Ah yes. We are languishing in the dark here. A quick joke for those of you who’ll get it:
John is walking around, minding his own business and thinking his own thinks when the Devil spots him. “Ah,” thinks the Devil. “Another soul for me to capture and torture.” Devil walks up to John and says “Good day, Mortal.” John looks at him and says: “Who are you?” The Devil replies: “I am the Prince of Darkness.”
“Oh!” says John. “I know who you are. You work for Eskom!”
Breaking News: This morning word went out that the National Anthem of South Africa will no longer be "N'kosi sikelel' i'Africa". It is being updated to "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle (with the famous first line: "Hello Darkness my old friend..."
For those not In the Know: Eskom is South Africa’s power supplier. This company is completely (or almost completely) state (or government, it’s hard to know what’s the right term anymore) funded, plus they charge us, as consumers, an arm and a leg (seriously, we are one of the coutries that pay the most for electricity in the world) AND THEN it turns out that they do not have enough power for all of us who are paying for our electricity and in fact, will only have enough power in PERHAPS 8 to 10 years. This is because they didn't foresee that providing electricity to all of those who didn't have any (which is a laudable goal, don't get me wrong) would mean that capacity increases, and now they have too little power to go around, and have to make plans to build new power stations. Which will take AT LEAST 8 to 10 years until we have that extra power.
What about the meantime, I hear you ask.
Well, Eskom says. For now it’s rolling blackouts and Load Shedding (which is just a nicer way of saying: "We're cutting your power when we're needing power, so solly cholly"!)
John is walking around, minding his own business and thinking his own thinks when the Devil spots him. “Ah,” thinks the Devil. “Another soul for me to capture and torture.” Devil walks up to John and says “Good day, Mortal.” John looks at him and says: “Who are you?” The Devil replies: “I am the Prince of Darkness.”
“Oh!” says John. “I know who you are. You work for Eskom!”
Another one:
Breaking News: This morning word went out that the National Anthem of South Africa will no longer be "N'kosi sikelel' i'Africa". It is being updated to "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle (with the famous first line: "Hello Darkness my old friend..."
For those not In the Know: Eskom is South Africa’s power supplier. This company is completely (or almost completely) state (or government, it’s hard to know what’s the right term anymore) funded, plus they charge us, as consumers, an arm and a leg (seriously, we are one of the coutries that pay the most for electricity in the world) AND THEN it turns out that they do not have enough power for all of us who are paying for our electricity and in fact, will only have enough power in PERHAPS 8 to 10 years. This is because they didn't foresee that providing electricity to all of those who didn't have any (which is a laudable goal, don't get me wrong) would mean that capacity increases, and now they have too little power to go around, and have to make plans to build new power stations. Which will take AT LEAST 8 to 10 years until we have that extra power.
What about the meantime, I hear you ask.
Well, Eskom says. For now it’s rolling blackouts and Load Shedding (which is just a nicer way of saying: "We're cutting your power when we're needing power, so solly cholly"!)
The ironic part of this is when you try to access the schedule for the load shedding, the "service is unavailable". Talk about an understatement.
UPDATE: Eskom fixed the webpage, but I still have the pictorial proof, tee hee hee. Oh, and for this weekend, apparently the schedule is 90 minutes on, 150 minutes off, 90 on 150 off throughout the days on Saturday and maybe Sunday. Now I ask you with tears in my eyes: why do we even have electricity? And why are we paying between 18 and 14% more for this *lack* of electricity this year?
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