Wednesday, March 28, 2007

No Power!

Today at 6:00 the power went out while we were eating dinner. So we got out our tea light candles, really quite inadequate as they are not of Candle Light quality... Usually when the power goes out it is only for a short time. But after we were done eating our enchiladas (tortillas homemade by Ibu Tati) and yogurt, the power was still out. Our neighbours were hanging around outside so we joined them for a bit and compared flashlights/lanterns. They were using a homemade lantern type thing that has a wick and kerosene in it and we were using our Home Hardware wind up LED flashlight special. Talk about old world meets new! Anyways, my neighbour told me that warungs (little shops) usually have candles that are tall. So Marc and I set out with Marc leading the way with the flashlight to go get candles. Well, they were all out at all the warungs around us. But one still had a kerosene lantern which I bought, well I didn't actually pay for it yet as I had only brought enough money along to buy candles, for about $2. They even put kerosene in it for me as we don't have any ourselves. A lot of people here still cook using little one burner "stoves" that use kerosene. Anyways, the power finally came on at about 8:30 and then went out again about 20 min. later. Then our landlord came by and gave us 2 candles. He said that he got them from the PLN (our version of BC Hydro). So generous of them to supply us with 2 candles... Quite hilarious. I'm not sure if our landlord came by because he had heard that I had been going around to warungs looking for candles or not... Oh well, we are now the proud owners of two tall candles... and an incredibly cheap kerosene lantern....

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