Marius van der Westhuizen, of Cape Town Metro Infrastructure Management, invited me and my partner to a banquet of the Cape chapter of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Glancing around the ballroom, stuffed with electrical engineers and their wives and sweethearts, I wondered how many knew what they were in for when they married an electrical engineer (for the sake of brevity we’ll leave out the female engineers). Wives know what doctors, lawyers and accountants do. Most have at least an idea of what land surveyors and actuaries do and some have an idea that quantity surveyors may be of use, in a vague sort of way. Even civil, mechani- cal and structural engineers give out some idea of their occupation.

But all electrical engineers appear to do, as far as wives and sweethearts are concerned, is drink. A lot. Further, in common with chemical engineers, electrical engineers can say sentences in English where only the pronouns and adverbs are understood by normal people. For example, if she asks, how was work today, a reasonable reply would be: “We were trying to do secondary injection tests on the 6.6 switchboard when some clown opened the CT circuit. The CT secondary lifted to primary voltage times the square of the turns ratio, which burned out all the secondary buswires. Yes, I’d love a beer. “As you see, clear as a bell.

Electrical engineers drink so much is owing to their upbringing. Engineering students on campus are the big drinkers. Most grow out of it but the electrical engineers never do. This is because they are permanently disappointed. And they are permanently disappointed since nobody listens to them and every- body interferes with their work and then blames them when it all goes wrong.

In 1994 the South African power system (as in Eskom) was in fair shape. There was a capacity surplus in so far as Majuba power station was coming on line but the load had not grown as much as expected. The ruling party soon fixed that. They decided not to build any new power stations and then decided to sell power at bargain basement prices to the Hillside and Bayside aluminium smelters, effec- tively cutting the power surplus in half. Trust me, this was not an electrical engineer’s idea and it led directly to the state we have today – running on very tight reserve margins. And disappointed electrical engineers.

Then we have the situation which is prevalent in many South African municipalities – the income from electrical sales is very high and balances the municipal budget. The electricity departments receive very little of the revenue they bring in since the municipality spends it on high salaries, smart cars and office furniture. With too little money to do proper electrical maintenance, despite warnings by the municipal electrical engineer, the power system falls into disarray. The electrical sales income drops and the municipality collapses financially. The electrical engineer is disappointed.

In the commercial world, electrical engineers used to issue and award tenders for electrical work. They know that a dodgy contractor can get way with just about anything so they would award tenders not only on price but also on reputation and ability. No longer. Now procurement depart- ments and quantity surveyors make all the award decisions. When the contract turns out to be late and of a poor quality, the electrical engineer is blamed and . . . is disappointed.

So electrical engineers drink. Often and heavily. The best drinking takes place when electrical engineers are telling stories. The stories are always about things that went wrong and often about things that blew up. Since movies often depict buildings and factories blowing up when electrical faults occur, these stories reinforce the wives and sweet- hearts’ view of electrical engineers – not that they do they get things wrong but they get very little right. And they drink. A lot.

Looking around at the banquet, I thought none of the above. The drinks flowed, the stories got better and better, the wives and sweethearts drew into a little group of their own, while the engineers laughed more and more. We electrical engineers are all crazy, I know, but we’re fun.