Surely You're Joking Mr Murphy!

I don't win many competitions. Because I don't enter competitions very much, this is understandable. Nikki's family, however, enters a lot of competitions. In fact, they enter all the competitions the come across. This increases their chances of actually winning something and, indeed, they have won competitions on numerous occasions. So, when I visit her and stay with her family, I get caught up in this practice to a small degree. She'd tell me to keep a movie ticket, because if you SMS the ticket number to the ticket line then you are entered into a draw and then the next time I'd do it automatically.

On Tuesday, my cell phone rang in a Computer Science tutorial period. Luckily it was not on silent, so I could actually hear. Not recognizing the caller's number, I assumed it was a wrong number (again). I was quite surprised when the voice asked to speak with me. He then cordially explained to me that I had won a hamper in a competition (the one with the movie tickets) and asked when I could come pick it up. The trick is that I had to go to the cinema where I had seen the movie – in Johannesburg. This is a problem, because I live in Cape Town and was only in Johannesburg on holiday (the sounds wrong to say, but never mind). I explained this to the well spoken gentleman as well as the fact that my girlfriend could go pick it up for me. However, the completion rules stated that I had to retrieve my prize personally, but the kind gentleman said that he would speak with his superiors and try to arrange something and then phone me back. He never phoned me back.

So, I won a competition, but in the end I have nothing to show for it. But so is life.

Going to that party tonight. I'm really looking forward to it, although I don't know how many people will be there that I know. But I know a few friends who are going, so it's cool.