Батарея идет заграждение!

Car batteries can explode, who would have thought? I can now vouch for it, after our dear Lada's battery went bang this Sunday evening in a parking lot at the V&A Waterfront. We got into the car, I turned the key and Kaboom! - there was a very loud bang, smoke coming from the bonnet and the lovely smell of acid in the air. Lada Niva's have a spare tyre lying over the battery under the hood, so damage was minimal (to the car, I can't say the same of the battery).

As luck would have it, Krizz was in the vicinity, so he and a friend came over and took some pictures of Still Life with Russian Battery, which he can post here once developed (film cameras!). He even managed to bang his head on the "Mind your Head" sign while he was doing it, which was funny. It was the first time I needed to call on my AA membership and the outcome was positive for everyone - within one hour I had a new battery installed and they had R500 off my credit card. It was time for a pizza.

Here are two lessons I have since learned:

• I am not the only one: Link
• Myth no. 3 about car batteries: "A battery will not explode"

Here are the other things that I should probably comment on:

• The AA dude came quickly, but not before the Call Centre (in Joburg) gave me a long pre-emptive excuse about how busy their battery service is in Cape Town tonight, all in an effort to lessen my expectations of actually sorting out the problem.
• We saw Memoirs of a Geisha earlier, which has stirred up controversy for the use of Chinese actors to play Japanese roles in a Western, Hollywood adaption of a book by a white American man during the time of the Nanjing Massacre - each a bundle of issues in its own. What bothers me, after looking at the Rotten Tomatoes summary, is how the average American movie reviewer (and I use average in exactly the way you wish to understand it) has now become the defender of ethnic and cultural sensitivities and the need to protect artistic integrity against box office considerations or Americanised clichés of the East. Suddenly they are all so sensitive to such sensitive issues. I don't know, I smell an exploded battery somewhere.

Hmmm, I think that's it.