Systems and malls

Tuesday 14th March 2023

I had to renew my driver's license card today, as my 5 years is up in May. The last time I did it it took me about 5 hours due to one of the two machines being 'offline,' then standing in a different office for a while to pay the fees. Today I drove to the Midrand  office where the actual system worked. There were at least 5 personnel handling the eye tests, registration and payment, all in the one go. I was back in my car in 30 minutes, all done! So refreshing to have a government office working so efficiently and professionally.

It was a stunning day so I headed to the Mall of Africa very close to the license office.  The R5 billion center was the largest mall built in a single phase, although the original budget was R3.5billion. It took 4 years to complete opening in 2016. I remember the  crazy traffic that backed up all the way to the highway when it opened and it's funny to think that it was 7 years ago already. Today, being my first visit, I had to take photos. It's rather impressive and spacious although too big for me to walk around completely.  Malls bore me after a while so I had some refreshments and decided to drive back.

The mall has impressive views and while leaving the parking, I could see the traffic backlog in the distance. It seemed as if all 4 lanes were being deliberately blocked by slow driving trucks. But there was nothing on the news anywhere to confirm that but fortunately my Google maps took me on a different free flowing route home.

Early evening  I took Molly for a walk, while sister ran. Molly was very excited and sniffed every tree and ivy plant. There was a cute corgi puppy being taken for a run and I realised that I'd never seen a corgi puppy before. The owner was a bit gumpy and didn't let the dogs sniff each other,  especially on the second sighting on my way back.  Power had returned by the time I got back and it was nice to be able to cook some dinner with the light on, haha.