Swiss next?

Loadshedding is very annoying, but we’re coming closer and closer to the realisation that we’re not the only ones who are chronically short of electricity.

As documented, the UK and Australia have come very close. And Shanghai and China were recently rolling their own blackouts. Now, there are warnings that Switzerland – yes, Switzerland with its neutrality, mountains, engineering brilliance, intricate timepieces, army knives and just general perfection – is likely to run out of power this winter.

When Switzerland is struggling, you know that there’s a real problem.

“Repeated, hours-long power cuts”. That sounds awfully familiar.

As I’ve mentioned before, some other country experiencing loadshedding doesn’t make the situation in SA any better. And our loadshedding is for a different reason to theirs (tl;dr – it’s massive, wholesale, unimpeded corruption), but it does remind us to maybe drop a bit of the exceptionalism.

The Alpine grass, despite what you’ve seen in The Sound of Music (that was Austria, I know) (although €707.23 per MWh there, too), is not always greener.

UPDATE: Loadshedding: now with added Finland.

I spy

No, not Busisiwe Mkhwebane the new Public Protector with her allegedly questionable alleged links with the Chinese.

Something much cooler (although arguably less important for the well-being of the Republic of South Africa), this:

binocular-pipes-hiking-mountains-switzerland-1

At first sight, it’s just a signpost in the Swiss mountains, with lots of tubes attached to it, and that’s because that’s exactly what it actually is.

But brilliantly, those tubes are so arranged, that when you spy through each of them, you see a different mountain.

binocular-pipes-hiking-mountains-switzerland-3

Then look on the side of the tube in question, and you can see exactly which mountain you are looking at.

This makes mountain identification – previously rather tricky, one would imagine, looking at just how many tubes are attached that signpost – much, much easier.