I'm sitting here listening to the radio (something I didn't do in the UK) and the song that's playing is 'I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face'. It reminds me of last Thursday, I was driving to work and realised I didn't have a huge grin on my face. Those of you who I worked with in Devon will recall that I had a Huge Grin pretty much from mid October until I left, that stayed until I arrived on Ascension, and reappeared on the Wednesday Afternoon when I arrived on St Helena. On Thursday I was just driving to work, I wasn't smiling, it was early and I had wanted to sit and relax more at home. It had to happen at some point I guess, but it was strange to realise my face no longer hurt. I think I'm now smiling evenings and weekends only, not that I don't like my job, but it is going to be a long hard slog for the next 2 years, but it should be very fulfilling as well.
The Radio
I've mentioned the radio, there are only 2 stations one on am which I haven't listened to much and one on fm. The fm wakes me up every morning on my radio alarm (at random times because of physics - see below), with Mike reading the news and a great selection of tunes, which I think are mainly requests. I love it, no Robbie Gaga, no Westcat That, no X Got Brother. Good proper tunes (and Country & Western), I particularly like the cover of 'The Wheels on the Bus', and Bob The Builder has been on a couple of times, my type of music :) with the odd commercial song from the latest X Factor Runner Up.
Physics - Yawn
I've always taken electricity for granted - you plug something in and it works, occasionally if the weather is bad there's a power cut, but it comes back. On St Helena Electricity is predominantly provided by 1 engine, ok so it's a big diesel and there are some wind turbines as back-ups, but basically we're talking about 1 engine. If it dies so does the electric everywhere. Equally, there's no Grid, if a line comes down, that's it one side of the island has no power. It takes 15 minutes to get the second engine up and running to take over, none of this multiple redundancy lark. But anyway, physics. In the UK electric is AC at 50 Hz (plus and minus swap over 50 times every second) this is standard and constant. Power Stations all run at 50 Hz and there are other Power Stations which are designed to force the Grid to 50Hz if anything goes awry. Here there is 1 engine, if it gets a slight fuel blockage, or a bit of dust in the air filter it'll slow down. If it gets a bit of cleaner than usual fuel it'll speed up, this changes the RPM (like a car) which is what sets the Hz.
Now for the Alarm Clock. In the UK I set the time correctly and physics makes sure it's right. That physics is the 50Hz business in the power cable. If it isn't 50Hz, say it's 49Hz it looses over a second every minute, or 1m 12s an hour. Overnight (8 hrs) I can loose (or gain) 9.5 minutes just from a 1Hz change in the power. And sometimes it's bigger than that, one night I couldn't be bothered to reset the time as I wanted to get up early anyway, when I woke the clock wasn't 12 minutes fast it was 2 minutes slow (according to my watch). anyway, that's why it's fairly random what time I get woken, luckily there's a battery backup, so if the power dies completely the clock still keeps going, although I'm not sure if the battery would run the radio alarm...
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