Category: annoying people

Loadshedding reaction

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And so, as widely predicted, loadshedding started again in South Africa yesterday. It’s the first time it’s happened this year, but it certainly won’t be the last. In fact, we’ve been told to expect it for the next 3 (three) years. Next week, our chronic problem will be acutely exacerbated by Koeberg’s No.1 Reactor being switched off for routine maintenance, and, if the reaction to yesterday’s events are anything to go by, we’re simply not going to survive.

Liverpool has long been chastised for its “victim mentality”. It is the Mario “Why Always Me?” Balotelli of cities, which is what made his move there last year so deliciously ironic. But a quick look at social media yesterday indicated that as a country, we’re pretty close to besting their “pity me” efforts. Here’s a quick selection of stuff I saw.

There was anger:

Complaining will usually make a difference if, say, you have had some bad service in a restaurant. Right with you there, Frana. But if you actually believe that complaining about loadshedding (even to these mysterious “right people”) will make the slightest jot of difference, you’re sadly wrong. While the restaurant manager can have a quiet word with your errant waiter, there’s no quick fix to [many] years of under-investment and the alleged lack of foresight by those in power (pun intended).  

Thanks Thabo. The microbiologist within me (I will let him out one day) has insisted that I pick you up on that first sentence though. Unless you are some crazy conspiracy theorist (and maybe you are), you should know that not every virus is made by man. Very, very few viruses are actually made by man. And loadshedding are not one of them.

And then there was the Sea Point Incident (#SPI), whereby the electricity tripped due to a power surge just as it was being restored following their allocated loadshedding period.
Jeez. You would think that the world. Had. Ended.

Obviously, the #SPI was a result of Eskom and City of Cape Town joining forces to deliberately crap all over Sea Point and thus, it was totes unfair:

Because people had important stuff to do:

Surely there was some sort of error?

And they really hope that it’s not going to happen again:

Honestly, if we could generate electricity by whinging, we’d be sorted.
But sadly for you guys:

nothow

However, we have to go to Facebook to find yesterday’s winning loadshedding reaction:

nowarn

nowarn2

nowarn3

But… but… how?

Excuse me asking, but exactly which large rock have you been living under? And is it still dark under there?

Sure, you may not have Twitter, although you do have Facebook, but then, maybe you don’t use it very much. (Although you could, and then you might not be so unpleasantly surprised in future.)

But do you not have a newspaper, an internet, a radio or a TV? If you do, do you read, listen or watch it? If so, how did you not know this was coming? And if not, how exactly do you expect to expect the wholly expected? Must the authorities inform everyone else by these mass methods of communication, but employ someone to pop round personally inform you of the latest news? Is this what we’re paying our taxes for? If so, it’s money that could be better spent on mending the broken electricity grid, so it’s people like you that are responsible for all these problems in the first place.

You and Apartheid. Allegedly.

The best way to keep your word…

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…is not to give it.

And yesterday, I did promise an end to the short blog posts and a return to something of normality. And then today happened.

Today wasn’t great.

Today was very busy and full of people letting me down left, right and centre. The dreaded South African customer service strikes again. Our daughter also got sent home from school, sick. [sad face]
Thus, it’s gone half past eight before I’ve even thought about having time to write stuff. And even now I’m having to get up and look after the dog because there’s an SAAF Oryx helicopter doing bumps and runs at 2 Military Hospital just down the road and it came over so low that it almost took my chimney off and blew the puppy away. Seriously. I just collected it from the garage roof.
It’s just been one of those days.

Talking of the dog, it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory of late, either. It has covered itself with soil from underneath my lawn though. Repeatedly. But every cloud has a silver lining, and that silver lining looks likely to shine on one of the readers of 6000 miles… Should another hole “mysteriously” appear in the garden*, I will be offering a one-of-a-kind, bespoke Beagle-skin waistcoat (it won’t stretch to a full jacket, I don’t think) to a competition winner picked at random from my readership. I may even commission a silver lining, literally.

The rest of the week looks frankly terrifying equally busy, but I have high hopes and expectations of getting some decent blogging done in between the disasters and the loadshedding.

 

* PRO TIP: They’re not mysterious at all – the beagle is digging them.

What a difference a year makes…

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…52 little weeks.

On 20th January last year, South Africa woke up to read what our Sports Minister had said about the national football team’s defeat the previous evening:

“The mediocrity we saw yesterday is disgraceful. Last night, we saw a bunch of losers who conceded two useless goals. We must never wake up to this situation ever again,” said Mbalula.

But then guess what happened last night?
Oops.

On 20th January this year, South Africa woke up to the words of a somewhat different Fikile Mbalula:

But that’s politics for you isn’t it? A short-term, shiny surface popularity contest (see yesterday’s post) with no real substance behind it. I’d love to think that Mbalula felt differently about the South African football team, but deep down, I think he’s just trying to look good in front of his legion of twitter fans after the kicking his reputation took for those 2014 comments.

So, while I’m all for this “new approach”, while we’re a whole 365 days on from Fikile’s extraordinary outburst, while he tells us how we must react to last night’s rubbish with dignity and while we’re all not calling Bafana Bafana names, let’s not allow ourselves to conveniently forget exactly who was the most famous name caller of all.

