Well, not that exuberant. But I could be worse ;)

I finally have power. I finally have the internet… I feel alive again.

For the uninformed, the southeast coast of NSW, much of Victoria and even Tasmania have suffered power and telephone outages due to high speed winds on Sunday afternoon, peaking at 141km/hour. This, naturally enough, caused various things to happen:

a) Driving became hazardousrnb) Trees succumbed to gravityrnc) Said trees, in as many ways as they perversely could, succumbed to gravity over power lines, etc.

As such, over 100,000 residences lost power. And, of course, since many telephone exchanges also lost power, and had insufficient battery/generator power to stay online, many people’s (mine included) telephones went offline.

Now, for my story. As you all no doubt know, being people interested enough about moi to read this ( ~^ ) I work on a Sunday night from 7 - 10pm. As such, when the power was off, I expected a leisurely drive to work (as I couldn’t phone them), a nice “May as well go home, Ben” and a quiet night playing Monopoly by candlelight. Sounds delightfully quaint, don’t it? ^^

Reality: Drive is evil. Four trees across Marshall Mt Rd. Bad. Dapto - no power. At all. Zilch. No street lights, no house lights, no emergency lights. Feels like I’m back in the middle of nowhere. Part of main road closed by police - bad. Time to drive down said piece of road is about, oh, thirty seconds. Time to go around blockade to get to work ended up as about five minutes.

Anyway, I got to work, pulled up (emergency lights were on in the mall) said a brief hello to the security guard (John) and wandered in. Was met by cries of ‘Ben, we tried to call you!’ and ‘We’re so sorry!’. Woolworths, of course, has my mobile number. But, this mobile number is… slightly wrong. Missing a digit, even. Wonder how that happened ^_^. Also, my mobile, due to lack of being charged, had a dead battery anyway. Ah, well. The boss (who had come in due to lack of power/emergency/whatever) said I might as well go home. I decided to chat with Rachel for a few minutes, then leave. Fine. I said my goodbyes, turned to go… and with a loud hum, the power came back on.

Bugger.

So, I worked my shift, drove home to dark house. Skipped Uni on Monday due to blockage of nose, sore throat and throbbing head - all non alcohol related. Visited Grandparents for shower and shave, went back home to second night of no electricity. Good thing we have gas for cooking… but since we are on a farm, all water (tank storage) is pumped by electricity. We finally got power back at 12.05am on Tuesday (today) morning. Helped my Dad clean out the fridge (which died) at about 12.30. Went to Uni. Came home. Fridge had been repaired (bless the repair man!).

Oh yeah…went to work again. Got home (with Two Towers DVD!)… decided to post this. Yeah.

Works for me. ^_^

-Andiyar