The V&A Waterfront hosted Symphony of Fire a few months ago in March/April and all I can say is “awesome” – in fact, I’d say to any Capetonian who didn’t go this year that they missed out big-time. It was a spectacular series: I made it to 3 of the 4 shows – more than the dismal one show I got to in 2000 when it was last held.
On the final Saturday, the finale as it’s called. All the participants put up one last show for the judges before the winner is announced. The V&A was packed to the brim. After spending almost two hours in traffic just to get into Cape Town city we spent another 20 minutes trying to find a parking place.
When the show was over there was yet another mass exodus of cars towards the seemingly-small intersection that links the N1 road to the Waterfront area. We opted to have a cup of coffee while the crowds cleared. About an hour later we went to pay for our parking using the magnetic card that the machine had coughed up when we entered the lot. But the machine would accept our money. “Error”, it said repeatedly. But you know this is Africa and we’re custom to things not working all the time – so we just walked to the next Pay Machine.
However at this machine the situation was worse. A crowd of angry people had gathered to shout rude insults at the Customer Assistance lady over the little microphone and speaker embedded in the machine. Eventually I too got fed up and decided i’d just “not pay” if they weren’t able to sort the issue out.
Upon arriving at the Exit Boom I pressed the “Help” button on the little speaker and a distant voice asked what the problem was. I explained that the machines were broken and after a 20 second pause the boom opened and I was told I could leave, and did.
This left my Magnetic Card still active and in my possession. And so when Amy and I returned a few days ago, we decided to see whether the bill had increased over the few months since we were last there.
You can imagine our interest, shock and strange excitement when the machine told us we owed R 5775.00 
Just another bit of arb
Edit — We dont actually have to pay this by the way. Its just continuing to count up ’cause we never paid once upon a time. I could throw the card away anytime but it’s too much fun to watch the numbers roll up each time I put it in the machine at the V&A. Hehe. What a waste of database space for them.
Ouch… £500 parking bill… not nice.