I really enjoy - and appreciate - responses to whatever I write. Naturally, I prefer the ones that go along the lines of "Mere words cannot describe the awe I felt when I read your incredibly perceptive...". Unfortunately, however, I am still waiting for the first of those to come in, but I did get one response last week that said, in essence, "Lighten up". So I choked back the tears, took it to heart and so here is something with a lighter feel to it. Helium. There, done it! Actually, there is cause for cheer - even if it is the somewhat ambivalent kind one feels when one's mother-in-law goes over a cliff in one's new car... It's the fact that Eishkom seem to have finally got their act together and the schedule for outages/blackouts/load-shedding - call them what you will - seems to be working. At last! So now we know that Tuesday evening is braai evening, and at the office we can plan on taking off even earlier than Capetonians usually do on a Friday - noon, instead of about two or three. It means we can plan - and that is what most of us have been asking for, for ages - so perhaps there is a flickering silver lining to the dark cloud. Factories can plan production, we can plan our schedules, malls can have the generators primed and ready to kick in. So now, to end on an even lighter note... Hydrogen!

Rod Baker, Content Manager