Any readers living in South Africa will know all too well about the electricity load-shedding going on here at the moment … At least 2 hours long, and as frequently as three times a day it’s really toying with people’s patience… Most office blocks have some kind of UPS system in place, keeping things running at half-mast. Business critical systems have power, luxuries like aircon (Ha! With the weather we’ve been having that should be mandatory!) and kettles don’t.

SleepyJane commented on this post a little while back about how folks always want to go and make coffee as soon as the power goes down, and she’s so right on that one.  I think it’s the interruption, the change in office condition wakes you from your slumber focus, and you think “Now’s a good time to get some coffee” but alas, the kettle plug doesn’t fit into a UPS plughole… (Unless you force it)

Of various the things that annoy people when they are subjected to load shedding, it’s not the lack of coffee-machine and aircon, the inability to cook dinner or having to open their garage doors manually that seems to bother people most, it’s the traffic. Perhaps putting traffic lights on a different circuit would have been a good idea, but hindsight is always 20-20…

So what can we do about this? Nothing really. You can get a generator for your home, plug your kettle into a UPS plughole at work, get take-aways for dinner 3 times a week, but you can do nothing to get yourself home faster when the traffic lights at *insert major road intersection name here* are out.  You can only sit and wait. And maybe get yourself the latest Madam & Eve book to read to make the trip less painful …

(ps. For any non South Africans, Eskom is our national Power supplier …)