{"id":316,"date":"2005-02-14T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T07:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/wordpress\/?p=316"},"modified":"2005-02-14T09:40:17","modified_gmt":"2005-02-14T07:40:17","slug":"being-a-good-parent-the-world-of-birds-and-the-horrors-of-nedbank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=316","title":{"rendered":"Being a good parent, the World of Birds and the horrors of Nedbank"},"content":{"rendered":"

On becoming a parent, I’m told, there are four things to do. Own a green card, giving access to all Cape Nature Conservation<\/a> sites, such as Cape Point and Boulders, an Aquarium<\/a> card, a Botanical Society<\/a> card and a World of Birds<\/a> card.<\/p>\n

I’m not doing too badly, scoring 75% as a parent, the aquarium card being the only exception. The one I use least is the World of Birds card, situated as it is in Hout Bay, relatively the opposite end of the world from me in Capri, especially as I refuse to support the monstrous Chapmans Peak toll road.<\/p>\n

The World of Birds produces a bimonthly newsletter, which always provides humourous reading. The owner seems to be engaged in continual bitter struggles with everyone around him. From the Jan\/Feb newsletter, it’s his staff, his bank, and his neighbours (x2), with the government, teachers, a Pretoria researcher and some guests getting general complaints.<\/p>\n

The bank story is most humourous. Obviously at the end of his tether with Nedbank<\/a>, the owner wades in with an article subtitled How Your Bank Could Damage Your Business<\/em>. Bad service from South African banks is so often taken for granted, so I love to see people slating their banks so publicly. After lengthy disputes with Nedbank, R75 daily penalties, R20 ‘excess fees’, R64000 in interest and service fees from Mar-Dec, and eventually having a bond turned down, they’ve moved to Absa<\/a>, who’d aproved their bond. So Nedbank, quibbling about cash flow and making the situation worse with their charges, loses a R5 million current account as well. Are Nedbank even aware of the penny-wise pound-foolish behaviour of their staff in this case?<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s time for a World of Birds visit soon. Dorje loved it last time he was there, and they’ve done some more expansions recently. It’s much bigger than it looks, about a week’s worth of exploring. I’ll just have to be careful not to annoy the owner and make an appearance in March’s newsletter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On becoming a parent, I’m told, there are four things to do. Own a green card, giving access to all Cape Nature Conservation sites, such as Cape Point and Boulders, an Aquarium card, a Botanical Society card and a World of Birds card. I’m not doing too badly, scoring 75% as a parent, the aquarium… Continue reading Being a good parent, the World of Birds and the horrors of Nedbank<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fire-social","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}