Burning The Midnight Oil (Happy New Year)

It's New Year's Eve. I'll be giving 2011 the nod at a braai* at a friend's place in the suburbs of the good old Mother City.
 

So many people take this night for granted. To be able to celebrate with loved ones at their side until they salute the sun as it dawns on a new year; to laze around the next day recovering from the night before.

Engineers are in the group of people who routinely work during the holidays. One may argue that you're not a real engineer if you've never worked on Christmas, Easter or New Year's. It's usually the only time that plants shut down long enough for major maintenance or installations to happen. And someone's got to do it, and get the place running again in time for the first production of the new year; Engineers are always at the helm of it.

I was lucky enough to only have to work through the holidays once; I guess I wasn't a real engineer for very long. A few years back I returned to work in Boksburg straight after Christmas. Two projects of mine were being completed and the equipment was finally being installed over Christmas break. I was the process engineer on the team and had to hang around until the end for the wet commissioning and start-up. With the ever-tightening project schedule, and the ever-dwindling laundry powder stocks, we commissioned on New Year's Day. The installation team called it quits at noon on New Year's Eve so at least we could all have our low key celebrations. And we found ourselves back at the plant the next day when half the nation was probably still sobering up and making their way home from the night before.

There were engineers on the maintenance team who were doing this for the tenth year or more. They did the same during Easter break and somehow their families had just adjusted. It wasn't that bad. It felt good to work on something so important that I had to sacrifice my New Year's, my holidays... but I didn't want to do it again.

This year my boyfriend, an emergency room doctor, was working at a private hospital in Gauteng** throughout January,  starting on 1 Jan at 8am. He caught a flight at midday on New Year's Eve; midnight ticked past with him asleep at a guesthouse in Vereeniging, a small town that exists mainly to house the brains and workforce behind the nearby steel and petrochemical plants. We had a faux New Year's Eve "party" on New Year's Eve-Eve.

Of course he was working at his regular post that night so we had it in the Casualty Doctors' tea room at a hospital in Manenburg on the Cape Flats. At 23:30 I was still sitting at the Doctors' table in the middle of the emergency ward.  While he and his colleagues worked, I  watched a drunk patient get tangled in his drip as he tried to disembark his gurney. We had a  New Year's kiss at faux New Year's midnight in the tea room, popped our faux bubbly with his two colleagues and ate our finger-food: they returned to work and I went home.

I spent the real New Year's Eve with family but it wasn't the same. The first New Year's Eve in ten years that we'd spent apart. I didn't even get to call him at midnight.

So tonight I will toast to all the people keeping society afloat while the rest of us party like it's 1999: the doctors, nurses, policemen, firemen, engineers, waiters, petrol attendants and Engen-Woolies cashiers... Even the accountants slaving away to close their books for year end.

Happy New Year everyone!!

*"braai" is a South African colloquialism for barbeque
** Gauteng (meaning "Place of Gold") is one of nine provinces of South Africa; the economic hub and home to the City of Johannesburg

Images:
New Year's Eve Ann Miller