Friday 15th September 2023
I opened a UK bank account today. I know it seems strange. You might be thinking, 'what has she done all this time?' Well I have a digital online bank account which has worked really well for the past two years but they don't have physical bank account buildings. The only snag with this is that I can't physically go inside to deposit a cheque from the tax office. Yip, one of those old style pieces of paper that has a value written on it. It's ironic that there's a certain amount of disdain towards digital banks while the big banks are trying their hardest to close all personalised branches and make people go 'online'.
Today I had a robot play banal music and give me the reassurance to not hang up my phone, but to wait for a human from the tax office help me out, for 56 minutes. I was so surprised when a chap started talking to me in a Scottish accent (this is still surreal- official voices sounding like me). For a second I had panic that he couldn't hear me and I'd be cut off and maybe have another long wait but fortunately all went okay and he assured me that the cheque will be on it's way soon.
The non South African readers of this blog might be thinking why is she going on about this kind of stuff, but dealing with official stuff in South Africa is a huge chore due to many parts of the infrastructure struggling. But I'm relieved to finally have some news on the 'pending' status of my UK tax so it was a constructive day for me. The long phone wait was balanced by the five minutes it took me to open my bank account online. I got the emails of confirmation before I'd closed the website window and I kept thinking 'is that really all it takes?'
So my new bank account will be ready for my lottery winnings next week, maybe the banks will be calling me, haha.
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