Oh dear, have I been busted - as Jack Bliksem, my 13-year-old nephew, would say - or have I been busted?
This week, a colleague of mine, one Jeremy "Bubbles" Gordin, went along with a troop (or is that a troupe?) of hacks to Eskom's national control centre (NCC).
That's the place where they keep an eye on our national electricity grid. It's apparently all very James Bondish and sci-fi and so on - with a massive electronic map that shows exactly what's happening with electricity supply and demand throughout the nation, from the Madupi power station in heaven-knows-where right down to Jacob Zuma's electric cooker in Forest Town.
Continues Below ↓
I mean if that cooker blows, they know all about it at the NCC - the whereabouts of which I cannot tell you because it's a national key point (more about this in a second).
Similarly, if the deputy editor of this esteemed newspaper spends the whole of Saturday night watching movies on his new television set, with the 420cm-wide screen and pony harness, well, they know about this at the NCC as well.
Gordin said the place reminded him of the great Peter Sellers' movie of 1964: Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Gordin, being a male chauvinist oinker of the worst sort and middle-aged and Caucasian to boot, was somewhat taken aback to discover that the person in charge of the heartbeat of the nation - or the monitor of the heartbeat of the nation - was a young woman, and a very impressive one at that. Actually, I don't know why I remain friendly with Gordin - he's such a bloody predictable type of South African.
Anyway, having told the troupe all about the ops room and the important work going on there - how the plugs are pulled all over the nation - the manager person remarked that the staff were highly trained personnel who took more than a few years to train; in fact, that they were the equivalent in terms of skill of Boeing pilots.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
