That’s the euphemism for rolling blackouts in Islamabad where the shortage of power supply has deprived our household of electricity two-three times a day lasting 30-60 minutes each since December. It is annoying to say the least, especially when they scheduled it so early in the evening. At first it was from 8:00 – 9:00 pm. So we started having dinner at seven and retired at eight, which was okay because of the baby. Then it was changed from 8:00 – 8:30 pm, so that was great, but it was shortlived, and became 7:00 – 8:00 pm. That didn’t last long either, and it soon became 6:30 – 7:30 pm. We were left with little choice but to have “dinner by candle light” or flashlight or rechargeable lamp — whatever was working — for at least two weeks. To add insult to injury, some sections only have one during the day or none at all. The only good thing I can say about these power outages are that they are often on time.

Growing up in the Philippines I am used to these rolling blackouts and intermittent brownouts, but not my husband. After reading the news reports that load shedding may continue until the hot summer months he started looking up the price of power generators, only to find out how expensive these are. But the good news is, the school can provide some kind of UPS, enough to provide electricity for lights and fans. So we decided to use our housing allowance for this.