The frustrations I felt with Multichoice over the installation of my PVR have far from dissipated, but I must say that my viewing experience is now immeasurably improved. I admit that I haven't read the manual - the truth be told, I hardly ever do and seem to work out how things work eventually, but I haven't yet deciphered how to skip ads. Sure, I can fast forward through them but I could do that anyway with my VCR - and, considering my thumb isn't yet a toggle expert, I tend to fast forward beyond where I wish to be. Yesterday, I actually watched an advertorial for Toyota four times more than I'd have to if I were watching it live. I watched it forwards and then backwards and at two different speeds. 

When I arose on my birthday, well before 6am - all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to spend the day on the couch watching TV,  I rehearsed the ignoble tirade I would unleash when DSTV's call centre opened shop at 7am. As was to be expected, if the previous night's debacle had taught me anything, I could get the DSTV signal but couldn't work the PVR.

I may have done myself serious injury had I not completed an anger management workshop. I talked myself through the stages - was my anger really about DSTV or something in my shadowy past? Had I split off unexpressed anger at, say, a school teacher and now that I wasn't getting my way with my TV, letting it out on DSTV? Could I give my anger a colour and shape and locate it in my body? Was this really about DSTV or about my love-lost youth? As the minute hand clicked into 7am I dialed - breathing deep to center my feelings in my body. Like a Pavlovian Dog with a massive cream filled pavlova squished onto its head, my tempered and controlled anger leapt out of my throat down the telephone to the fucking voice singing that fucking song - All Yooooy ever wanted - all I want is for my fucking PVR to work. Obviously, another of the 10, 000 new decoder owners got through to the centre before I did - as I waited and waited and waited for someone to answer.

Those who know me, will concur that I am a reasonable man. I'm rarely quick to anger - except when hotels, despite being told of my allergy to feathers, insist on filling the room with them. However, when a man at the DSTV call centre who is talking me through the reinstallation of the decoder insists he told me to unscrew the wirers from the satellite dish when he didn't - I lose it. "I DID tell you", he jabs, "and this conversation is taped. "Okay, fucker (I say that part in a whisper that sounds like a cross between a sneeze and muffled orgasm) YOU LISTEN TO THE TAPE AND CALL ME BACK TO APOLOGIZE!!!!!!!!" I'm still waiting for his call but the relief of it finally working is bliss. In the future I plan to get angry just so I can feel good when I'm not.

Loving the History channel - watched Seinfeld, Fraser, The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives. Also loving the 80's music channel - I'm finally going to be a cool teenager - even if my 38-year-old body would prefer otherwise.