Power Outages

Well, in exactly two weeks and 3 hours I'll be leaving SA for London :-) It's been hectic - you'd be amazed how much there is to do, and how easy it is to do some of it (like cancel my medical aid) and how difficult it is to do the rest of it (like cancel my TV licence). It'll be sad to go - today I rode out to Simonstown, and I'll miss the mountains and the sea. But I'm looking forward to being there, and in some respects I'm looking forward to leaving here (for example: the security complex where I live has gone downhill fast since the units have been sold off individually - while I'm sitting here, I can hear every word of an argument going on somewhere in the complex, with lots of shouting and "are you swearing at me" and more shouting - sounds like at least 3 people involved. I don't need that, and I suspect that it's the same unit that I've been hearing shouting and screaming from for about 2 days now).

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is: thank goodness for mobile devices! I'm sitting here blogging and checking my email using my laptop, my cellphone, and a torch, since the power's out. Again. Luckily I can touch type and don't need really need more light than I can get from the screen! If you're in Cape Town, or even in South Africa, you'll know this, but we've been having rolling blackouts since the weekend- due to a variety of reasons, apparently, but mostly because Koeberg's one unit is down for maintenance, and the remaining one is now having issues. It was going to be fixed yesterday, then it was today, now it's friday - although someone mentioned it would be another 50 days, which sounds about right. What gets me is that if it's a rolling blackout, then surely they know which area will lose power when - so why can't they tell us in advance? Even if they can't post a schedule a day in advance, it would be nice if they would tell us "don't start baking a cake; charge your laptop; make sure you've got a torch handy since the power will be going off in an hour". Or even more importantly, "don't get into a lift"! Don't ask me how they'd disseminate this info, but I'm sure they could come up with something :S And you never know how long it'll be off for - could be an hour, could be 3 or 4 hours. Or more.

And for me, it's just inconvenient - no TV, no lights, no freezer, no microwave; in fact, no takeaways since they're without power too (and my laptop has only 1 hour of battery life left - I won't even play MP3s since that uses up a lot of battery, and I'd rather stay connected a bit longer than have music). But what about people with babies, who need to heat up milk? Not to mention small businesses, shops, etc. - the amount of time lost isn't just the time without power, it's the time on either side, while you wait for the power to go off, and settle down to work again after it comes back. And big manufacturing plants, where you can't interrupt a process - although I guess they'd have generators, and the same goes for hospitals. And all the traffic lights that are either out because there's no power, or because they haven't been reset properly since the power came back on. And there are a lot of reasons that they're giving - but I think a lot of it all comes down to lack of maintenance. Although it's amusing to watch everyone trying to blame someone else :-)

Oops, I almost forgot to mention my alien conspiracy theory. You see, today my motorbike's battery went flat, even though it seemed to be working fine the other day; and my camera batteries, which I recharged on Monday and only used for 4 photos since, were also flat. So my theory is that there's a giant alien mothership sitting in geosynchronous orbite above Cape Town, somehow sucking up all the electricity ;-) It would explain why everyone's so evasive about the reason for, timing of, and duration of the power cuts! Although it wouldn't explain why my laptop & cellphone batteries are still fine... hmm, maybe they use a different type of battery that the mothership can't drain? Or, maybe, they want some of us to be able to get the word out in order to spread the fear... will your city be next?

Update: Darn, it's now 21:35 (two hours later) and still no power... only 5 minutes left on my laptop battery. Guess I'm just going to have to have an early night and catch up on some sleep :-(

Amazing Neil Gaiman Poem

I just read the most amazing poem by Neil Gaiman, published on SpiderWords. I'm not really into poetry much, but sometimes one will just resonate with me - this is one of those. Here's the first two verses, but go and read the whole thing, because it's the ending that pulls the whole thing together.

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,

Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,

And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,

Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us

And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow

But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,

Was the day that the graves gave up their dead

And the zombies pushed up through soft earth

or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,

Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,

But you did not notice this because

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Catching up

It's been a while since I posted, so here's a quick catch up on what's new:

I finished work on 21 January - I'm free!! They gave a me farewell card signed by everyone at the Cape Town office as well as a bunch of flowers, which was touching; they also made me stay late my last two nights to update the production server, which wasn't so touching. But it's all good :-)

Then, as I posted before, I was considering getting a tattoo - a friend sent me an incredible design, and I fell in love with it immediately even though it was totally different to what I was thinking of. So I had it done last Friday - and no, I'm not going to say what, where, or post a picture :P It was surprisingly not painful - more of a tickly, tingling type sensation; at least, that's true for the outline. The filling in was a bit more sore, and it's a been a bit painful while it's healing, but it looks awesome so it was definitely worth the tiny bit of pain! If anyone reading this is in Cape Town, and wants a tattoo, I highly recommend Tattoo Coral in Plumstead.

I'm still really looking forward to moving to London - things like no sunburn, a decent internet connection, the ability to actually buy music online *gasp*!, and a ton of other stuff make it rather more attractive than Cape Town right now. I'm busy trying to get things organised - making dentist and optician appointments, backing up my PC & laptop, that kind of thing - but I'm going to have to start packing in earnest soon (I'm putting some stuff in storage, the rest I'm going to have sell/give away/throw away - the trick is figuring out what falls into which category).

The other thing I'm currently working is getting my big bike licence - as I've mentioned before, I currently have an A1 licence, which is for bikes <>125cc bike, which I don't have - the test is exactly the same, btw; what licence you get depends purely on what size bike you ride for the test). I went for the pre-test training today, where we worked through the entire test, and I'm going for the actual test tomorrow - hopefully it works out okay. The problem is, you can be a good rider and fail the test, or pass the test and be a really bad rider - it doesn't actually measure your ability to ride. But hopefully I'll pass.

Hmm... what else? I bought a new watch, a Casio Baby-G, which is really cool, although some of the button assignments are bit... unique. And my current favourite song is 'Push the Button', by Sugababes - the lyrics are great, and the tune is incredibly catchy. Now if only I could actually get it without having to buy an entire CD, or comply with Musica's ridiculous DRM :-( Oh, no, wait - sorry, I can't buy it from Musica, ridiculous DRM notwithstanding, since it isn't available from them. I'm not advocating piracy - but surely they can see why it happens?! Or maybe little old countries like us just won't make them enough money anyway, so we're just not worth it. Typical.

Update: I passed! Yay! Now I can get an international licence, which means I can ride in the UK if I want.