On Voting and Shoes and Eating Out

Hello folks. Now it really is Friday. Thank goodness. I need a weekend. I have no idea how on earth I'll survive an entire 5-day week next week?

But it has been a pretty good one ... and our weekend looks set to be fairly busy. On Tuesday evening we stayed in and had dinner at home. After walking to our local Spar for our final ingredients instead of going to gym. It was quite a hectic uphill walk there, I think it made a nice substitute actually :)

On Wednesday, we voted. Of course. Actually I wish "of course" was everyone's response. But I found out the next day at work that 3 of the 4 people sitting immediately around me hadn't bothered. WHAT? It simply blows my mind. Look, I get it if you happen to be away on holiday, but lets be honest we've known about this since December, I think? And I get it if you accidentally end up in hospital or something on the day. Unscheduled unavailability or whatever. But if you just couldn't be bothered? Then shame on you.

While I do think that there is something to be said for the fact that yes people fought hard for the right to vote but, I guess it's sorta like abortion ... whether you personally would or wouldn't have one, people should all have the right to make that decision for themselves. Anyway, I have voted every time since I turned 18. To me, it's a no brainer, you should. Hell, I know a guy who flew up from Cape Town (he moved there earlier this year, after registration closed) so he could also vote provincially. To him it is that important. Big thumbs up to him. Now don't all y'all who didn't make the effort to vote feel ashamed?

So yeah, it took us 50mins. Not too shabby. But it took The Trucker's sister a whopping 5 hours. I swear I woulda up and found myself another voting station when I arrived and saw a queue like that o_0 Handy that this year they let people vote anywhere.

We did a whole lot of other stuff with our day off on Wednesday too. Who knew everything would be business as usual at the shops? We went to Builder's ... a pipe broke on our Main Bathroom's toilet while The Trucker was trying to fix it the night before. Yay, now it's really fixed :) He's so handy. Swoon <3

And we went shopping. For me. You don't understand how rarely this happened. Okay so I didn't really get much, just an AWESOME hoody, cause that's what I was looking for for winter. And I went to buy some cowboy boots I'd seen at Old Khaki (was waiting for some birthday money before buying them) ... but our local one didn't have my size ... and then I saw another (more expensive, of course) pair of different boots which were also awesome. So I had a whole internal debate about whether I could justify buying both.

Which I mulled over the whole way to another branch to find the original boots in the correct size. And then I tried them both on. How could I decide?

So I decided to buy both and open an account to get the discount vouchers. Generally I only have store cards if they offer you 6 months interest free (Edgars, for example). Otherwise what is the benefit, I'd rather just put it on my normal credit card? But R600 in vouchers, well that made it momentarily worthwhile. (I reckon the account will be closed before the end of May ;) )

But then you have to fill in this whole form and it has to go for approval and you can't actually do anything till you have the card ... so that was hugely disappointing. BUT, they phoned yesterday to say it was approved and my card was there so I made a detour after work to collect it and buy the boots!

They are awesome :) I figure good boots (and these are Harley Davidson and Caterpillar) can last for years (my other Caterpillar ones I bought before going to Canada in 2009 and still wear them!), so if you spread the cost out like that, it's not *so* bad o_0 But still. Yoh. Expensive. Goodbye Birthday monies.

What else? Oh yes, we watched The Lego Movie. It was quite good, The Trucker & I were laughing out loud at some parts. Good light entertainment and I loved how it came together in the end :)

Oh, and. Yes, there is more ... sheesh. We went to Beluga Waterfall for dinner last night. The Entertainer had some special May vouchers and I didn't even know we had a Beluga up here so it seemed worth a try.

I've been to the Cape Town one (twice). Looking back at those experiences (cause I couldn't really remember it that well, except that it hadn't left me with a must-go-back memory), I can see that I wasn't impressed with the service either time. Well aside from the Joburg one being in Waterfall, where the traffic is horrendous ... sheesh. Can you say "double lane parking lot" and at 7pm in the evening! How do people live like that? The service in the Joburg Beluga was superb. Bordering on invasive. Aside from our actual waiter, we were asked by at least 3 other random waiters if we needed refills and if everything was okay.

They seemed to have A LOT of waiters per capita. We started with a little something from the Dim Sum menu (Spicy peanut, chicken & coriander Pot Stickers, R44 for 3) and something from the Sushi menu (Bam Bam rolls, R106 for 6). Both were superb!

For mains I had the Asian Prawn & Chicken Curry (R175) and The Trucker had the Beef Wellington (R160).


Okay, a few things. This place is expensive. Even tho the Sushi and Dim Sum were both divine, it still felt more expensive than necessary. And the mains, I definitely felt they were over priced. The Beef Wellington didn't arrive with a sniff of vegetables (only some amazing crumbed sweet potato balls). It was tasty tho. My curry was tasty, but not almost R200 worth of tasty.

And the venue itself feels a bit like a men's club instead of a restaurant what with pictures of pretty girls all over the walls and menus ...? Where are the sexy guys? And they don't stock any craft beers or Coke Zero (only light) or Savannah Lite or Dark (only Dry). Perhaps I am not the right target market ;) Maybe we should've been drinking wine.

All in all, would we go back? Yeah, maybe, at a stretch. But just for the Dim Sum and Sushi and with a very large wallet. But then again, the traffic puts me off another week-night visit.