Hello, and welcome in again. It’s been a long while since I’ve hosted you and I’m glad to be back. Come on in – you can have a Sheldon type of ‘hot beverage’ or just plain coffee. And because it is almost Easter (well in the next few weeks, and the shops already have Easter eggs on sale) there are hot cross buns!
Photo of the week
But before we get started on catching up I want to show the best photo I took this week – of coffee! What else is there? Che helped me set it up and he’s so good with composition.
Catching up on admin
This week I caught up on some long overdue admin, like applying for a passport renewal. I used the new online system but can’t leverage its full convenience by using a bank branch to get my photo and biometrics done because my bank is not part of their system.
I don’t have accounts in the banks that do. Because of home affairs’s annoyingly antiquated system of payment, I have to have an account with a bank that’s part of their system to effect payment for the passport. With Paypal and EFTs part of daily life, I had hoped that our home affairs department had come into the 21st century.
So, all this to say that I still have to go to a home affairs department and stand in 3 queues to get the biometrics, photos and payment done. Unless it is is 2 queues…I will keep you posted. I will be very pleasantly surprised if it is 1 queue, like it is in Portugal.
Maar nou ja…(Afrikaans for ‘in any event’)…
I’ve finally booked my flights
I finally booked flights for my trip overseas. I was procrastinating about dates – do I just go for the 2 day coach camp, or do I go a bit earlier and combine it with a trip to Lisbon. I opted for the latter. I’m so looking forward to walking the streets of Lisbon again.
I must say that booking multi city trips is not a piece of cake. If you book everything through one airline you end up paying more than double. What also makes it interesting is that I’m paying for the Portugal flights and the company is paying for the others.
So I ended up booking 3 separate return flights on 3 separate airlines. Gosh! The key thing was deciding on which hub I’d be using because this makes all the difference in how long the layovers are. I don’t think I’m the only person not fond of long layovers (unless I’m flying Emirates business class which doesn’t often happen).
I eventually chose Frankfurt as the hub. I fly on Friday night, land in Frankfurt, clear customs and get baggage and then catch the flight to Lisbon. So Saturday I am in Lisbon. I stay until Wednesday, where I fly back to Frankfurt to catch the flight to Berlin. I’m there for 2 days, then fly to Frankfurt on Friday night and spend Saturday exploring it and catch the flight back to Johannesburg on Saturday night.
Thai massage
My friend K and I went for a Thai massage. I’m a bit stiff today on the thoracic spinal area. I’ve been hunching over a laptop for a couple of days so my muscles were a bit stiff to begin with. So the massage worked these muscles deeply. I expect the muscles to relax more by tomorrow – unless off course I hunch over my laptop this weekend again.
That said, tell me how was your week?
Oh, and if you want to catch up on coffee with the awesome weekend coffee share community, just click here to find them.
