welcome to a Third World monopoly

[freckles_and_doubt]

Interesting facts about Telkom:

1. Arranging a phone line for your invalid father is apparently a deeply suspect and illegitimate project. You will have to phone the helpline multiple times, and will be given conflicting information from each different person you speak to.
   
2. Their phone operatives do, in fact, seem inclined to put unnecessary obstacles in your way, in this case police intervention.
   
3. In defiance of probability the Claremont Telkom store contains one actual sales assistant who is cheerful, friendly, knowledgeable, efficient and empathetic, but you need to go in in person to access him.
   
4. This morning's take on the Telkom helpline required me to phone the bloody thing five times in a row, since their number-press system kept cutting me off when I pressed 2 for a "Progress report". This is clearly because Telkom doesn't care about making progress and certainly doesn't want you to find out about the lack of it.
   
5. When you eventually press to order a new service, in desperation, the operative will inform you that there is no point in updating the record with your dad's cellphone number, since the technicians have already left for the day's rounds and can't access the system.
   
6. Telkom's technicians are not, it appears, in any form of telephonic or data contact with the mother ship while out on a job.
   
7. My faint, wondering surprise at my Evil Landlord's loathing of Telkom and all its works is, in fact, an illegitimate reaction based on the fact that I've never really had to deal with them. He was right all along.
   
8. Their Evil Empire status is not sufficient to prevent me from feeling obscurely guilty all morning at having told the helpline woman "Thank you very much for your complete absence of help".

I seem to have lulled the lurking bug, and Sid the Sinus headache, into something like acquiescence by going home at 1pm yesterday and spending the entire afternoon crashed on the sofa watching the new Indiana Jones, which I somehow missed on circuit when it was actually new. On the upside, it's very like the first three films, as in it's lots of fun but not actually very good - I'd say the level of cheesy plot hole is about constant. Nonetheless, truly wonderful Cate Blanchett in a seriously slumming-it role; bonus aliens, which always float my boat; and a surprisingly entertaining take on the James Dean rebel by Shia Laboeuf. On the down side, it's very like the first three films in that it's not actually very good, and poor old Harrison Ford really is getting a bit creaky - they played on it as a motif quite well, but it somehow feels all undignified for him.

Also watched Hellboy: The Golden Army, which, despite being a Guillermo del Toro and therefore incapable of doing wrong, was really a Tolkien rip-off which would have benefited materially from a Legolas. (Didn't find the elves at all hot, which simply feels wrong). Loved the deltoroid faerie folk, though, truly creepy at times, and the animation of some of them (the tooth fairies, particularly) was beautifully done. Also, was it just me, or did they somehow stuff up Hellboy's face-mask? looked all wrong. Del Toro is, however, very gratifyingly able not to clutter up his plots with unnecessary bits. Enjoyable movie, although not quite as enjoyable as I'd expected, somehow.

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[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

My otherwise easy going husband lost any sense of humour or patience he might have had with Telkom when we moved into our current home and they failed to give us ADSL for something like 3 months. After a while, he managed to get the direct number of one official type and called him daily. This was also the period during which we met the German Dragonlady from the road behind us, who has The Pole with The Box in her back garden but will not allow Telkom technicians access unless they have called beforehand.