For those of you keeping abreast of the goings-on in Zimbabwe, you will be aware that President Mugabe's refusal to remove RBZ Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana from their position is putting a tremendous strain on the inclusive government. I believe a major problem is that no one has come forward and applied for these positions, so for the sake of my nation, I have written the following letter to the Minister of Finance requesting that I be considered for the position:
Honorable Tendai Laxton Biti
Minister of Finance
Ministry of Finance
Harare
14 June, 2009
Dear Sir,
RE: Application for Post of Governor, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
By way of this letter, I hereby apply for the post of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. I am fully aware that technically there is not yet a vacancy for this position, but my submission of this application letter is a resounding vote of confidence in your ability to overcome the misgivings of He Whose Name We Dare Not Speak (I’m sure you know of whom I speak, but just in case there is another Whose Name We Dare Not Speak, the one I am currently referring to was born circa 67 B.C.E., looks and walks like a fossil, and wears spectacles so thick if he squints his eyes he can see into the future.)
I feel I am highly qualified for this position, especially now that our country trades in US dollars and South African Rands. First of all, I was educated in America and lived there for over 5 years. That alone makes me something of an expert on the US dollar. I must admit I could not have dreamed of taking up this post 10 months ago because truth be told I do not know my quadrillions from my quintillions. Now that we are dealing in currencies of sane people, with hundreds and thousands, I think my A in ZJC maths should stand me in good stead. I am so confident of this I would venture to say that given the current level of activity in our economy, a ham sandwich could probably run our Reserve Bank. I assure you, sir, that I am more intelligent than a ham sandwich, except on Friday nights when Johnnie Walker tramples all over my gray cells.
I have vast experience dealing with numbers in a business setting. What’s more, I have proven myself to be an imaginative and visionary entrepreneur, qualities I am certain you are looking for in a Reserve Bank governor. Case in point: A year ago, my brother and I were having a whiskey at the Keg and Sable, admiring the scenery, when we simultaneously noticed that we could see right through the skirt of the girl standing in front of us near the door. I mean, we could see the outline of her entire Netherlands, if you catch my drift. We were appalled, or at least would have been had it been 3 double-shots earlier. As it was I must admit we were mildly entertained.
In our subsequent discussion, it emerged that neither of us could name a single store in Harare that sold petticoats! Can you believe that? All these poor Zimbabwean women were walking around having their nether regions examined by drunk perverts because no one had the foresight to manufacture or import so bare a necessity as a petticoat! We immediately stopped drinking and dashed home to do a bit of research on the Internet, and in no time we had placed an order to China for a consignment of 10,000 petticoats of varying sizes and colours. We paid for it using funds we had externalized the previous year (please forgive me for this infringement upon the law, it was a temporary lapse in judgement, and it only happened a few times.) A week later our shipment arrived and we set about saving the dignity of our mothers and sisters throughout the country and across the political divide. In our first month we sold 2 petticoats, to our maid. Although that may not sound like much, it was an impressive start, and we would have done much more if the current RBZ governor had not jumped out of bed one morning and decided that the country would start trading in US dollars, of which very people had any at the time, according to our research.
Honorable Minister, as you can see, I am uniquely blessed with an unorthodox business mind, which is something every central bank governor should have. My first act as RBZ governor will be to ensure that Dr. Gono returns the Mercedes Benz S600 Brabus that he acquired a year ago using state funds. Yes, I know he says he didn’t buy one, but he should return it anyway because this new government needs to show restraint, and there is no point in buying me my own brand new Mercedes Benz Brabus when there is a perfectly good one available already.
Sir, my second act as RBZ governor will be to donate petticoats to all the women in your home area, to ensure that you are voted in for another term as MP when election time rolls around again, I have yet to do a stock-take, but I think we should have somewhere in the region of 9998 petticoats to distribute during your campaign. You can even take one or two for your wife, Honorable Minister, although I doubt anyone has ever been drunk enough to examine your wife’s Netherlands. Except of course yourself, sir, so consider yourself lucky.
