(posted now ‘cos Jo’blog was broken for ages)
A few weeks back Clive pointed Mike and I to a post he wrote on a guy called Richard Mulvey who’s climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money for the kids at Reach for a Dream.
He asked us if we could do anything to help, so we donated R5k and some of the Linkers put together this short vid:
Dig deep kids, or at the very least, spread the word for him, it’s a good cause…!
To make an incredibly long story short:
Yesterday armed gunmen walked into the office and stole our laptops, cameras and phones. When I wanted to get a SIM replacement, Vodacom’s system was down. Then half of Jo’burg was without power until the evening, so I had to wait ’til this morning to get my own number back.
Fuckers. All of them.
Last Friday I was phoned and informed that the VW competition I entered into last year has drawn my name as a winner. The lady, Ntombi, asked me if I remember entering the competition.
For the life of me I couldn’t remember if I’d entered into something like this or not, because occasionally while reading a magazine, listening to the radio or watching TV, an SMS-to-enter competition might catch my attention and I’ll send one through forgetting about it a minute later. So I replied to the voice on the other line, ‘You know, if you’ve got my details, I probably did!’
Ntombi then told me that I was guaranteed to win a prize, and the prize giving was happening on Tuesday.
Now, most people have been scammed by this ‘buy timeshare to win’ crap, it was huge a while ago, and seemed to slow down, until now, I thought.
So, the blogger in me, and the fact that Jo’blog has been lacking in posts of late, decided to go through with it, with one quest in mind:
I would arrive, be told I had to do something first before I could get a stupid little prize, then go postal on anything and everything around me because I was told I was ‘guaranteed to win a prize’. Take names, take numbers, and post it all in a big fat rant for the world to see.
This is what happened:
I drove to Midrand. Parked my car at the specified address. Walked in. Gave my reference number. Was shown to a room. Entered the room. Chose 6 random numbers. Watched a lady spin a box with numbered balls. Was handed a voucher for a weekend away, here. Walked to my car. Drove home.
That simple. I have no idea how these people make their money. There were at least 5 different rooms with people walking in and out, doing exactly the same as I did. Bizarre.
Yes, they have my name and phone number. Yes, I know I’m going to get spam SMS’s from time to time. But come on, a free weekend away? Well worth the 10 seconds it takes to delete an SMS, or tell a telemarketer to fuck off.
…until his legs gave way and he blew off my windscreen.
True story.
