Of Coffee With Vim (2024)

If you were having coffee with me, I would invite you to feel at home while I carry out some aqua-thermal treatment of ceramics, aluminium and steel under a constrained environment.

Dont mind me, that’s just fancy speak for I am using hot water to do the dishes I should have done days ago but didnt, now I don’t have a choice but to do it. We cant have a meal because there are no clean cups and plates. You know how in the movies or crime shows, forensic investigators are able to tell that someone had company for dinner by looking at the two wine glasses in the kitchen sink? Well, here they would come up with wrong conclusions.

I also have a new-found respect for dishwashing liquid that produces a healthy foam after just one drop. No wonder why its so expensive too.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that there’s this scouring powder brand which has been around for so long that any abrasive powder is identified as that one, Vim. Even when you don’t have any scouring powder, helpful aunties will tell you to make your own Vim using ash and sand to scrub pots and pans. You know a brand has become a household name when that becomes the default name people call any alternative products.

Unilever South Africa posted a notice that they would be discontinuing Vim Abrasive Powder due to low consumer demand for the product within South Africa. Unilever Zimbabwe has over the years descaled manufacture in Zimbabwe in favour of outsourcing from South Africa so this would translate to Vim no longer being available in Zimbabwe as well. Feels like the end of an era.

Unilever PLC has been operational in Zimbabwe since 1943, in 1947 it was trading as Lever Brothers Southern Rhodesia (Pvt) Limited then changed to Lever Brothers (Pvt) Limited in 1963 and in 2003, became Unilever South East Africa (Pvt) Limited. A lot of our common household products for home and personal care can be tracked to Lever brothers and Unilever subsidiaries.

Unilever is a Dutch-British transnational with a global reach of over 400 brand names in 190 countries. Unilever was formed in 1929 by a merger between Dutch Margarine Unie and British soapmaker Lever Brothers and the name a portmanteau of the name of both companies. So, they have been around for close to a century and obviously would have some interesting skeletons in their closets amassed over the years.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the electricity has been quite stable for the past week, its crazy how I have this anxious feeling that any time the power can just cut, maybe, I have been watching too many horror movies Check Out My Reviews Section, October is after all the spooky season. 👻.

We have electricity now, but the freezer stopped working and the repairmen who ducked around with it the last time, has not been picking up my calls for the past week. He did however, call me back, out of the blue today and claimed that the thermostat on my freezer, is what is now dead and that he could come through and fix it, for a fee of course. I am thinking hmmmm how about no, what thinketh you?

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the government issued Statutory Instrument (SI) 169 of 2022 making the wearing of face masks mandatory indoors and in public transport. People had practically stopped wearing masks and it seems like the government is bringing back face masks, when instead the latest SI only gives legal force to what Govt already announced earlierin August. And then you have media houses that run with the following misleading headline.

Anyway so the government just goes around announcing things without putting in place the legal instruments to govern what it announces? I wonder in what way this might be related to how we now have a local factory manufacturing PPE, your guess is as good as mine 🤡

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that Zimbabwe Robotics team won a gold at the won the XPRIZE Gold Medal Innovator award, at the 2022 FIRST Global Challenge games in Geneva. The Olympics-like challenges are international robotics competition for high-school students from around the world. Maybe I should look up the team and see if I can ask them to have a look-see at my fridge or maybe design a robot that can keep things cold.

Whats been happening in your world?

~B

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