In the slipstream of Uber

Uber on the pulse

Anything over a few kilometres or if we are quite tired out from walking, we have Uber cabs come to our rescue with opportunities for feeling the pulse of the city from the perspective of people who might know a lot more about what it going on from the many diverse riders they fare from one place to another.

In this modified lockdown setting, you here of whether tourism is thriving or not, it isn’t compared to before the pandemic. Bootleg alcohol is on offer at exorbitant prices, I think we can survive teetotal for a few weeks. Brian has been trying out presumable 0% alcohol at restaurants, barely fermented effluent with hops to give that distinctively bitter taste.

For all the opinions I have heard about the Coronavirus pandemic, I don’t challenge the assertions from believers or unbelievers, but we can agree on one thing, you do not want to contract CoVID-19 at all because it is just not a nice thing to have from what we have read from survivors with long-term issues referred to as long-CoVID.

Every name a winner

Another trigger for conversation is the names of the Uber drivers for which I can say something funny, we met Yen; a rich man named in a unit of Chinese currency, Enos; an alternative spelling of Enoch who in the Bible purportedly walked with God and never died a natural death, probably sent to take us to a holier place. On our way to have brunch, we got Ramadhan, we had not planned to fast on that day.

The most fascinating of these names was Mitterran from Cameroon. I immediately thought the name was spelt wrong and I was right. His birth certificate was acquired on his behalf by his headmaster who did not care to find out how the French name given to his pupil was written and probably in his rural setting might have been unaware that there was a world leader Francois Mitterrand, the President of France, thereby formalising a misspelling with the last letter D lost to posterity.

There is a likelihood no one had said anything about this to Mitterran before I did, but for my failings, a misspelling will hardly pass me by even if many of my blogs for the lack of effective proofreading might be full of spelling errors that I correct years down the line. Meanwhile, if I come across Gianfranco Zola, I will have to remember Zola sends his regards from an Uber in South Africa.