SA Haters

[Darko]

Originally Posted by Daxk

"Regarding being a boy scout and being prepared - have you collected tinned foods and stored them in your nuclear fallout bunker yet? You never know if Russias or Iran's arsenal could get past Trident.

You know...just in case. "

Funny you should ask that....

Pls tell me you're joking!!

[Halo]

Who knows,,,, when your spleen is part of a muti - You tell me.

[Daxk]

Originally Posted by Darko

Pls tell me you're joking!!

AND.......... some green 3d wraparound dark glasses in case of Alien Invasion from Pleides.

I used to tie a rope around my mothers middle in case the rapture happened while she was driving, I knew I was already disqualified and might be left in a driverless car coming down from Chapmans Peak.
One can never be prepared enough.

[TheLastBaron]

Originally Posted by Daxk

Baron:"My signed, sealed contract has no skills transfer clause, as it is a German-based contract and such a clause would be illegal here. "

So you wont be asked to mentor and train someone up to take your place in case you should decide to leave?
There is no Training or assistance in your Job description?

There is a 3-month training period integral. However, there is also an interesting clause which reads that I am in no way expected to or obligated to train others. Some companies still believe in having professionals train, as it goes a long way towards combatting exactly the type of behavior you describe, which I am quite familiar with as it is an import from the U.S.

I am also not permitted to leave before the first two years unless I wish to repay moving and immigration costs.

[TheLastBaron]

Originally Posted by Klebe

Please do not call me dear...you do not know me from a bar of soap.

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and putting things in it."

Your petty, sly little put downs and sarcastic tone is wearisome.

I'm very grateful that I do not, and will never have the displeasure of actually having to convince you of anything.

You cannot be moved, and so you shall remain...

I like your attitude. Some people have closed minds from birth on. And instad of shying away from people and retreating to caves 8as was the way in the old days, viz. St. Gallarus and his famous Oratory in Dingle), they insist on injecting their venom and vitriol everywhere they can. Daxk would probably also regard that stunning Hollywood "classic" (-choke-) "Snakes on a Plane" as being within the realm of realistically possible...

I arrive in CPT late next month. So far, I have met some lovely people in person and on-line. As I grew up in large (ooooh, scary!) cities and have traveled and lived in many cultures and environments all of my life, I expect I will soon get accustomed to CPT and what exists in danger. Common sense is not something I lack, so I expect I will be fine, even if there are some things which may/may not prove unsettling.

[TheLastBaron]

Originally Posted by Darko

I've seen "advice" like that from the "SA Haters" before.

1st piece of advice:

"Leave SA now, before the ZAR hits 30 against the GBP...then it will be too late". This was when the ZAR was 15 odd to 1, and these "SA haters" predicted 30:1 in no time. It currently stands at a very low 12.8ish to 1. I hope nobody left on that sound piece of advice.

2nd piece of advice:

"Just wait for the 2009 elections - you will see tribalism and bloodshed at its worst - and then you will realise that you should've left SA". Now I'm not being funny or anything....but these were the most peaceful elections i have ever encountered.

So please, treat the term "advice" with a pinch of salt. If these "SA Haters" were so good at giving advice and predicting armageddon, they woudl all be billionairres.

I think the reason we see such individuals with negative eyes, is because of their relentless knack to will / wish SA into doom - and somehow it just doesn't happen in reality. They are simply bored in my view.

Judging how much time Daxk has to spend answering every single post in this and many other threads, I have wondered if he isn't retired, bored out of his wits in rural Ireland and has an internet flat rate - all a perfect combination for his "saintly" advice to anyone who dares to express an inkling of going to or returning to SA. Same for a host of others here...

Glad to know not all are doomsayers and "I told you so"s.

[TheLastBaron]

Originally Posted by Halo

Dear Baron von Munchhausen.... How can someone like myself who have had family members killed (and this is not just a botched robbery - Hijacked, beaten, ending up in a black bag) seen the deterioration..... sit back and not tell those (especially with children) that SA is a good place to migrate to.

