Thursday, April 3, 2008

April Fooled

It wasn’t intentional but it might as well have been since it happened on April Fools’ Day. At about 11:15 am the power went off in our apartment. I had steaks baking in the oven and was about to put some rice in the rice cooker. Raine was happily watching The Backyardigans on TV. I was bummed of course, we just had a power outage the previous Friday and I was surprised we were having another one so soon. Sidenote: About once or twice a month, there’s a 5-6 hour brownout here on the islands. They say it’s part of some maintenance or electrical work they are doing, I’m not really sure.

I called up hubby to tell him to bring some lunch since I wasn’t able to cook. I was hoping that the electricity would go back on by 4 pm. Raine took her usual afternoon nap but awoke after just an hour probably from the heat. I had been fanning her with one hand while I read a book with the other. Raine and I went to the veranda to cool ourselves. Thankfully, there was a nice breeze and I put Raine in her stroller and gave her a bottle of milk to drink as we enjoyed the view.

At past 5 pm I decided to call hubby and ask him if he knew what time the power would be restored. It turns out that our apartment was the only place where there was no power. I called a friend who lived in the apartment across the street and she said they had electricity all day. Suddenly, I noticed that our neighbor’s air conditioning was turned on. I went outside and the stairs’ light was also on. Across the street our neighbors’ homes had their lights on! Ours was the only one in darkness.

I called up the Marshall Electric Company (MEC) and after getting transferred to three people I was able to get someone to come to the apartment and see what was wrong. The person I talked to promised to send a lineman in 20 minutes. Hubby arrived and checked the main switches to see if the electricity had tripped or something. He went outside to check on our meter with a neighbor. When they went to the meter room they saw that the door was forcibly opened and our meter had been removed! We were puzzled, did someone steal the meter? If someone from the MEC had gotten it why would they have to break open the lock on the door? We called up the accounting department of hubby’s office to check if the bills for the apartment had been paid by the company and found out that the bills were paid on time so there was no reason for MEC to remove the meter.

It was past 8 pm and we were already pissed, the 20 minutes had stretched to two hours of waiting. The lineman that was promised was nowhere in sight. We called MEC again to make sure someone was on their way to the apartment. Hubby went outside to wait for the lineman. At about 9 pm the electricity went back on. At last!

Hubby came back to the apartment and said he had seen the lineman reinstall our meter. The lineman asked him, “Are you Paul Wright?”. What the *#&@! It turns out that it was our neighbor, Number 3 who’s electricity should have been cut and not us, Number 2! Argh!

Goodness, what a day! We were April Fooled indeed.

2 comments:

wifeynibangis said...

hi rhea :) i added your blog already. can you also add my other blog? it's http://changinglanespitstop.blogspot.com/

nice meeting you :)

all4seasons said...

hi rhea, added ur blog already..thanks for the visit..see u around :)