Next, Honorable Minister, I will immediately re-introduce the Zimbabwe dollar. Our economy has never seen such boom times as it did during the heady days of rampant illicit forex deals, illegal mining activities, and overt insider trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. This will go a long way in lifting everyone’s sprits as the entire nation is currently in a state of shock and rapidly sinking into a psychological depression from which we may never recover. All civil servants will once again be allowed to resort to corruption, bribery, extortion, and any other nefarious activities they deem fit. In one fell swoop I will have lifted a huge burden off your shoulders because you will no longer need to worry about paying them that $100 a month allowance.
Lastly, I will accompany you around the world and assist you in all your begging activities. I will carry your suitcases and your begging bowl. I also wash underwear as one of my skills. I know we need something called balancing payments support and queues of credit, and I will definitely be an asset in our quest to secure these. I am tremendously gifted in the art of begging because my father never gave us pocket money when we were kids, and we survived 5354 break-times each by relying on the largesse of others. To boot, President Obama is also a personal friend of mine, so I could always put in a good word for our nation next time I speak to him. Well, let me not say next time as I’ve never actually spoken to him as such. He’s actually more of a pen pal than a friend, but I think he should fix the postal service in his country because his replies to my letters never seem to get to me.
I am sure you will agree that my credentials are impressive. I can begin immediately even though I am employed as C.E.O. of a medium enterprise - when my nation calls, I come running. I now eagerly await your positive response.
Yours Financially
Zakeo Zakeo
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Hell in the Heavens
Why is it that no matter where I go, there is always someone there determined to drive me to drink with their obnoxiousness? Not that I ever need much of an invitation to drink – I think last year I single-handedly contributed not less than 6.7% to the gross global earnings of the Chivas Brothers Company. I really am doing all I can to stop this recession from spreading to every sector and every company. Well, to one company at least.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I enjoy the occasional glass of whisky (or four). I am refined in my drinking habits and dignified in my drunkenness. But every once in a while I meet a real ISO-certified asshole who makes me want to empty my whisky into buckets and then pour it into my mouth continuously until I pass out. Case in point:
I woke up at 5am this morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg. I suspect those readers that know me are already struggling to believe this story, as on most days I am generally up round about the crack of lunch. I’m known for waking up early about as much as Michael Jackson is known for his insatiable appetite for women. But suspend your disbelief for a moment, will you? This is a true story. Anyway, my driver arrived promptly at 5.30am to pick me up, just as the hardest-working witches whizzed over our heads in a rush to park their brooms before sunrise. It was so ridiculously dark; I think all people who wake up this early as a matter of routine are evil. If your husband, wife, brother, mother or whoever ever says to you, “I just can’t sleep past 5am. I’ve always been a morning person,” I think you should drive a stake through their heart that very evening when they get back from work or wherever the hell they claim to have gone. Trust me, it’s the only way to kill them, I’ve done my research (with a lot of help from MGM Studios in conjunction with Twisted Pictures Entertainment).
I am neither a wizard nor a blood-sucking vampire as far I know because as much as I’m not a morning person, I’m decidedly also NOT a night person. I can’t stay up past 10pm, so I’m really just an afternoon person, which is relatively harmless, unless of course I’m a daywalker, like Blade, in which case I’m even more badass than I thought I was because it means I routinely present monthly reports to my Board of Directors in the morning, hunt vampires and kill lycanthropes during my lunch break, and then come back and review my company’s weekly marketing plan before quitting time. Jeez, even I didn’t know I rock this hard.
But back to the matter at hand. I don’t know what type of plane passenger you are, but I am one of those that loves to keep to himself. All I want to do on a plane is read a book or a newspaper (but not those worthless in-flight magazines – complimentary copy my ass, no one takes those things home coz they’re BORING), listen to my iPod, do a little bit of work on my laptop if I need to, and sleep. I particularly value the sleep part. So it pains me a great deal when I get seated next to another type of passenger: the motor-mouths. These passengers think it is polite to tell you their life story no matter how disinterested you make an effort to appear. Then they want to know your life story, never mind that you’ve been giving them one-word answers since they boarded the plane. Anyway, as soon as I walked up to the SAA check-in line at the airport, I spotted an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in about ten years. He’s always been talkative, so I groaned inwardly and tried to duck behind this fat woman who was in line in front of me. The problem with assholes is that they can sense fear. He immediately cast his eyes around behind, spotted me, and greeted me with as much joy as John the Baptist must have greeted Jesus at the river that day.
