Been away for a while and thus a bit late on my updates.
We visited Taipei where I attended Computex, probably the biggest computer trade show in the world. A couple of things caught my attention immediately. Things like the general attitude of the people.
The fact that very few people can understand English made things a bit difficult, but that does not stop them from being helpful. The work ethic is out of this world with businesses staying open until ten at night.
Inspite of the millions of people I did not see beggars or any sort of "street" people. Seems everybody has a job to do somewhere, somehow. There are millions of scooters which might explain why they don't have traffic jams. All over the traffic was always flowing. We witnessed one accident which was less than a bumper bashing which three cops attended to. That's unheard of over here. If no-one got killed the cops don't bother here by us.
Road design is totally different. Due to minimal space these guys came out with some excellent designs that seem to work. On and off ramps are located in the middle of the highways. Everything just seem to work.
Coming back to South Africa I was surprised at the amount of work being done to the Johannesburg highways. Being so far away from big cities one does not always see or hear of construction happening in preparation of the 2010 World Cup, and this seems to be going well. The closer it gets the more one realise how much government is putting into it. We might just get a surprise.
The only concern I have as far as 2010 is concerned are our people and our services. It's all very nice that the police will be plentiful and mostly prepared for the matches, but what about common crime? Presently they are hopeless and most of them can barely speak English. Our medical facilities need a lot of attention and money to get it sorted and our traffic (metro) police are mostly on the take with an attitude.
Most black uniformed persons here have attitude dealing with other races. This is similar to countries like Mozambique and Botswana where whites aren't welcome (in general). They make you understand that this is their country and you will do what they tell you.
Of course this is also the perfect time to strike. The workers and their unions know that there's a time-frame and government will do whatever it takes to get things done on time. But somewhere someone will have to draw the line and get them back to work. Of course the unions know how to intimidate and will persist with their demands until government gets involved.
In the current economic climate there's no reasoning behind some of these demands, but you're not South African if you don't have demands.
Escom is trying to get their 34% tarrif increase approved. It's strange that they spent millions in refurbishing old power stations just to put a hold on it in anticipation of this rate increase - then they can build new power stations. Why bother fixing / upgrading the existing ones? Doesn't make sense. Seems this is one bus without a driver, totally directionless. But that's South Africa.
Let's have your ideas -
Message Board
Free Forums by Bravenet.com
