...and the power goes out

Saturday was a beautiful day. After a couple weeks of dry weather everyone was really happy when the sky clouded over in the afternoon and started to rumble. As an extra loud bang indicated the lightning was getting closer to the house, I jumped out of the shower and stood safely on the mat drying myself off and watching the rain stream down the window. I like storms.


Remembering the giant TV screen in the lounge where I’d been watching a football game while exercising just a little while earlier, I felt concerned that someone should go and unplug it. Living in countries with frequent storms, power cuts, and electrical surges instilled that in me, I guess. Before I could get dressed though, the power went out, sending everything into a dusky late afternoon gloom.

My plans of putting on music while filing and painting my nails went out the window as the rain water poured in. I ran around closing things up, and checking on the other unoccupied apartments to make sure nothing was getting wet and ruined.

This building my mom lives in is actually a small apartment building, though from the outside it just looks like a big house. Since all the people renting them are working with the same organization we see each other fairly often, even if it’s just in passing.

Now with the power out everyone came into the hallways and entrance area, and stood around discussing the storm and speculating how long it would take to get the power back up. Someone wondered if it might be out all night since it was already late Saturday afternoon. There was talk of pulling out candles, and I started to feel right at home.

Back in Nepal we were having up to 14 hours of power cuts per day, and have just adjusted to that being part of life in the winter. On powerless evenings we all sit around and talk, play a game or two, watch a movie if someone still has battery on their lap top, or go up on the roof on warmer evenings. It’s nice, and I actually felt a little disappointed when the power came back on after just about 45 minutes and everyone disappeared back into their own flats.

It reminded me a bit of our center in South Africa where things like lightning, and thieves taking the copper from the electrical wires, regularly plunged us into darkness. Everyone would come out of their offices, and stand around getting a snack or a cup of tea and waiting for the power or the generator to get things up and running again. As a non office person (I ran the kitchen and food distribution services) these were often the best parts of my week.

Sometimes I think everyone could benefit from turning off the electricity for a little while, or at least shutting down the internet, computers, and television, and just taking time to talk and interact with each other. Obviously we need the power to get things done and the internet to stay in touch with the world, but we shouldn’t let it keep us from connecting with the world that’s right around us, our family, friends, and neighbours.

Back to Front

This is one of my latest favorite songs. It's not the greatest video, but all the ones of Eliza Doolittle singing Back to Front live have pretty bad sound quality.

I like the idea of everything going backwards, and the simplicity of being children again, rather than the complications of getting older. And I guess I've been thinking about that more lately as I just turned 30 a few days ago.

It's interesting as I'm visiting my mom now, and seeing some old friends that I haven't seen since we were all teens. There's been a lot of reminicing going on. Nice to revisit old memories and good times.

But when I really do think about it, I wouldn't quite want to go back to those days even if I had the opportunity to. Having learned so much over the years, and changed, hopefully for the bettter, I wouldn't want to undo any of that. So in the end, I will be happy going forward, having new experiences and adventures, and making progress even if it does come along with getting older.

travel notes

It was a looong trip, but a few nice things that happened along the way made it seem shorter. Namely the day I spent in China.

Since I had a fifteen hour stopover in Guangzhou and I've never been to China I decided to get a transit visa and go out of the airport. Also one of my friends' family lives there and he wanted me to bring some things to them. I assumed that one of them would pick the stuff up from me, direct me to some nice places to look around and spend the day and that would be that. Instead his mom spent the whole day with me. His brother met us for lunch. And when his mom heard I hadn't slept at all the previous night, since my flight was at 11:00 p.m., she took me to her friend's appartment so I could shower and rest for a few hours.

I went on to the next leg of the journey feeling much more refreshed, and very happy that I'd gotten to see at least a little bit of China.

Landing in Los Angeles was a bit strange. I think it's been about seven years since I'd been back there. The last couple times I visited my family I went to South Africa. Before even if it had been a year or two  arriving at the airport always felt a little like coming home. This time it didn't at all. It all seemed very foreign. And it was cold outside the aiport. I don't remember April evenings being so cold before.

Now I'm just resting, getting over jet lag, and enjoying the time with my mom.