No thanks to Noah

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The first mosquitoes of the season moved in last night. To be fair, we’ve had a good run: usually, we’ve been roundly devoured several times over by the beginning of January, so I shouldn’t really complain, despite the fact that certain members of the family are sporting several (or more) red blotches this morning. Yesterday’s hot weather, coupled with a unusual lack of wind, meant that conditions were perfect for the little bastards to buzz around us like an even more irritating Robert Marawas constantly blowing tiny vuvuzelas over our beds. If, like me, you have a musical ear and decent pitch, once you have heard one in the room, you can constantly hear one in the room, even if the offending insect has gone elsewhere to bite someone else.

No-one is quite sure how mosquitoes managed to get through the ancient trial of Noah’s Ark. Why would he allow something so pointless, annoying and destructive (malaria, anyone?) on board his Ark? Some opine that he was struggling with mental issues brought about by stress at the time: hearing booming voices in his head, building a huge boat, worrying about the inclement weather forecast, wondering where he was going to put all the dinosaurs (something he never managed to find work out, obviously). It seems likely that he just made a bad call when he signed off on the mozzies, a bad call that inadvertently resulting in the deaths of millions of people, primarily infants across Africa. Oops.
Perhaps we shouldn’t blame Noah though: maybe his hands were tied with overly politically-correct rules and regulations. Maybe there wasn’t time for a full hearing of the local Equal Opportunities Committee to be convened before the flood, thus meaning that the mosquitoes’ objection to their omission on the passenger inventory couldn’t be heard and they were therefore entitled to board. To be honest, they could have just sneaked on anyway. Unlike the Brontosauruses (RIP).

Fast forward several million a few thousand years, and mosquitoes have evolved (“no they haven’t” – Creationists) to become one of the most bothersome species on Earth, a title willingly contested by the likes of the Herpes virus, Maltese poodles and Steve Hofmeyr. Fortunately, while the Cape Town wind sadly has little effect on those other three, it does at least seem to deter the mosquitoes from successfully getting into our bedrooms. It’s windy today and my sleep-deprived body is glad of that.

Tonight, the mosquitoes will be going sideways past the window, rather than wandering in and eating bits of me. Tonight, I shall sleep – no thanks to Noah.

An Open Letter to writers of Open Letters

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Dear Writers of Open Letters,

I trust this finds you well.

What a 2014 you had, hey? Barely a day went by in South Africa without someone, somewhere, writing an open letter about something to… well… to everyone.
We had open letters to white South Africans, open letters to black South Africans, open letters to Julius Malema, Jacob Zuma, Helen Zille (and every political party and organisation in the country, often), open letters to Oscar Pistorius, to Muslims, to Woolworths and Pick n Pay. Khaya Dlanga wrote open letters to everyone, Richard Branson didn’t write an open letter to the EFF and Thuli Madonsela wrote an open letter to herself.

There was even an open letter from an injured tourist to South Africa.
All of it.

Such was 2014, and we shall remember it thus.

But this is 2015, and digital guru (he’s good with his hands) Mike Sharman has spoken:

If Mike’s right, “folks”, then not only is 2014 dead and gone, but with it, the alleged curse of the open letter. But let us note that Mike made his announcement as a PSA in a tweet. And (as Mike knows full well) a PSA in a tweet is basically just a short open letter.
Sure, nous sommes Charlie so he’s welcome to his (incorrect) opinion, but he’s trolling us as he makes it. And that smarts a bit.

My message to you, open letter writers of South Africa, is to keep on writing. How else would we know that you have a very important viewpoint on any given subject if you weren’t to scribble it down on a bit of keyboard and send it to news24 so that everyone else can read it too? Yes, gone is 2014, and it may indeed turn out to have been the heyday of open letter writing, but this is an art form that must not die. Because gone also are the days when it was good enough to send a private email or – god forbid – an actual letter in an envelope straight to the individual or organisation concerned. And look where getting rid of that got us: now, apparently everyone needs to read your dirty laundry and your grubby opinions. You seek support and validation for your views and actions and someone out there will give it to you, just as long as they know you’re angry about the same thing that they’re also angry about.

In this world of myriad communications, a personal letter can easily be overlooked. Indeed, cynics will tell you a personal letter expressing upset, anguish or annoyance will be overlooked. But it’s very, very hard for an open letter which has been shared on Facebook by Auntie Edith and her Bridge Club and by the lady that left SA for Perth and/or Canada in 1994 to be overlooked.
No, open letters are routinely ignored, not overlooked. So don’t expect any response from the party you’re actually writing to. That’s not going to happen. The response will come as a groundswell from blog followers, from the grunting hoards of news24 commenters (if you’ve stooped that low) or, if you’ve been particularly radical, in the form another open letter from someone who has equally radical opinions which radically disagree with your radical opinions.

Talking of radical opinions, open letter writers and fans of the same, Mike Sharman has just told you (and everyone else) that you are unwelcome to continue your beloved hobby into 2015.

I think you know what to do…

Best retards,

6k.xx