If any of you have lived overseas, you know that something we take for granted \u2014 dependable and fairly stable electricity \u2014 isn\u2019t the norm in a lot of places. A number of places we\u2019ve been it was necessary to plan events around when you guessed the power would be on \u2014 at least \u201cfull on.\u201d Brownouts were commonplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first experiences with dealing with these issues came shortly after we arrived at a new post. The first night in out new quarters, we were both tired from days of travel and \u201cmoving in\u201d to the new place. We figured we\u2019d just go to bed and get a fresh start the next morning. We went into the upstairs bedroom, but the lights wouldn\u2019t come on \u2014 neither would the ceiling fan. I figured the fuse had blown and after searching \u2014 and finding \u2014 the \u201cfuse box.\u201d I couldn\u2019t find anything wrong, so we just went to bed \u2014 leaving my expert troubleshooting for morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
About midnight, all the lights came on VERY bright and the ceiling fan was turning so fast it almost shook the room \u2014 sounded like a helicopter. There was also a very loud buzzing noise. I ran around turning off some of the lights and the ceiling fan. I had no idea what happened, but we certainly had (lots of) electricity upstairs<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day, I had time to explore and discovered a few things about our house \u2014 and \u2014 the neighborhood. It turns out that the house was located only about half a block from a strip of, for lack of a better name, \u201cbars.\u201d Exploring the house, I found on top of the refrigerator (why there, of all locations, I don\u2019t know) a step-down\/step-up transformer. The transformer had a power surge alarm\u2026. yep, a buzzer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here\u2019s the results of my troubleshooting and analysis of the problem: All the bars down the street turned on their air conditioners about 4:00 pm, just in time for happy hour I suppose. All those air conditioners used up just about all available electricity. There was a curfew when we were there that went into effect at midnight. So \u2014 the bars closed down at midnight and shut off their air conditioners. When that happened, all the electricity surged back in to the rest of the neighborhood.\u00a0
It turned out that wasn\u2019t too bad \u2014 at least it was predictable \u2014 some places we lived you never knew when, or if, you\u2019d have electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We learned to step-up the transformer before 4:00 and turn on any lights or fans we thought we might need, and we also learned to step-down the transformer before we went to bed. That prevented the ceiling fan from trying to take off and the alarm buzzer from waking up the whole neighborhood.\u00a0
So, do I miss times like those? Actually, sometimes I do\u2026..
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If any of you have lived overseas, you know that something we take for granted \u2014 dependable and fairly stable electricity \u2014 isn\u2019t the norm in a lot of places. A number of places we\u2019ve been it was necessary to … Continue reading