I made idle chit-chat with this guy for about 5 minutes, you know the usual, man it’s been so long, when did you get back, what you up to these days etc, before, thankfully, he was called up to check-in. When it came time for me to check in, I was determined to sit as far away from this guy as possible because having woken up at 5am, I needed conversation on this plane about as much as Kate Moss needs a regular supply of Slimfast. So I asked the check-in lady where she was seating me, only to be told, to my absolute horror and disgust, that this flight was free seating. Free seating?! Since when do you get to sit randomly on a plane? Even kombi drivers tell you where to sit in their long-distance omnibuses these days. But I quickly recovered from my shock and realized that I still had a chance of avoiding sitting next to Mr. Motor-Mouth if I could make sure that he boarded first or that I sat in a fully occupied row. The problem with the latter plan was two-fold, however: Firstly, the plane was not full, so I would doubtless have gotten the look of Satan if I had dared to try and squeeze myself into the middle seat of an occupied row in a half-empty plane. The second problem was that even if by some miracle I could pull that off, there’s no guarantee that I would have found myself in between two fellow guardians of the Seventh Circle of Eternal Sleep Society of which I am an active, paid-up member. The last time I sat next to a stranger on a plane I made the mistake of commenting that I wondered why the game of Sudoku was so hugely popular. Man, that guy spent the entire two hours of our flight educating me on all the technical aspects of the game, and tips and tricks to use to improve my time. I had never played Sudoku, and still have not, and will not. Don’t you hate when people assume that just because something fascinates them to death, it should also leave you in breathless awe?
Anyway, I realized after making these quick deductions that my best chance was to ensure that he boarded first. But as we all know, God has a wicked sense of humour. My acquaintance was held up for an inordinate amount of time by the customs officials, until the runway bus began to board. Now, while I’m on this topic, please indulge me for a moment as I ask a question that has genuinely baffled me no end for years now: Is it really necessary for the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe to provide a bus to ferry passengers twenty meters from the boarding gate to the plane? A ten month-old baby could casually walk that distance in 9.8 seconds. Incidentally, upon deplaning on my last return trip to Harare we were made to wait for almost ten minutes in the frigid night air for the bus to come and collect us to take us this twenty meters to the airport entrance. When the feisty old white lady standing next to me asked the CAA employee who was engaging in what was quicklybecoming crowd control why we couldn’t just walk to the airport entrance, he told her because it was dangerous. It was quite a hilarious conversation that followed as she refused to let the issue die. What do you mean, dangerous? she quizzed. Because of the traffic, he replied. We all glanced around the dark runway; it was dead silent and apart from ourselves, nothing else moved. We looked back at the cranky old white lady and a hundred eyes implored her to ask the obvious question: What traffic? Unperturbed, he replied ground traffic. What ground traffic? the lady persisted. There’s no one but us, why can’t we just walk? At this point the guy began to realize the issue was not going away. He thought about it for a moment, then a flash of fear briefly streaked across his face as he realized that actually, he had no clue at all why we couldn’t just walk. He only knew that it was not allowed. After a moment he said: Air traffic control regulations do not permit you to walk on the runway. He sounded even less convinced of this reply than of his “because of traffic” retort earlier, but he issued it with a finality that said: I may not know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my $100-a-month-paying job because you idiots want to just walk into the airport. Thankfully for him, the bus arrived just then, saving him from another round of interrogation by Super-Gran.
Now look, I’m for keeping our airport up to international standards as much as the next man, but seriously, I think purchasing a bus and fuel and paying a driver to ferry passengers twenty meters to the three planes that use Harare Airport a day is a waste of resources. But that’s just my opinion.
