John | 15 June 2006

This afternoon, Eric and I first went shopping for office plants, then did a Thai language study session in the nearby ice cream shop. Doesn’t sound like we were working very hard, does it? Here’s our excuse:

It started out just before lunch, when the power went out. No big deal, we just took an early lunch. As we left, we saw some young guys working around the electrical meters. When we came back, the electricity was still out, but now Eric’s cell phone charger had blown up. Really. Half of it was 5 feet away from the other half. Eventually, some electricians came in and flipped our breakers back on. This time, the fluorescent lights give out a squeal. They just turned off the lights and left again. A few minutes later, our air conditioner control unit expired with a very loud Pop! Fortunately, that was the only thing still plugged in, as we had at least learned some lessons from the poor cell phone charger.

Later, a much more experienced-looking electrician showed up… We knew this guy had it together because he had an actual volt meter. He told us that our sockets were putting out 400 V, and he promised Eric a new cell phone charger. some more electricians came and went with ladders, so we decide to bail again and took Joy, our language helper, to the ice cream parlor.

Some days, you just don’t get much code done. Ah well… the plants look good and the ice cream was great. I even learned to a million.