When the lights went out

Where were you when the lights went out?
It was the title of a movie years ago I saw as a teenager. I can't even remember the actors, but I know it was a comedy, and the different actors were involved in "hilarious" (no, couldn't be "tragic" scenarios or else it wouldn't have qualified as a comedy, would it?) situations when the City of New York was completely switched off.

Last night I had a similar taste of such a potential scene. There were several loud booms of thunder, (followed --oops, correction, as I pondered over this!)preceded by flashes of lightning that lit up our living room like giant camera flashbulbs on top of the normal flourescent lighting. Then there was a "thud" sound as the circuit breaker went off automatically and there was 80 per cent darkness with some streams of light flowing in from the roadside lamps/lights and from the homuses across the road. Our immediate neighbour's house also plunged into semi-darkness.

Impatient Desiderata waited about five minutes before swtiching back the white box switch and the lights came back ... so I could resume my reading of the daily newspapers.

Less than 180 seconds later,several flashes of lightning knifed through the living room and sank our house into three quarters darkness. But this time, flames shot through the swtiches wiring the television set, combo unit and the video player, just for 2-3 seconds and "self-destructed" (i.e. "disappeared"). As the lighning sliced through the living room this time, my eyes shot to the circuit breaker now caugfht in flames.The flame did NOT "self-destruct" and in a sort of reflex action, I shot up from my sofa-settee fronting the TV set, dashed about three metres to the circuit breaker box and smashed on the flames with my few pages of paper. No, the paper did not catch fire, and the flames were extinguished.(Saying "sorry" to the news Straits Times of June 10, 2005 for "abusing" thee!) there was no warning sign of the "thud" -- the circuit breaker gave up on us.

Cutting a long story short,to my friends who wish to know, my answer to the question "Where were you when the lights went out?" about 7.30-7.40pm last night in SEREMBAN where the famous Haridas stall serves the best "teh traik susus lembu", my answer is "I caught the fire burning out my humble residential circulit breaker in less than ten seconds -- I think that's how long. But such oments can affect your arithmetic recall...)

To cut a longer inventry short: the damage done is only propertied, hence I consider collateral: two TV sets, one combo set, one VCD player.

The main damage is to my pride in thinking it's alright to be impatient when confronted by the forces of nature.

One consolation though -- it is a "miracle" that my body and other family members in the house were not touched by electricity. Had the lightning hit the ground level instead the higher wall or ceiling places, well, don't paint the possible scenarios.
Another less surprising "mircale" is that the faithful laptop computer did not go "kaput", as it resumed working beautifully after the wireman came and restored power some three hours later.

David Chan who came on an SOS call to have a tea-tarik break with me felt "It's that power of an Unseen Hand" at work to warn Desiderata not to taunt Nature's hands. When thunder booms, and lightning flashes (it should be the other way round, nay, it doesn't matter, this is not a Physics article, guided by the fact that Light travles faster than sound, remember?...), the wireman's advice is: Switch off the power mains, even disconnect the power points to expensive equipment like the TV, fridge, yes, the computer.

Thanks to the wireman's counsael, I off-ed the mains, and this computer for an hour while working on this Post (yes, at about 4.00pm just now.) ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY.

But the bite wasn't too deep -- several thousand ringgit damage, but the almight dollar can be earned with the mightier hand, right, or left?) The important things the laptop was spared, and I could upload my weeekly update for klsetracker this morning at 10.15am; and now for this post -- "finis" at 5.47pm. Thanks.

PS: David, the ever-optimistic fRiend, says now I can invest in a DVD player so that I can catch up on a lot on films (stopped her at 5.57pm as I hear the rumbling of thunder again; resumed typing at 6.47pm) in the DVD format he's invested in. This was at lunchtime today after I had picked up my Counsellor-Friend Mr Coww from the bus-satnd after he got back from two days of outstation duty...). So Coww asked me what the "GOod" news was after I had indicated to him eralier I had bad and good news to update him on.

"Coww, the good news is that last night's incident, by David's description, did not make my hair stand like Simpson's!)", my humble reply.


One lingering question: Does lightning strike at the same place a second time?

OR Is it: Does the Postman Always Ring Twice?

Dear Readers: Do you ahve stories to tell? I mean, about either when the lights went out; or The Lightning Striking; or The Postman Ringing ...