Day number...and where the heck am I?

I am losing track of the days... Any new job is disorientating, I guess, but moving countries and doing it doubly so. I suppose at least they speak a variation of English here, which makes it somewhat easier. I asked the other day for a koki and was met with a blank stare. So basically if I'm not sure what things are called, I read the label of the item concerned. 'Permanent marker' therefore produced an instant and helpful response.

I just have to vent about the traffic here and more specifically my Garmin GPS.

I have been fighting the whole week with my blasted GPS. It is not that it is faulty. It does things just to cheese me off. It works a treat when it works and I especially bought a fancy one with bluetooth and traffic reports and the only thing that makes me restrain myself from dropping it in acid and hammering it repeatedly with my car jack is the fact that I believe I would get lost more often than it does. But it has been a close call sometimes ... The skyscrapers in the city sometimes make it disorientated and it has taken me around in circles more than once. I can deal with that: I normally look for the Harbour Bridge as I would have used Table Mountain as a reference point and it somehow comforts me and - more often than not - the Garmin as well, and then it is able to lead me the rest of the way home. The problem is when it is been bloody vindictive. I will be cruising happily along, settling into the rhythm of the traffic of my new home city roads and then out of the blue the little cretin on the dashboard will say in the sweetest female British voice: 'Take the next exit' - completely ignorant or more likely, unconcerned that I have to negotiate 4 lanes of traffic to get there. And then.... as I near the top of the offramp and am faced with choosing a lane going left or right, she will be silent. Dead silent. I can scream at her and threaten to rip out her innards; I can slow down to a crawl and watch old couples in walkers pass me on the pavement, as I wait for her to say something but it doesn't help. Until I am finally forced to choose a lane and commit to it and turn right, immediately after which point, she announces decisively: 'Turn left' - I swear there is a note of sadistic pleasure in the voice sometimes. The she will say: 'recalculating' and feign myriad calculations to find another route and proceed to tease me for half a dozen blocks announcing that I turn left or right on such and such a street just after I have passed each successive street. I have stopped shouting and swearing at the GPS, because my apoplectic shouting and gesticulations at the stupid device were attracting attention from other motorists. The damn thing is taking years off of my life. Anyway, I am thinking of nicknaming her Margaret...