Now back to the asshole (don’t worry, you’ll soon understand why I refer to him as such). I could not for the life of me fathom what the Zimra customs officials were talking to him about, but our bus left for the long ride to the plane without him. Ten minutes after we were seated on the plane, the bus came back with a handful of late passengers, my unwanted acquaintance among them. I watched in terror as he quickly scanned the plane, found me, and made a beeline for the seat next to me. Resigned to my fate, I steeled myself in readiness for the almost two-hour-long torture that was to follow. And boy, did it come in some style.
Holy crap, I’ve just realized that I’ve mastered the art of digression. This post is already 2000 words long and I haven’t even gotten to the subject at hand. More importantly, I now need my beauty sleep, so since this is my blog and I can do what I like, I’m going to end like this:
TO BE CONTINUED…
zakeozim@gmail.com
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I enjoy the occasional glass of whisky (or four). I am refined in my drinking habits and dignified in my drunkenness. But every once in a while I meet a real ISO-certified asshole who makes me want to empty my whisky into buckets and then pour it into my mouth continuously until I pass out. Case in point:
I woke up at 5am this morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg. I suspect those readers that know me are already struggling to believe this story, as on most days I am generally up round about the crack of lunch. I’m known for waking up early about as much as Michael Jackson is known for his insatiable appetite for women. But suspend your disbelief for a moment, will you? This is a true story. Anyway, my driver arrived promptly at 5.30am to pick me up, just as the hardest-working witches whizzed over our heads in a rush to park their brooms before sunrise. It was so ridiculously dark; I think all people who wake up this early as a matter of routine are evil. If your husband, wife, brother, mother or whoever ever says to you, “I just can’t sleep past 5am. I’ve always been a morning person,” I think you should drive a stake through their heart that very evening when they get back from work or wherever the hell they claim to have gone. Trust me, it’s the only way to kill them, I’ve done my research (with a lot of help from MGM Studios in conjunction with Twisted Pictures Entertainment).
I am neither a wizard nor a blood-sucking vampire as far I know because as much as I’m not a morning person, I’m decidedly also NOT a night person. I can’t stay up past 10pm, so I’m really just an afternoon person, which is relatively harmless, unless of course I’m a daywalker, like Blade, in which case I’m even more badass than I thought I was because it means I routinely present monthly reports to my Board of Directors in the morning, hunt vampires and kill lycanthropes during my lunch break, and then come back and review my company’s weekly marketing plan before quitting time. Jeez, even I didn’t know I rock this hard.
But back to the matter at hand. I don’t know what type of plane passenger you are, but I am one of those that loves to keep to himself. All I want to do on a plane is read a book or a newspaper (but not those worthless in-flight magazines – complimentary copy my ass, no one takes those things home coz they’re BORING), listen to my iPod, do a little bit of work on my laptop if I need to, and sleep. I particularly value the sleep part. So it pains me a great deal when I get seated next to another type of passenger: the motor-mouths. These passengers think it is polite to tell you their life story no matter how disinterested you make an effort to appear. Then they want to know your life story, never mind that you’ve been giving them one-word answers since they boarded the plane. Anyway, as soon as I walked up to the SAA check-in line at the airport, I spotted an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in about ten years. He’s always been talkative, so I groaned inwardly and tried to duck behind this fat woman who was in line in front of me. The problem with assholes is that they can sense fear. He immediately cast his eyes around behind, spotted me, and greeted me with as much joy as John the Baptist must have greeted Jesus at the river that day.
