by NINAD JOG
This morning, the crack of dawn marked the two-week anniversary of the power outage in my condo complex in Reston, when the power was out until late at night because power cables overheated and burned under one of the buildings.
Several firetrucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene, and firefighters could be seen raising ladders to the top floor and to the roof to do heaven knows what. Rescuing people maybe?
Many residents of the complex left their homes and stayed in hotels or with their friends and relatives that night, because they were told that the power may not be restored for days while the repairmen tried to pinpoint the precise location of the fault. I chose to stay at home, because it wasn't hot enough to need air-conditioning, and I would go straight to bed when it became dark, thank you.
But it wasn't long before I started regretting my decision. Just as it got sufficiently dark, making it impossible to do anything without a flashlight, I got sufficiently bored and lonely, and wasn't feeling sleepy. Besides, the skies darkened, and it started pouring cats and dogs. All hope of the power supply being restored that night was lost. Why, oh, why, had I not taken the other residents' lead?
But lo and behold - the lights came on just then - power was restored! I had been rescued from the depths of despair. My decision had truly reaped dividends. I fired up my computer and caught up on all that I had missed that day.
A fortnight has passed since that incident, but it burns fresh in my memory. Why am I feeling the need to recount it? Am I a stickler for anniversaries? Aren't the burned underground cables water under the bridge?
Not quite! On the day of the outage, the power was restored not by replacing the cables, but by connecting a large, truck-sized generator to them, a machine that made a whirring sound loud enough to wake the dead, making life a living hell for the people staying in the buildings nearest to it.
That night, we knew that the generator would keep running for a day or two, and we knew that it could keep running for a week or so. But little could we have imagined that it would still be humming along two weeks later. If there's an abject lesson to be learned about the difference between 'could' and 'would', this would be it.
I still keep my bedroom window shut and turn on the air conditioning when I'm home. My building is mercifully not too close to the generator, but its incessant hum isn't exactly music to my ears. Let there be light, but let silence prevail.
This morning, the crack of dawn marked the two-week anniversary of the power outage in my condo complex in Reston, when the power was out until late at night because power cables overheated and burned under one of the buildings.
Several firetrucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene, and firefighters could be seen raising ladders to the top floor and to the roof to do heaven knows what. Rescuing people maybe?
Many residents of the complex left their homes and stayed in hotels or with their friends and relatives that night, because they were told that the power may not be restored for days while the repairmen tried to pinpoint the precise location of the fault. I chose to stay at home, because it wasn't hot enough to need air-conditioning, and I would go straight to bed when it became dark, thank you.
But it wasn't long before I started regretting my decision. Just as it got sufficiently dark, making it impossible to do anything without a flashlight, I got sufficiently bored and lonely, and wasn't feeling sleepy. Besides, the skies darkened, and it started pouring cats and dogs. All hope of the power supply being restored that night was lost. Why, oh, why, had I not taken the other residents' lead?
But lo and behold - the lights came on just then - power was restored! I had been rescued from the depths of despair. My decision had truly reaped dividends. I fired up my computer and caught up on all that I had missed that day.
A fortnight has passed since that incident, but it burns fresh in my memory. Why am I feeling the need to recount it? Am I a stickler for anniversaries? Aren't the burned underground cables water under the bridge?
Not quite! On the day of the outage, the power was restored not by replacing the cables, but by connecting a large, truck-sized generator to them, a machine that made a whirring sound loud enough to wake the dead, making life a living hell for the people staying in the buildings nearest to it.
That night, we knew that the generator would keep running for a day or two, and we knew that it could keep running for a week or so. But little could we have imagined that it would still be humming along two weeks later. If there's an abject lesson to be learned about the difference between 'could' and 'would', this would be it.
I still keep my bedroom window shut and turn on the air conditioning when I'm home. My building is mercifully not too close to the generator, but its incessant hum isn't exactly music to my ears. Let there be light, but let silence prevail.
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