There was a short electric shortage just this evening. I was online on my laptop, Adlina was out at a friend’s apartment in the same building, two house-mates were in their rooms, and another… I don’t know.

Turned out that not only our building got the electric shortage. Even the university’s buildings got the same problems, as well as the other buildings in the area.

So, while waiting for the electricity to get back on, I sat by the window and watched what other people was doing while there was no electricity inside the building. My laptop’s battery can’t actually be trusted, and we don’t when the electricity will be back. I kinda noticed some were just relaxing around, but most had somehow depressed look on their faces.

It makes me wonder somehow. Two hundred years ago, on this date, I don’t think there was electricity supply. Electricity had started to be an important asset to human life during the Second Industrial Revolution, and that was around 1870 to early 20th century. And even then, not everyone can use the electricity.

How was life before the existence of electricity? How people move around during the night, or even when they are inside their home, how they continue their lives? Of course, there’s fire, but I don’t think that’s enough. When there was major electricity shortage in Malaysia years ago that lasted the whole night, it was hard to move around in the house and we siblings didn’t even allow to move around much, my parents worried that we might knock ourselves into something.

I love reading, especially at night. Our days are full with other activities: classes, going out and etc, and night time was the time when all of us are in the house and do whatever things we want to do during our spare time. Mum had scolded me when I was a small child for reading under the blanket without sufficient light and way past our bedtime. She always said something about it was bad for our eyes.

So how do people do it in the past? Surely they didn’t do their things at daytime only. Whatever they were doing can also extend to night time. Especially during the times when there were so much discoveries to be found, so how did they do it?

As much as I love to imagine living in their time, I can’t think myself being there in reality. I will probably have some problems adjusting. ^__^;;

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.