I made idle chit-chat with this guy for about 5 minutes, you know the usual, man it’s been so long, when did you get back, what you up to these days etc, before, thankfully, he was called up to check-in. When it came time for me to check in, I was determined to sit as far away from this guy as possible because having woken up at 5am, I needed conversation on this plane about as much as Kate Moss needs a regular supply of Slimfast. So I asked the check-in lady where she was seating me, only to be told, to my absolute horror and disgust, that this flight was free seating. Free seating?! Since when do you get to sit randomly on a plane? Even kombi drivers tell you where to sit in their long-distance omnibuses these days. But I quickly recovered from my shock and realized that I still had a chance of avoiding sitting next to Mr. Motor-Mouth if I could make sure that he boarded first or that I sat in a fully occupied row. The problem with the latter plan was two-fold, however: Firstly, the plane was not full, so I would doubtless have gotten the look of Satan if I had dared to try and squeeze myself into the middle seat of an occupied row in a half-empty plane. The second problem was that even if by some miracle I could pull that off, there’s no guarantee that I would have found myself in between two fellow guardians of the Seventh Circle of Eternal Sleep Society of which I am an active, paid-up member. The last time I sat next to a stranger on a plane I made the mistake of commenting that I wondered why the game of Sudoku was so hugely popular. Man, that guy spent the entire two hours of our flight educating me on all the technical aspects of the game, and tips and tricks to use to improve my time. I had never played Sudoku, and still have not, and will not. Don’t you hate when people assume that just because something fascinates them to death, it should also leave you in breathless awe?
Anyway, I realized after making these quick deductions that my best chance was to ensure that he boarded first. But as we all know, God has a wicked sense of humour. My acquaintance was held up for an inordinate amount of time by the customs officials, until the runway bus began to board. Now, while I’m on this topic, please indulge me for a moment as I ask a question that has genuinely baffled me no end for years now: Is it really necessary for the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe to provide a bus to ferry passengers twenty meters from the boarding gate to the plane? A ten month-old baby could casually walk that distance in 9.8 seconds. Incidentally, upon deplaning on my last return trip to Harare we were made to wait for almost ten minutes in the frigid night air for the bus to come and collect us to take us this twenty meters to the airport entrance. When the feisty old white lady standing next to me asked the CAA employee who was engaging in what was quicklybecoming crowd control why we couldn’t just walk to the airport entrance, he told her because it was dangerous. It was quite a hilarious conversation that followed as she refused to let the issue die. What do you mean, dangerous? she quizzed. Because of the traffic, he replied. We all glanced around the dark runway; it was dead silent and apart from ourselves, nothing else moved. We looked back at the cranky old white lady and a hundred eyes implored her to ask the obvious question: What traffic? Unperturbed, he replied ground traffic. What ground traffic? the lady persisted. There’s no one but us, why can’t we just walk? At this point the guy began to realize the issue was not going away. He thought about it for a moment, then a flash of fear briefly streaked across his face as he realized that actually, he had no clue at all why we couldn’t just walk. He only knew that it was not allowed. After a moment he said: Air traffic control regulations do not permit you to walk on the runway. He sounded even less convinced of this reply than of his “because of traffic” retort earlier, but he issued it with a finality that said: I may not know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my $100-a-month-paying job because you idiots want to just walk into the airport. Thankfully for him, the bus arrived just then, saving him from another round of interrogation by Super-Gran.
Now look, I’m for keeping our airport up to international standards as much as the next man, but seriously, I think purchasing a bus and fuel and paying a driver to ferry passengers twenty meters to the three planes that use Harare Airport a day is a waste of resources. But that’s just my opinion.
Now back to the asshole (don’t worry, you’ll soon understand why I refer to him as such). I could not for the life of me fathom what the Zimra customs officials were talking to him about, but our bus left for the long ride to the plane without him. Ten minutes after we were seated on the plane, the bus came back with a handful of late passengers, my unwanted acquaintance among them. I watched in terror as he quickly scanned the plane, found me, and made a beeline for the seat next to me. Resigned to my fate, I steeled myself in readiness for the almost two-hour-long torture that was to follow. And boy, did it come in some style.
Holy crap, I’ve just realized that I’ve mastered the art of digression. This post is already 2000 words long and I haven’t even gotten to the subject at hand. More importantly, I now need my beauty sleep, so since this is my blog and I can do what I like, I’m going to end like this:
TO BE CONTINUED…
zakeozim@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
