I had to chuckle at some of the comments I received regarding ‘loving’ the taxi drivers!!…ok, perhaps love was a bit over the top….bless em! …it was tongue in cheek though.

There is no doubt that some of them are totally infuriating and plain criminal in the way they use the roads, but It has to be said that some of the very worst drivers on our roads are those driving top of the range cars, especially on the highways. They, as some of the taxi drivers , seem to think they own the roads and everyone else must just get out of the way.

These days I just sit back and enjoy the entertainment, because that is what it is if one can get past the irritation and annoyance…which I admit is not always so easy.

The point of the comment in the first place was to relate to my belief that everything that goes on around us, that is, how we perceive it, how we receive it and how we handle it depends solely on our state of mind. If we think it is going to be bad, it is going to be bad, and vice versa. In the context in which it is written I am saying that regarding ‘life in jozi” I only want to write positively about everything. That is not to say that I take the ostrich approach, I am well aware of all the problems we face here on a daily basis and take every care, including maintaining a positive and upbeat point of view with my life! Positive attracts positive, why be anything else?

If I had a negative state of mind those taxi guys could spoil every single day of my life but I refuse to let that happen, and so, as I say, I look for the entertainment value. It is certainly there, unbelievable at times. Shockingly outrageous, ridiculous to sublime, horrifying, hilarious…I really must take a few pics with the cell phone camera and post them here.

Interestingly, once the daily shenanigans on our roads have got me chuckling, I tend to start ‘seeing’ the faces of the culprits, and the process of thought leads me to appreciate that they are all just folk striving to survive and make a penny at their various walks of life and levels of personal growth, and it gets easier and easier to deal with.

On the odd occasion I do crack a bit and let myself get stressed out, afterwards, I think of what a smug prick I must sound like and pack up laughing at myself in the rear mirror…so somehow it works out.

Talking about positive attitudes, a lot of people ask what I think about the future of the country in general and in that respect i am truly upbeat and excited about the road ahead. We have everything going for us even though we do have a crime problem.

Then again, is it a crime problem? Or is that just the ‘face’ of the problem?

Quite honestly I think we, particularly those of us who live in Joburg or Gauteng, are living in one of the safest places in the world.
HUH??…I can hear it!!..’What is this boy smoking?

I know we have our problems, crime, corruption, etc etc but it is the same all over the world. Some of our problems may be worse than in other places, some of our violent crime is surely amongst the worst in the world but the grass is no greener on the other side.

If I add it all up, crime, violence, war and the threat of war, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados, terrorism, flooding, pollution….we really are in one of the safest places in the world .

In the east we all know about the recent Tsunami. People living on some south sea islands have to move up from the water’s edge a couple of times every year because of rising waters.

In America many people have to evacuate their homes on an annual basis because of hurricanes and tornadoes, earthquakes are prevalent and many experts say that regarding certain cities, it is not a question of if they get destroyed but when.

Large swathes of Europe is in serious danger of disappearing under water.

It is more dangerous for teenagers to walk the streets of London than it is for some of the soldiers in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. I heard on sky news recently that there are 60,000 reported stabbings or knife crimes in England annually!!

We all saw the pollution in China during the Olympics, the floods in India and Bangladesh…it goes on. As for the driving on our roads, perhaps we should all go over to somewhere like Bombay or Cairo and drive around there for a while before we feel too sorry for ourselves.

Everyone and everywhere has its problems. Quite honestly i embrace the problems we have here, at least i can do something about them, even if it is only showing courtesy in the face of adversity on the roads and thereby educating those that know no better. Here i have to worry about getting killed at the hands of a hijacker for example, in other parts of the world i would be worried about dying of boredom and frustration in a nanny state that completely ties my hands. True security is a fallacy, it does not exist anywhere for anyone on this planet.

I suppose one might argue that Australia could be a good place to be from a safety and security point of view…but then you would have to be an Aussie!!….who would you hate in sport?…lol