Day 35: Drive, Mrs Lamb!

Today I am struck by a bit of atypical nervousness. I went for a driving lesson. And if that was a driving test, I would have failed. Twice. That is not exactly how I envisioned the experience, to be honest.

I mean... I am generally a careful driver, I don't take chances, I give way when I should, I don't speed. Well not too much. 'Speed' is a matter of perception, really. If I consistently drove 60km/h in Johannesburg streets I wouldn't have had any speeding tickets. If I do the same here, I would lose my license, or simply not get it. It is REALLY hard to drive 50km/h downhill!

Then there's the roundabouts. We don't have them in South Africa. I remember seeing something similar in some town one day, and I think Pretoria has two, but not near anywhere I used to drive. An in any case, they're not roundabouts. They're circles. Or traffic circles, if you must. What type of name is 'roundabout' for anything? Just imagine someone saying: I'm going to take a driveabout the roundabout before I go for a walkabout!

Well in my defense, I didn't fail anything about the roundabouts. Even in a 4WD it would be hard to drive OVER them - common practice for some circles in Gauteng - since these ones are not merely paint on the road, but proper circles with lawn and trees and occasionally a kangaroo in the middle. I mean, proper roundabouts.

Then there is the parking issue - which once again, will most likely be fine as I won't be driving a 4WD. So I should be able to control the urge to drive up and over curbs. And strangely enough, the driving instructor was very perturbed when I asked about doing a reverse parking manœuvre on the RIGHT-hand side. 'Why on earth would you want to do that??' I have wondered about that many times years ago when I had to master that tricksy one myself. Of course that is for parking that side in a one-way street.
But apparently it isn't required in Australia. Smile. And neither is parallel parking. Another smile.

Then there was just the little issue of the 'Busses-only' sign. Mental note to self: If instructor instructs to go left and sign says no cars, don't follow instructions. That's a tough one. The sign can't hit me over the head for disobeying instructions.

As the instructor and I parted ways, he gave me another piece of valuable information: the South Port testing station is much more difficult than Helensvale. There are roadworks, unexpected signs, missing stop-street signs, and a pass rate of only 50% compared to 70% at Helensvale.
And yes, we are booked to go for our tests at South Port.

But that's fine, really, I know how statistics work. It means if me and my husband take the test, one of us will likely fail. So if I could get my husband to fail, statistically speaking I would have a better chance to succeed. Sigh. Not really an option... On the other hand... Let's say I were to fail, just maybe, maybe, I could get a chauffeur...

Driving Mrs Lamb...

Day 3 - A License to.... Everything

One of the nuisances of moving to a different country is all the administrative tasks that go along with it. No wait, just about ALL the nuisance revolves around paperwork and forms and more forms. And just when you're done with the one lot on the one side, the next list builts up on the other side! Bank account. Driver's license. Telephone. Medical. Well that's the ones we started with anyway.

Different to South Africa, it turned out that opening a bank account was the easiest of the lot! Friendly, efficient, helpful staff at a small branch of the Commonwealth bank. Also different to SA, The Critical Document To Have is a driver's license. It is the one piece of plastic that define Who you are. It is a Category A proof of you are who you claim to be, and clearly you are a responsible person because you managed to get It. You can't get a cellphone contract without It. You can't get medical without It. You can't open bank accounts without It. But in order to get It, you need to proof Who you are. Which is rather difficult without IT!! The ONLY reason we managed to exit the circular loop, is that we stay with family who, thankfully! are in posession of the all-critical piece of plastic, and could give sworn statements that they really really do know us..... Phew!

First step in converting our SA licenses: write Learner's Test. Done. Next step: book and go for Driver's Test. Now just to put things in perspective: if you are an Aussie getting a license, it would take anything from about 3 years to 7 years to progress through all the different levels of provisional licenses and log books to finally having the coveted Open License. SEVEN YEARS.

Small wonder they put so much value on it!

(Sorry, no pic today. Don't have IT yet!)