| Written by Thingfish,
on 29-09-2006 15:27
|
I’m sitting at home, typing by candlelight. There’s barely a sound but for the click of my keyboard and the chirruping of cicadas in the trees. Far off in the distance I can hear the murmured growl of generators.Manila is officially in a state of calamity. Virtually the whole city, like the rest of Luzon and half of the Philippine population is without electricity tonight. Meralco, the major electricity carrier, reportedly lost all but 17 of its 65 substations and 95% of its supply. Pathetic, isn’t it? If you’re sitting in London, Berlin or Tokyo, try and imagine how a bit of bad weather could take out the power for half your national population. If you’re in the US I know, you’ve been there plentyfold. Here in Ayala Alabang, the lights are out everywhere. This is one of the richest neighbourhoods in the nation, home to pop-stars, politicians and religious leaders. But nearly every house is in darkness. Every house except for the git on the next block whose garden is strewn with fairy lights. While his neighbours are worrying about their candle stocks, he’s got a generator and he’d going to make sure we all know it. Yes, in most countries, September is a bit early for Christmas lights. But not in the Philippines. Aside from the occasional forward-planner, everyone has been shut down by typhoon Xangshane, or Milenyo as they call it here. Even the malls and gas stations closed when the eye passed over and it looked safe to make a break for home. But with no power and no-one on the roads, there wasn’t much point in them opening anyway. Cock-up
I hear a cock crowing in the distance and think “what the hell is a cock up for at this time of night?” I chortle at my hilarious wit. What else is there to do in a power cut? It could be days before Manila is working again. The last time our house had a brownout, a badly wired fusebox had burned out in a storm, taking a hundred feet of two-inch power cable with it. I called Meralco, and they had our whole block reconnected in a couple of hours. Not likely to happen this time around. Last time it was a case of patching a cable and changing some fuses. This time, the whole of Luzon needs a repair crew. More than your usual brownout
I woke up this morning with a howling gale outside and a blank face on my alarm clock. I harassed a light switch and got no response. Power cuts happen in the Philippines, and you live with them. But this is more than your usual brownout. The power went down at around 6am, long before my wakeup was due. It’s now 2.30 am, and it might be days before we feel air con again. I glance at the low battery indicator on my screen and shrug to myself. It’s no great loss. Without internet access, this laptop is better than a fancy typewriter. For me, the joy of computing was never the zeros and ones, it was the world those digits gave me access to. Without the internet, computers are impotent. Glasses without any actual glass in them, as Steve Jones might say. An ill wind
The problems out here are hardly unique to the Philippines. Anyone who’s lived in a developing country must know what I’m talking about. Like so many countries in similar circumstances, the Philippines has a lousy infrastructure, piles of poverty and corruption is part of the furniture. Monopolies are still accepted, and our local power company, Meralco, controls all the power in Manila. Being a monopoly, Meralco is both expensive and inefficient. And as a result, Manila’s sole source of electricity has been effectively closed down by a bit of bad wind. If this was the Shetlands, maybe no-one would care. But the Philippines has 85 million citizens, and I doubt if any of them gives a hen’s bollock about whatever excuse Meralco will make: We want our electricity back now. In the eye of the storm The eye of the storm passed over us at midday, so I took advantage of the lull to drive to work. All the way we wove from one side of the road to the other, around giant acacia trees that had been uprooted and crashed across the road. Bastard things took our power lines with them, and it could be days before all those cables are restored. Clean up crews were already at work, wielding pitiful machetes to try and hack away at 60 foot high trees and the occasional ancient mango branch. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t stop as we passed Gloria Jean’s coffee shop. I stop there sometimes because they do a nice tuna pandesal and their coffee’s not too bad. It’s a shame I missed it, because the way things are looking, I may not get another pandesal for a while. The office is an oasis of calm. Banks of generators keep the power flowing, private circuits keep the phones and internet connected and the canteen keeps everybody fed. It feels a little like the dotcom days, when people slept under their desks. We stood at the windows and watched as the storm returned, even meaner the second time around. Sheets of corrugated iron spun through the air like frisbees, trees and fences prostrated themselves and we watched the roof of a building opposite lift and flip in a neat, graceful arc. That may seem like nothing if you live in Florida or Louisiana, but however this compares in size, the effect is still a stunner. Marooned It was a slow drive home as we manoeuvred our way around the debris, wondering at the new landscape. With no street lights, the only lights were burning oil cans that had been placed in front of fallen trees. Seemed ironic to think that in a country with no power, the only light comes from burning diesel. It’s a strange kind of disaster. Sure, it’s not Beirut, Baghdad or New Orleans, but I can’t help feeling that we’re all hopelessly marooned. There’s been no news for hours. In the modern digital household, nobody bothers with analogue radios or battery-powered TVs, and it takes a total power collapse to realise how cool the last generation’s technology was. Until tonight, I’ve had access to the world’s media via the internet, cable TV and digital radio. But right now, the best-informed people in Manila are the poor – because at least they have battery-powered radios. The stormed moved on hours ago, but we’re not free of it yet. When the power grid went down, it took the water supplies with it. We have a huge water tank, but it’s on the ground floor so we can’t even depend on gravity for our supplies. With no power, water, fans or TV, for entertainment tonight, half the population will be sitting in the dark, bitten by mosquitoes and grumbling at their smelly relatives. The irony is that even in this state of calamity, for millions of Filipinos, all of this is just the daily routine.
 Quote this article on your site
Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.3
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved
Last update : 29-09-2006 15:47
|
News 
