Category: annoying people

Out and about

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We’re out and about doing an outdoors thing away from Cape Town today, and why not, given that there will be no electricity to do anything indoors at all. Yes, Granddad is getting a true South African experience with (as it stands) 11½ hours without power today. I jest, but it’s actually pretty scary stuff: the schools are still on holiday, many people haven’t gone back to work yet after the summer break: demand should be low. That Eskom can’t even keep up – they’re not even close – is very worrying and doesn’t augur well for the coming year, especially as at least a quarter of that year is forecast to be winter.

This is supposed to be the easy bit.

Anyway, onto more positive matters. Today should be fun (if you’re reading this, we’ve likely already started) and I’ll surely share some photos on here or on The ‘Gram (link top right) a little later.

Have a great day and don’t forget to charge your devices.

Tourist season down south

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I’m sure I’ve mentioned before (although I can’t easily find out where, as you’ll read below) about the difficulties faced by many small businesses in Cape Agulhas during holiday season. Put simply, because of the region being just too far out of Cape Town to easily attract day or weekend visitors, there are about 50 weeks of relative calm and quiet (which is why I love it down here), followed by 2 weeks of annual chaos.

Compare and contrast with Hermanus which is 75 minutes out of Cape Town (if you ignore the nonsense of Somerset West) and is busy most weekends with tourists from the Mother City. They can run businesses with plenty of staff all year round. They’re experienced in dealing with large numbers of people, and even when December is busier, they’re ready to go.

But Hermanus used to be lovely. Now it’s just like another busy city. So actually, vive le difference.

Reasonably though, you can’t set up a small business in Agulhas to effectively deal with that sort of wild seasonal dichotomy.

And so there are issues with too few tables at restaurants, not enough goods in supermarkets, slow service in both, and general frustrations for everyone concerned: the tourists are hungry and could be on the beach, the businesses could be getting more people in and out through their doors and making more money. And that’s so annoying, because this is their one fortnight chance to make proper moolah to last them through the harder times ahead.

There’s no easy answer.

And then there’s the water and the internet. Struisbaai relies on boreholes to get water for its +/- 4,000 residents. There’s no rain here in summer. Boreholes need electricity though, and there isn’t a lot of that about at the moment. There’s quite literally not enough water to go around at the best of times.

But there are over 20,000 tourists visiting throughout Christmas and New Year. They don’t care about the water restrictions, because their GP-registered Chelsea Randburg tractor is near the sea, and will rust overnight if they don’t hose it down each evening. And so we literally run out of water some days.

But remember that if you are a tourist, the place you’re visiting is completely yours for the duration of your stay. Never mind the other people visiting, and certainly don’t worry about the local residents – they’re just there for you to use and abuse as you wish.

But that’s another story.

Anyway, we’re a bit tight on resources, so it’s a good job they’re not planning on building 650 new housing units down here.

Oh. Wait.

And the internet at our cottage in our little village is via one mobile operator. There’s a single small mast here, and it doesn’t like loadshedding. It also doesn’t like it when the village is full of people. It can’t cope. And so this post, while being typed on my laptop, will then have to be transferred to my phone via Whatsapp, formatted on the WordPress app, moved into one of the larger villages nearby and uploaded from there.

Needs must.

I don’t like it when it’s so busy here, but I get it: without these two weeks each year, there wouldn’t be anything here for the other 50.

But I am looking forward to some February sunshine and a beach to myself (and the beagle) again.

El Niño Is Coming – and the World Isn’t Prepared

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That’s the title of this Wired article, and it makes scary reading.

I have no doubt that climate change is a very real thing, but I have often commented that I am regularly unimpressed by the hyperbole and drama with which the news stories around it are presented.

This one seems a little different.

Current forecasts suggest that La Niña will continue into early 2023, making it – fortuitously for us – one of the longest on record (it began in Spring 2020). Then, the equatorial Pacific will begin to warm again. Whether or not it becomes hot enough for a fully fledged El Niño to develop, 2023 has a very good chance – without the cooling influence of La Niña – of being the hottest year on record.

Sure, there are predictions of hurricanes and crop failure, of food shortages and economic impacts, of power outages and ever increasing temperatures, but there’s no embellishment: just facts and indications of what we might expect.

It still doesn’t sound good.

