Lights Out

Electrical outages seem a fairly common thing in Renon lately, and the most recent ones have been fairly lengthy—four of five hours at a time. These tend to render life rather less than amusing. I was, for instance, about to watch a movie tonight and enjoy a bag of popcorn, but of course the internet is out, as is the microwave. Here is where modern technology—the bag of microwave popcorn—comes into conflict with the realities of a third world (excuse me, developing) country—the inability to use the microwave and thus pop the popcorn. I can, however, use the laptop, as long as the battery holds out, which will be, according to my icon, 6 hours. Oh joy!

A very long time ago, this used to be a common enough occurrence in my old home town of Portland, Oregon, too. From time to time, the power would go out. In fact, during what came to be known as The Columbus Day Storm, in 1962, the electricity in our house was out for two weeks! Try and beat that, Indonesia! Of course, for young boys like my brother and I, this was all a great adventure. One got to use flashlights and lanterns just as if he were camping, and fewer baths were required, given that my mother would need to heat the water and carry it to the tub on the second floor. My parents, being avid campers, had all the necessary equipment—Colman Stoves, Colman Lanterns, flashlights, plenty of canned goods, and so on. So we camped out, and rather enjoyed it all (although when I say “we”, I mean to indicate only my brother and myself). As an extra bonus, schools were closed for some time! And you couldn’t beat the electrical outage when it came to games of hide-and-seek or rounds of ghost stories.

Come to think of it, I use a gas stove here in Bali, as most people do. I can just dump the microwave popcorn into a pan and pop it in the old-fashioned manner, right? But hold on … there’s still no wifi connection.

Damn!