Yes, it is time for yet another Eskom rant. I haven't had a moan about this in awhile, and, while you may be sick of the subject, they keep providing us (and the Madam & Eve cartoonists, it seems) with more material and reasons to complain.
Our dear power utility, which can't provide enough power, despite this being its sole purpose on God's green earth, now wants to charge us more money for something they can't provide. Old news, yes. But now it appears that we Saffers have been subsidising the costs of electricity provided by Eskom to neighbouring countries for years. Get the full story here.
I dare any shrink to ask, 'How does that make you feel?'
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Friday, 25 April 2008
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Power cuts boost productivity... by preventing procrastination
Yikes! It has been a long while since I last blogged. Why, you may ask (or not. i suppose it depends entirely on whether or not you actually care). Well, if you're in South Africa you probably know the answer... Eskom. And for those of you who are not from this glorious land of sunny days and dark, electricity-less nights, that is not a rude Afrikaans word. Although it should be.
Eskom is our national power supplier, but they're not doing a very good job of supplying electricity to us at the moment. Not that it's their fault - they have been warning our government for years that we needed to invest money in building new capacity. But, as President Mbeki has admitted, the top dogs did not listen, and so now we are stuck with rolling blackouts everyday, usually twice a day, around the country.
All of this rambling about the uselessness of politicians and utilities is merely background to explain my latest excuse for delayed blogging... "load shedding" as Eskom calls it. This annoying and highly disruptive policy of turning off our electricity at random intervals during the day does have its plus side though... It has put an end to my procrastination. See, to make my deadlines I am forced to sit down immediately as I get into the office and do as much as possible while the PC is still on, as well as copying everything onto a USB stick to use on the laptop while the power is down and drawing up very organised 'to do' lists of people I need to call and things I need to do that don't require electricity for those two-hour sessions. When the power is off and I have no internet or email access, I simply go through my lists and feel very good at being able to tick things off.
So while Eskom's little switch-flicking games may halt the work on the Gau-Train project, lose millions of Rands for the mining companies, and generally wreak havoc and mean that nobody can get a good cuppa, at least little old me is doing just fine.
The only down side (and some will debate that this is a negative at all) is that there are long gaps between blogs.
Eskom is our national power supplier, but they're not doing a very good job of supplying electricity to us at the moment. Not that it's their fault - they have been warning our government for years that we needed to invest money in building new capacity. But, as President Mbeki has admitted, the top dogs did not listen, and so now we are stuck with rolling blackouts everyday, usually twice a day, around the country.
All of this rambling about the uselessness of politicians and utilities is merely background to explain my latest excuse for delayed blogging... "load shedding" as Eskom calls it. This annoying and highly disruptive policy of turning off our electricity at random intervals during the day does have its plus side though... It has put an end to my procrastination. See, to make my deadlines I am forced to sit down immediately as I get into the office and do as much as possible while the PC is still on, as well as copying everything onto a USB stick to use on the laptop while the power is down and drawing up very organised 'to do' lists of people I need to call and things I need to do that don't require electricity for those two-hour sessions. When the power is off and I have no internet or email access, I simply go through my lists and feel very good at being able to tick things off.
So while Eskom's little switch-flicking games may halt the work on the Gau-Train project, lose millions of Rands for the mining companies, and generally wreak havoc and mean that nobody can get a good cuppa, at least little old me is doing just fine.
The only down side (and some will debate that this is a negative at all) is that there are long gaps between blogs.
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