Blinking in the dark

It's way too late at night and I should be asleep, but I can't seem to manage it. I felt so crappy after going back to school on Friday that I spent most of the weekend napping on the couch. Guess I napped a little too long. After several attempts at drifting off, I took my pillow and blanket and crept into the darkened living room, thinking I could hook my laptop up to the DSL and doze on the couch, listening to a little NPR on-line to distract my wakeful brain.

Have you ever looked into your darkened living room at night? How many little colored lights did you see, blinking like salutations from your many household appliances? Roomie and I can look forward to night-time greetings from:

1. A red, round light high up on the far wall, indicating that the air conditioner is off
2. A diffuse orange glow next to the sofa from the plug-in bug repellant
3. The "north star" of our Spare-Room Doorway Constellation: the red dot at the top of the emergency light
4. Two large orange rectangles from the fuse box
5. And finishing up the Spare-Room-Doorway Constellation: anywhere from one to three narrow lights (red, yellow, and green) midway down the wall, for the water cooler.
6. The router for the DSL blinks its five tiny green lights a few inches above the coffee table
7. Below the coffee table are two orange rectangular lights indicating that power is flowing to the extension cord we use to connect the router to the wall plug
8. Our television has a little red light next to the power button that apparently stays on whether the set is on or not
9. The radio has both a red power light and a brand-identifying blue LCD display that keeps going like a marquee, day and night.

This is the age we live in . . .

All these lights, of course, indicate that the electricity is working which is, I admit, nice to see. Urban Pakistan is plagued with regular power outages as the electricity demands of its several massive cities routinely out-strip supply. This is especially true in the summer, when the heat is enough to make you desperate. In Lahore, a city of 10 million (!), the power-outs are usually short--5 to 30 minutes, and often coordinated in two or three daily episodes of what locals call "load shedding" and folks from home call "rolling black-outs." I'm told that in one city (15 million souls!) the electricity can go down for hours at a time. This past summer there were some instances of 16- or 20-hour blackouts!

From what I've read, there is a fair amount of siphoning off of electricty from the grid, which surely contributes to the problem. My friends tell me that the cities are just so damn big that services are strained. I've also seen an awful lot of development and construction around town, and I suspect that private business and the army are simply building too fast for public utilities to be expanded, repaired or maintained in time. (As for asking these entities to share in the cost of providing power, water, etc. I haven't asked around about that. However, making stuff happen in Pakistan is largely about whom you know, and whom you pay, so I doubt any wealthy businessperson--let alone the army--is going to be nagged about such things.)

OK, goodnight. No, really.