A Bowl of Stupid

Today epitomizes one of the many ways Asia is so different to the States.

Today — or rather, this evening — the electricity in the entire towns of Legion and Seminyak — two of the biggest tourist and/or expat locales here on Bali — lost electricity for most of the afternoon and evening. Indeed, it is now about 8:30 at night, I’m at at a coffee shop working off a generator, and the electricity is still not on back in my house.

Chances are, nobody in a position of power (no pun intended) has even been alerted yet to the fact the electricity is, in fact, not working. Granted, the electricity goes out here on a fairly regular basis, but only for 15-20 minutes at a time — most likely due to overloads in the power grid. But the last time something like this happened for an extended period of time (a power pole went down on my street), it took most of 1.5 days for anyone to even START working on repairing the problem (and another 2 days for the power to eventually return — by which time, I was already gone to Bangkok).

Yes, California is also now prone to ‘revolving power outages’. But the outpouring of righteous indignation and immediate demands for assistance I’ve witness there whenever THAT happens is absolutely ridiculous — even by California standards.

In contrast, here in Bali, nobody even seems to notice. Or care all that much … besides us Westerners. To wit, while the local family from whom I rent my villa took the outage as a call to make it an early evening, I simply had to get to a coffee shop and the internet, lest I be bored to death by the presence of candles and silence.

Sure, I like to play Asian, and I may raise my voice in defiance every once in a while, but as soon as the electricity goes down, my true colours come out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to my iced late and the latest episode of The Daily Show — who knows if I’ll have my HBO back on when I get back home.