Back from the Black

For whatever reason - and the reason why remains unclear at this unGodly hour - we're just coming back from a 12+ hour power failure which occurred immediately after I had exhausted my laptop battery on another project and was about to recharge it.

Power failures up here in never-never land are especially fun because a) there's really no place to go to get something to eat b) it's hard to pick up any TV or radio reception without satellite assist so it's difficult to establish whether this is a freak blackout or whether the world's coming to an end and c) once the light of day fades, what the hell do you do? In my case, we went to bed hours early and read "The Da Vinci Code" by light of wind-up flashlight. Then, almost as soon as I turned out the flashlight, I noticed there seemed to be light coming from somewhere and... of course... electricity was restored. So here I am at 3 AM eating a defrosted McMuffin and sipping coffee.

Still, after more than 12 hours without any news, I was a bit nervous about what I would log into find. As usual, it's not good (2 dead sailors, and the part of N Korea where the two trains supposedly exploded the other day has been "flattened" according to the Red Cross).