black hole

They always happen at the most inappropriate times. It’s like someone with a bad sense of humour has timed them so perfectly - I am talking about the blackouts in Dili. Because whenever I am deeply absorbed in a movie on HBO and the film reaches a climax, there would be a power outage.

Zap!

My whole compound falls into darkness and the last scene on the tv screen gets swallowed up into a dark hole. I don’t move because I cannot see nought. I just wait for the guy in charge to kickstart the generator for backup power. I hear the engine’s roar as it wakes up from its slumber, and then seconds later power returns to the room. By now, I know that what will greet me on Channel 7 is a blank screen and not the film I had been watching. I sigh and wish that the landlord had been watching the same channel because then he would switch it back to HBO. But alas, most times, that screen stays blank for the rest of the night.

I am left feeling cheated not knowing how the movie ends. Blackouts can be so frustrating and they happen almost everyday here. This is why malaes (foreigners) like me pay a fortune to stay in places that have their own generators so that we can have backup power almost immediately. For the locals, they just light their candles.

Outside Dili, most places are in a permanent state of blackouts. They have no electricity in the day, let alone at night. Some locals have wryly commented that this is why they have such high birth rates (more than 7 babies per women!) since there are no other forms of nocturnal activities except for you know what.

So in the districts, there are no fans whirring overhead to cool you down in the day, no ice cold beer or coca cola to relieve the heat, and no power to start a computer. In some places, the power does come on in the evenings from 6pm and lasts till midnight.

This lack of electricity is hard to imagine for city rats like us who depend so heavily on power in our homes and in our industries that are now running round-the-clock shifts or brokerage firms working to other time zones. The last time we had a major power outage, hundreds of thousand dollars were lost as businesses were disrupted and ornamental fish asphyxiated from the lack of pumped oxygen.

In Dili, there are no street lights so when I walk home from work at about 7pm, I depend on the headlights of vehicles that zoom past me. I have to look carefully to avoid falling into potholes and sometimes I wonder if the cars can see me as they whiz by.

My city eyes fail me here. I am uneasy with the darkness. City rats like bright lights and neon signs. We feel safer when night is like day. Maybe we don’t eat enough carrots back home but Timorese seem to be able to navigate easily even while walking in pitch darkness. I remember the Tibetans doing the same too – slicing, grinding and cooking their meals in such dimness. When I ate dinner in remote villages in China, they used to light a bark just for me while they carried on in darkness.

I can’t help thinking if man never discovered fire and subsequently electricity and lamps, where would we be now? I remember how I went to bed at 730pm, once in China because there was no electricity and hence nothing to do. I wonder how the economy and standard of living of Timorese would be like once they have power at night? I naively thought that power at night would mean more children reading and doing homework but my Timorese colleague just said, “Nah, everyone will just watch TV.” I think Singaporean kids would head for their Playstations first.