I was less sure about climate change 15 years ago. I was put off by the constantly incorrect predictions and yes, probably swayed by peer pressure when it came to believing (or not believing) what was going on. But if I hadn’t changed my mind about climate change before 2020 (I had, but…) then Covid sealed the deal for me. Not because I believe that the latter was due to the former, but because I watched experts being experts and sharing their expert knowledge, and it being shot down because of poor reporting or just sheer bloody ignorance.

Now I know how those climatologists felt.

The worst bit about knowing that this is happening is not being able to do anything about it. Because it really doesn’t matter how much good stuff like recycling and switching off our geysers that you or I do, when (e.g.) China is building another 15GW-worth of coal-fired power stations in the first six months of 2023 and (e.g.) India is reopening more than 100 coal mines to make more electricity. While collective effort at a local level probably assisted with some degree of relief during our awful drought in Cape Town, it’s absolutely laughable to try to get consumers to behave more responsibly when it comes to climate change when Jinping and Modi are chucking out more CO2 than ever before.

We don’t even have enough electricity to go around, but we’re being told (and paid) by Europe to shut down our 18 coal-fired plants, which at full capacity (ha!) amount to about 45GW of generation capacity. Meanwhile, China is operating over 1,100 coal-fired stations for 1,110GW. And all the emissions that come with them.

Until that sort of dichotomy is rectified, (and I understand how depressing and pessimistic this sounds) it feels utterly pointless to try and “do our bit” on a personal level.

ESP Screenshot

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The go to app for all your loadshedding info has to be Eskom se poe… Eskom se PUSH, which will inform you exactly when your next slots of misery are due. Super useful, free (but therefore full of ads), and… well… it just works. There are, however, a couple of unnecessary embellishments, like their social media community chat thing, for example. This was probably added because everything needs to somehow be a social media community chat thing these days. That’s what the world seems to think, at least.

The trouble is that their social media community chat thing is not very well monitored, and this is South Africa, which makes it a hot bed of fake gnus…

…and often (not even) thinly veiled racism.

I don’t subscribe to the social media community chat thing because of these reasons, and because it’s actually of very little use, even when the comments aren’t lies or discrimination, but I still get a little snapshot each time I log on, presumably to try to encourage (?!?) me to get involved.
Stuff like this from “Bishop”:

Not a very ecclesiastical thing to say, Your Grace.

This was 17 hours ago, which means that Bishop has had at least three power cuts since it was written. One can only imagine the state of his diocese, given the promised loose stools which will presumably have repeatedly prevailed.

Eww. Messy. (And I don’t mean the overrated footy one.)

There is a serious side to this (other than the awful stuff that gets shared on their social media community chat thing), being that the reaction of the Bishop here is a snapshot all of us in SA right now: desperate, angry, overwhelmed, worried… and about to loose our shiit.
And while there is absolutely every justification for feeling this way, it achieves nothing at all, save for working us each towards an earlier grave. Sad.

Petty

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I am currently being irritated by an advert that I keep being served on the internet. Mainly YouTube, but I have seen on The ‘Gram, as well.
It’s for a toothpaste which claims to relieve the problem of sensitive teeth.

I don’t have a particular issue with sensitive teeth (my problem – as you’re about to find out – is more with (over) sensitivity regarding the wording of online toothpaste advertisements), but I guess it’s a thing for people my age and they’re just chucking it out there to my demographic and hoping that someone will bite. No pun intended.

The line that gets me every time, just before I’m allowed to hit the SKIP button is that the product:

…offers instant relief in 60 seconds.

That’s not what “instant” means. What you are after is a synonym for “quick”. Something along the lines of “fast”, “speedy” or “expeditious”. But I’d probably suggest “rapid” for the alliteration.

But “instant” doesn’t mean “in 60 seconds”. It means “instant”.
And if you can’t even get that basic information correct, what are the chances of you being to cure my (or anyone else’s) sensitive teeth?

“ARGH! THE ICE CREAM! IT HURTS!”
“You’ll be fine. Just give it a minute.”

Look, obviously I’m not going to take this any further: it’s sad enough that I’ve even brought it this far.

But if I wanted to…

Indeed:

The Kraft Company markets its microwaveable cups as “ready in 3.5 minutes” but Amanda Ramirez says it takes longer.
The $5m (£4.2m) lawsuit claims the time advertised does not include preparation time – opening the lid and sauce pouch, before adding water and stirring.

Same petty energy.