Category: in the news

Here we go again

Posted on

Gorgeous pre-frontal skies in Cape Town this morning can only mean one thing: a front is coming.

The hint is in the name, see?

And yes, it does look like tomorrow’s weather is going to be pretty ropey, then we’re in for a couple of very chilly days before Sunday, when… well… it’s looking positively biblical.

The weather apps agree on the timing, but are all at odds over the actual amount of rainfall. We’re looking at anything from 10-20mm tomorrow and anything from 22-50mm on Sunday. It’ll be cold and windy as well, just to add injury to injury.
Don’t expect daily highs of anything more than 15°C*.
Do expect winds gusting to 85+kph.

All of this will put additional strain on the electricity supply, which doesn’t even do well when everything is peachy, so it’s full-on recipe for disaster stuff. Ugh.

Thus, it would seem likely that tomorrow will be our first fire of the season. For the record, our first fire of last winter was 25th April. This is probably the most predictable weather-related thing that’s ever occurred in Cape Town.

* we’ve been down “15 isn’t cold road” many times before. don’t force me to make you to turn right onto “well 30 isn’t hot avenue”.

Who are these people?

Posted on

I recently saw a Finnish comedian asking the same question. As Finland was voted the happiest country in the world for the sixth year running, based on a poll which basically asks: “Are you happy?”, he and his friends were wondering exactly which Finnish people they had polled.
Of course, this was all for comedic value, but still, when the results of a poll are so surprising, it’s maybe a valid question to ask. And the results of this poll are surprising, so I am asking the same sort of thing:

Who are these people?

No, not these people:

I’m talking about the other people.

I’m talking about the 12% of whites, the 19% of Indians, the 23% of coloureds and the 35% of blacks, that – by extrapolation, at least – appear to think that the country is being steered in the right direction.

wut?

Look, at least we had a majority that fits with the correct (my) viewpoint. And I get that different people have different political views and beliefs, and of course that’s ok.

But…

…with political corruption, governmental incompetence and an apparently blasé attitude from those “in power” so evident in everything that’s wrong with the country; with literally every single economic marker looking genuinely frightening; with 12 hours of rolling blackouts each and every day with no end in sight… well, you have to wonder how on earth they think things are getting better.

Is it just the ability to shut everything out?

To somehow bury their heads in the sand?

Is it drugs? In which case, to paraphrase a famous movie scene: “I’ll have whatever they’re having”.

To be able to live in such ignorant bliss would be absolutely amazing. Sadly, for most of us (see poll results above), that’s clearly just not possible.

So, it’s onward and upward (at least between 10:30am and 2pm when the next 4½ hour power cut kicks in).

It’s happening next door

Posted on

Botswana has implemented loadshedding. That might not seem very surprising to people “overseas”, but generally, Botswana is regarded as the stable, unfluttered, well-managed, “sensible cousin” bit of the Southern Africa. Well, the bit on the continent, anyway: Mauritius is the gold standard for excellence if you’re willing to cross a bit of ocean. More beaches than Botswana too.
But look:

It reads almost word for word like an Eskom announcement. And indeed, why not copy the text from the experts? A couple of points regarding the above: the footer unironically stating that they are “Powering Botswana To Prosperity” (except for the next few weeks, it seems). And the images top right, which are actually the same image, but with one very slightly rotated. Sadly, this only serves to suggest that the transmission line in question is falling over. Prescient.

Of course, we’re also in for blackouts this evening, including one at dinner time. Spotting this ahead of time, I’ve fired up the braai and we’re going to make the most of it with some decent meat and some decent red wine. There’s nothing we can do about it, and constant unfettered rage (like this lady – wow) will surely only lead to an early grave (which will mean less incidences of loadshedding in your lifetime, but still…).
So we’re going to cook oor die kole this evening, saving electricity we haven’t got and making the most of the situation. The glass is always half full, unless it’s that shiraz from Tulbagh (which it is), in which case it gets drained pretty quickly.

Pre-drinks?

A rather nice Bloody Nora (with this and this). Soooo good.

See you on the other side.

Off again – and that font?!?

Posted on

The issue with our ailing power utility – so we were told – wasn’t the years and years of rampant corruption, but rather the guy who was in charge. He was in the process of stepping down when he gave that bombshell interview about all the corruption and was politely(?) asked to leave immediately.

So, now that he has gone, everything should be ok. Right?

Wrong.

Weirdly, it seems that he wasn’t the issue. So we have no idea what the problem could actually be*, but there clearly is a problem of some sort. Because I’m sitting here for another 10 hours without power today, because of the ongoing demand and supply problem. We want 31.3MW, they can only give us 24.7MW. And if you don’t cut the power to cover that shortfall, everything falls over and it’s a very bad thing.

Those figures come from this tweet from last night:

And I actually love the way that they’ve done their best to cushion the blow by using a whimsical font. Who do we think came up with that idea?

“Not looking great on the grid figures tonight. We’re dangerously short and we need to tell people.”
“OK. Send the twee… no… wait. Do you have a kind of handwritingy font we could use?”
“What?”
“You know. Something a bit fun and disarming.”
“But we’re the official state power utility. Shouldn’t we be using the official state fonts?”
“Well, yes. But let’s show our human side. Just something a bit playful and quirky to take their minds off the awful numbers.”
“Well, I mean, I have got this one…”
“Like, actually Oh Em Gee! It’s So frikkin perfect! Look at the devil-may-care lack of connection on the loops! Observe the mildly curved downstrokes! The capricious overshoot on the Es and Ms! Do it!”
“Er… right. The numbers are still bloody horrendous, though.”
“Who cares? It’s so pretty! Quick, just click SEND before the boss comes back!”

I imagine that’s pretty much how it went, anyway.

Sadly, using my scientific brain, I was able to see through the eccentric and unprofessional choice of typeface, and I’m actually pretty worried about just how bad the situation is. But hey, it’s so easy to get bogged down in bad news. I guess that we should take solace in the fact that they haven’t used Comic Sans yet, so maybe we’re still somewhere just above rock bottom.

* although there is still that years and years of rampant corruption thing, but… surely not?!