Truth is truth... perhaps you're not affected and for this I am grateful. Others on the other hand are not so lucky.

Dear Halo: Your reference to the good Baron Münchausen escapes me not - however, I am not lying or spinning tall tales, for I have no reason to. I am in fact a true Baron (the 43rd in my line), which accounts for nothing these days, and have no need to augment what has been a pretty wild ride through life so far.

Responding to your question about crime: Sorry for your loss. My uncle ended up being identified from his dental records after being found after a public holiday by his cleaning lady, strapped to the chair he was beaten to death in in his own apartment in one of Berlin's ritziest segments since the perpetrator apparently was trying to beat something out of him. Another cousin was raped brutally multiple times in Belfast by British soldiers. In neither case were the perpetrators caught.

In the events that have personally affected me, yes I have been held up at knife-point (actually, knife at my neck from behind) while walking in Washington's Rock Creek Park; I have had a gun pointed directly at me from another car and have experienced other unpleasantries which put the fear of something into me at the time.

Nonetheless, I have managed to remain positive, keep my wits about me and remain able to cope. Perhaps South Africa will change that, but I choose to believe the opposite.

[Daxk]

Originally Posted by TheLastBaron

Judging how much time Daxk has to spend answering every single post in this and many other threads, I have wondered if he isn't retired, bored out of his wits in rural Ireland and has an internet flat rate - all a perfect combination for his "saintly" advice to anyone who dares to express an inkling of going to or returning to SA. Same for a host of others here...

Glad to know not all are doomsayers and "I told you so"s.

AAh Last baron, thought you had dissapeared.
You are almost right, I am in my 3rd retirement but found an interesting little niche market that had been overlooked so I have another little factory in process.
and yes, my internet and home phone package are flat rate and very good.I also enjoy talking/discussing/debating and have been doing since about 1996,

rural ireland is Quiet,in fact its very much like rural South Africa in the years that
I grew up in and very much like the little town I intended to retire in SA.
So yes, you got those right,

Bored? I have'nt been bored in decades,I doubt I will ever get bored,
I come across something that interests me and that leads somewhere else,its fascinating.

Now,once again your arrogance displays, I dont care wether people go to SA, and i'd like you to show me where i have said that they should'nt, on all these fora I inhabit.

In fact LB,I would rather you did,I want SA to succeed,I want it to become the paradise it could so easily be,
and SA, because of crime more than anything else,has a major skills shortage,LB,
not because it grew .
So it needs skills like yours and the others who come on here, and I have no problem with that.
I also have no problem with a mentoring phase from the skilled expats not because it takes jobs away from me, AA has never affected me and neither did BEE, and its not that I deny the need for AA mentoring because eventually,your contract will end and you will go back to wherever you wished to.
at least you will have left SA a better place.

So in terms of you (and Klebes comment) it's not that I wish to persuade you or convince, you will either go and leave without having experienced anything violent or you will experience something that shakes you to the core of your existence.
You're an adult. its your choice.

But!!!!
Having never lived in Germany if I were to parade my 2nd hand knowledge coupled with some holidays that I enjoyed there and attacked you and other peoples experiences, and did so arrogantly, then the conversation would be very similar to that we have had.

What lights my candle is when people BS or try and minimise the danger ,especially to children, and I'll give you an example.

An Foreign Contract worker's wife spots what appears to be a home invasion going on, she calls the armed response company and is then still in the driveway when they arrive.
A gunfight ensues and they lose their daughter.
A South African would have gotten the hell out of there and THEN phoned.
I dont blame the parents, how can you?

I do however blame whoever did the risk briefing and training which all Contract workers and their Families should get.

CT is safer, I dont know why, yes, a 40 yo lady did get abducted from Constantia Village a week or so ago but the cops got her back,
people do get hit in CT as well as anywhere else in SA, but it seems to be less violent?
enjoy, lost baron,it is a beautiful Country, everyone loves it, some of us just have an undying love.

