I’m not running marathons this weekend (many people are) but if I was…
I’d surely know all of my stats.
Big win for United this afternoon. Birthday braai later (not mine).
It’s all good.
Was it fun?
It’s happening next door
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?!?
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?!
Fragile
Back improvement continues, but there are ups and downs. Today, I’m feeling rather fragile after a mauling by the physio. She did say that I might still be able to play football next Tuesday though, so it’s not all bad.
But I’ve hit a bit of a wall after getting back from taking my daughter to her horse-riding lesson, so I’m going to play it safe and chuck up a QP from the beach on the Easter weekend:
Those are Goose Barnacles clinging to a piece of driftwood: they’ll attach to anything floating in the sea, including turtles, and go wherever the floating thing takes them. But these ones are now stuck on the shore in Suiderstrand, so they won’t be going anywhere else.
Much like me. Except maybe to bed.
One for the Future
Lucky enough to go along to Kenilworth today and watch this guy’s second ever race. And was he ever ready to go:
But once the tension and the nerves in the Parade Ring had dissipated, he went out and he did the business in a very strong field.
“Winner winner, chicken dinner”, as the locals say. Although actually, I think they have plans to race him some more first.
Amazing result. I’ll let you know when he’s racing again so that you can win some money, too.