Blackout blank out bedroom light still out

Colin Goh ponders: How I learnt to stop worrying and love the blackout*

So I have to admit that the magnitude of the East Coast blackout didn't really hit me till I read this piece. For one thing, I haven't been in a blackout in years. The last time I was in a blackout, it was in the US and I had to write my journal (yeah, I was an old-school journaller then) by candlelight, which gave me a whole new perspective on how people functioned after dark in pre-electricity days. The time before that when I was in a blackout, I'm pretty sure I was still a kid, which means my ever-efficient mom simply whipped out the candles and the torchlights and no alarm needed to be raised.

Of course, when I was a kid, we didn't exactly have terrorists lurking on our doorstep, either. That's one perspective that, I'll admit, completely eluded me when I heard about the East Coast blackouts a couple of days ago --- which explainins why initial reaction was, "Eh. Blackout. Big deal. What else is on?"

My husband and I did have to find out way around the apartment in the dark last weekend though, when our bedroom light gave up the ghost and decided to trip the fuse along with it (see the entry for August 10, since I haven't figured out how to link to previous blog entries yet). That's when we realized that should the lights fizzle out again, we have no idea where our torchlights or matches are. We'd have some scented candles and a rusty cigarette lighter, but that's about it.

Oh, and the bedroom light? We still haven't replaced it yet.

*The link is valid only for 7 days from today, thanks to the Straits Times' unfriendly archive-access policies, so don't try reading it after that.