[TheLastBaron]

Originally Posted by Daxk

AAh Last baron, thought you had dissapeared.
You are almost right, I am in my 3rd retirement but found an interesting little niche market that had been overlooked so I have another little factory in process.
and yes, my internet and home phone package are flat rate and very good.I also enjoy talking/discussing/debating and have been doing since about 1996,

rural ireland is Quiet,in fact its very much like rural South Africa in the years that
I grew up in and very much like the little town I intended to retire in SA.
So yes, you got those right,

Bored? I have'nt been bored in decades,I doubt I will ever get bored,
I come across something that interests me and that leads somewhere else,its fascinating.

Now,once again your arrogance displays, I dont care wether people go to SA, and i'd like you to show me where i have said that they should'nt, on all these fora I inhabit.

In fact LB,I would rather you did,I want SA to succeed,I want it to become the paradise it could so easily be,
and SA, because of crime more than anything else,has a major skills shortage,LB,
not because it grew .
So it needs skills like yours and the others who come on here, and I have no problem with that.
I also have no problem with a mentoring phase from the skilled expats not because it takes jobs away from me, AA has never affected me and neither did BEE, and its not that I deny the need for AA mentoring because eventually,your contract will end and you will go back to wherever you wished to.
at least you will have left SA a better place.

So in terms of you (and Klebes comment) it's not that I wish to persuade you or convince, you will either go and leave without having experienced anything violent or you will experience something that shakes you to the core of your existence.
You're an adult. its your choice.

But!!!!
Having never lived in Germany if I were to parade my 2nd hand knowledge coupled with some holidays that I enjoyed there and attacked you and other peoples experiences, and did so arrogantly, then the conversation would be very similar to that we have had.

What lights my candle is when people BS or try and minimise the danger ,especially to children, and I'll give you an example.

An Foreign Contract worker's wife spots what appears to be a home invasion going on, she calls the armed response company and is then still in the driveway when they arrive.
A gunfight ensues and they lose their daughter.
A South African would have gotten the hell out of there and THEN phoned.
I dont blame the parents, how can you?

I do however blame whoever did the risk briefing and training which all Contract workers and their Families should get.

CT is safer, I dont know why, yes, a 40 yo lady did get abducted from Constantia Village a week or so ago but the cops got her back,
people do get hit in CT as well as anywhere else in SA, but it seems to be less violent?
enjoy, lost baron,it is a beautiful Country, everyone loves it, some of us just have an undying love.

Hi, we seem to be getting closer to an understanding, it would appear.

As an American-German dual-national (by quirk of birth, my mother is Irish!) I think we may have more in common than you might suppose. I have been moving around the globe myself; my move back to Germany was motivated by disgust at the U.S. which I lived in for 20 years as a hard-working hotelier/chef de cuisine until it all got to be too much. Germany turned out to be less than ideal as this country has gotten very, very flakey since I left it in the late 1980s and the constant immigration of "Russian Germans" is making things much, much worse. Many of them are hard-working, wonderful people, but for each of those there seems to be at least a half-dozen of the kind no one would want anywhere. I wanted to move to Switzerland, but there is little work there, as here, for someone in his 50s, so the offer from South Africa was welcome, even if the crime, corruption and other problems might seem more offputting than welcoming to some.

I have been following the news reports about CPT and think that with some common sense it should be a good place, even though getting used to burglar bars and being careful about coming in at night, etc. will require a little getting used to, as will many other things I currently know nothing about.

You are very right to assume that anyone with common sense should have driven away and called the police from safety, as almost every guidebook and website I have read/perused so far advises. I guess some people do not react well in a crisis... and the cost was the death of a daughter. Very sad, indeed.

My sister is retiring to her cottage in Donegal in August and has been doing missionary work in Uganda for several years now, so I guess I feel less daunted by SA's problems than some.

Peace,

TLB

By the way, can you tell me what (I hope I spell it right) "Voets toots" means? I've tried finding it on Afrikaans translating sites but no luck. Thanks.

[Daxk]

voetstoets means without warranty, as you find it, if you buy a car and 5 minutes later it dies, you have no recourse, no claim against the seller.
Not recommended if you ned reliable transport