I was looking forward to a night of social networking before the end of year is upon us and 27Dinner Jozi seemed like the perfect excuse to get together with fellow bloggers and workmates to have a little fun.

I had a hand in organising the 27dinner this time around so thanks to my precise organisational skills, things were all set to go as planned until Eskom failed to comply with my socialising calendar.

While listening to the new at 6pm while making my way to Primi Forum in Melrose Arch, I shrugged off the news alert that unscheduled load shedding was planned for the evening after 9pm.

Clearly Eskom is working in totally different time zone because in the midst of a perfectly good 27Dinner wouldn't Load Shedder strike and cause mayhem in Melrose Arch. Off course it was too early to have ordered food yet and people had just gotten round to placing their drinks orders when the lights went out.

I must admit that even though this slightly blotted out any hope of a geek dinner with preso's, the candle lit mingling that we were allowed was quite a lot of fun and gave lots of people the ultimate excuse to order more bottles of the free Stormhoek wines that were available.

Merv being the hungry ogre that he is, kindly suggested that at 7:30 pm we go in search of food that could be easily prepared but did not consist of lettuce leaves...Apparently only Melrose Arch's poor cousins were left without electricity last night as the merrymakers at the Meat Company and the Melrose Arch Hotel enjoyed their well-lit meals.

We ended up ordering pizzas from Giovanni's because they actually make their food using a pizza over and took our food back to Primi to enjoy, however as Murphy's law would dictate, the lights came back on just as I'd placed the second round of pizza orders at Giovanni's, causing me to miss the first presentation by iMob's David Theron.

We got back in time for Afrigator's big Beta test launch and to much joviality post Stormhoek stage;-) All in all it was a great evening and thanks to all newbies who experienced their first of the last 27Dinners of this year. I hope all who managed to get their hands on a Cerebra 'im*' t-shirt enjoy it and just remember the message on the back is true, lol.

See the rest of you in 2008! Can't believe that still, but it's true.