About fear and being doff

About fear and being doff

We are in Buenos Aires and we are here to collect my motorbike. I have two options. Either I do it myself or I pay someone to do it for me. The difference between these two options is a minimum of $250.  Fiscal restraint made this Hobson’s choice, but therein lies the gist of this blog.

One thing about doing 36 hour bus trips, or 10 hour walks is that you do have time to reflect on a number of issues, one of those issues is a little fundamental. Why are we doing this? I never thought about making a travel blog a blog about the meaning of life, but I would like to get down some of my thoughts before they disappear and for me a lot of what I (we) are doing and indeed one of the reasons for the options above, is there always seem to be unexpected rewards by doing the hard option. No pain no gain.

As you all know my nickname is Doff. As you most probably don’t know I very rarely introduce myself as Doff. If you ask me my name I will say David, but this never sticks, within a very short space of time David becomes Doff! I have asked sister Jen and brother Rich the origins of this nickname and in either case I get very unsatisfactory answers, but now I don’t ask the question as I know the answer. I am doff! 


No doubt my nursery school teacher Mrs Ward, or someone like Pam Kent a very close friend of my parents called me doff because they thought I WAS doff! Indeed I AM pretty doff about many things. Today it would not be PC to call someone Doff, they would just say he is pretty Dyslexic, but as Dyslexia was venturing into somewhat uncharted waters in 1948, it was much easier to refer to me as being doff. I have to be a little amused as not only were these waters uncharted, they were also somewhat sanitised in that I for one certainly cannot recall Afrikaans being spoken in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg when we were growing up. The only time I heard Afrikaans was when I visited H2O’s Soils Laboratory, which was run by Koos Kruger, who I liked very much as he taught me to weld. Koos didn’t live in the Northern Suburbs. Now had I had more welding lessons I am sure Koos would have informed me of the meaning of the word “Doff”, but being the bosses son I can imagine he thought that maybe he should keep that one under the hat, or maybe he thought I was not that doff because I learnt to weld pretty quickly!

Doff it is and Doff it always will be. What has this got to do with clearing a motorbike out of Customs? Not a lot really it just sparked some thoughts about how we overcome fear and some of the rewards of doing so, and whether the way we deal with Dyslexia in modern day education does in fact help the individual. 

Up to ten years ago I would not have written a blog as “spell check” was not an option for hand written letters or documents, I was happy enough to write to my family (indeed it was a school requirement to write a letter home every Sunday) as they overlooked the fact that I spelt successful with one “s” or “c” and two “l’s”. I would not have exposed myself to ridicule, but this fear made me more creative. I changed my handwriting so that it was hard to see how I spelt successful! Not that it fooled many people, but it made me feel less exposed! So it is in life that we either deal with our fears, overcome them or walk around them. That is why I decided to write a blog, first and foremost to see if I could and if I enjoyed it. The same goes with my painting. Initially they are both painful experiences because of the unknown, but once you type a word or paint a stroke the fear goes. By doing this trip we have chosen to expose ourselves to certain situations as a challenge. Somewhat similar I imagine to climbing a mountain, although we don’t have a clear summit to reach. Being doff has helped, as there are times when you REALLY need to find creative solutions to various problems and creative solutions is something I have had to do all my life, which in turn makes me less fearful. More or less than other people? I don’t know, maybe the non-doff people can tell me!

So back to clearing the bike through Customs! All I was expecting was to get a motorbike out of the harbour as cheap and as painlessly as possible. I was told that I would definitely need to employ the services of a Clearing Agent as I didn’t speak Spanish;I would have to pay off all sorts of officials; the docks were in a dangerous area;  I wouldn’t find my way around etc. etc. I said to Ewa “What do you think agent or no agent?” Silly question really as her reply was “how much” which answered my question in the first place!  I certainly had apprehensions. In my effort to trace my missing bike, I had been dealing with Veroniqua at SSL Consolidated Shipping. She had been really helpful over the past month, so I was somewhat taken aback when I received an email the day we arrived back in BA saying that she had gone on holiday for a week and would not be contactable. Spending $250 started sounding more and more appealing.

The story unfolds.  We decide to bite the bullet and do iy ourselves. Firstly I had to pay the clearance charges at the offices of SSL. I dreaded to think where in this sprawling city I would find their offices. Where were they located? About two block from where we were staying! I could not believe my luck. As soon as we had put down our bags on Sunday morning, we went to check that there was a building at 1562 Moreno St. All looked promising, but now the question was who would I get in place of the absent Veroniqua and would she Habla Ingles?


Monday morning at 9.00 we are at the offices of SSL and what did we get as a replacement? Not one Vogue model speaking perfect English, but three of them. I am required to pay $376.33 shipping charges, I would have been happy to pay double that but Ewa was with me!

We were told that the next step was to take the documents to EMBA at some strange  address in the docks and maybe we should take a taxi, but as the vessel had just arrived, we should only go on Tuesday mid-day. So we set off walking at about 11.00 on Tuesday. Taxi? Exercise is good for you! 


We got to the said address on time, but an office marked EMBA were definitely not readily in view. We walk, we ask, we walk, we ask. Nothing. Finally we walk into a somewhat obscured single story office that is marked Duane. We enter and there are two queues, Imports and Exports. We stand in Imports. I present my documents and the official smiles and makes it understood that I need to go to EMBA which is not in the current building. He then instructs the poor fellow in the queue behind me to take me to the bus stop to catch the bus to the building housing  EMBA. The kind fellow not only does as he is told, he gets on the bus and gives the driver instructions to get us off at the correct stop! We duly take our seats and on arrival at the correct stop the bus-driver instructs another alighting passenger to show us where to go. The alighting passenger smiles and takes us to a very obscure building, marches us up a flight of stairs and instructs us to knock on the white door! We knock on the white door and enter. A rotund smiling fellow in an office of three tells us to be seated and then mock scolds us that we do not talk Spanish as he does not speak English. He checks the papers presented and then takes his cigarette lighter, places it on top of the cigarette packet and lifts lighter and packet onto an A4 sheet of paper! He then lets it be known that the Lighter (motorbike) is in the cigarette packet (container) and both cigarette packet and lighter are still on the A4 sheet of paper (the Ship) and if we come back at 12.00pm on the 3^rd he will be able to help us! “Quanta Costa duty” say I, “No Costa duty” says official with a smile.

All we have had in Argentine is really lovely helpful people. I have not got my bike yet, but I have no doubt that if it is off the ship, I have a good chance of getting it by Friday and all my fears were groundless. If it is not off the ship we will have to wait until next Wednesday as Monday and Tuesday are holidays due to Carnaval, Either way we win!

As you may gather Ewa is bent on keeping me fit by walking EVERYWHERE! To be honest although she does it to save on fares, I do enjoy walking as you get a really good feeling about the place and downtown BA is no exception. It is very pedestrian friendly with a lot of pedestrianized streets.

Going no where

While we were walking yesterday we came across this queue of people waiting at a kiosk. I looked at them and wondered what they were queuing for, then I realized they were going nowhere as they were mannequins! I only had my phone with me so the pic does not do them justice, but it was very amusing. 


On a different tangent, I was flipping through some of my pictures and was somewhat amused by some of the pictures that were not meant to happen. There is a story behind this. Years ago 1976, we gave a slide show about which Kevin Kevany was exceedingly rude (in retrospect I think he had a point), so what we are thinking of doing another really bad show and inviting them again. We have had a lot of laughs talking about this and it has almost taken on theatrical proportions, but if you have a look at the following pictures I am sure you will get a feel as to where this is going, even if we do have to pursue them to New Zealand.

El Catedral Ski Resort

El Dentist

Piggy

Mating pair of Condors

Ewa