Watch the skies

The whole town was without internet access yesterday and half of today, but everything now seems to be back to normal, touch wood (not that there's much of that up here).

As a footnote to my previous post, Tuesday's power outage did have at least one positive result, in that we were all afforded an even more beautiful view of the night sky than normal. The night time vistas in these parts (or should that now be night time Windows 7s?) are pretty spectacular at the best of times due to the minimal street and house lighting here, but on Tuesday the view was even more crisp and the aurora was in full, stunning effect.

In fact, the view was so clear that at one stage you could quite clearly make out the distinct fiery trail of a Toyota as it streaked across the night sky, inexorably picking up speed as it accelerated its way toward escape velocity.

Damn clever, those Japanese.

Powering down

We had a power cut yesterday - only the second since I've been in Kangiqsujuaq, which isn't bad going as we had them all the time in Inukjuak - but unlike the one we had back in October this one was at night and lasted a fair bit longer. The power went down right at the end of House and I also missed the whole of 24, which was most annoying. I've been recording 24 with the intention of viewing all the episodes en bloc at some future time, but I guess that plan's now scuppered.

It was during this period of total darkness that I realised I don't have a torch - I still find it hard to call torches 'flashlights' - or any candles up here, but thankfully I downloaded the flashlight app for my iPod a little while ago (hey, I said 'flashlight') so I was able to patrol the house whilst listening to music that was guaranteed to be correctly filed and sorted. About an hour later the power came back on, but within ten minutes it went off again, only to come back on after a couple of minutes, after which time it failed again....

After about an hour of this the power finally stopped coming back on, but by this time I had already got fed up and gone to bed. I found it hard to sleep though as I was very aware that my alarm clock probably wouldn't go off in the morning, and this was a situation that I found unduly stressful for some reason (oh for the days of huge wind-up alarm clocks, now only seen in old cartoons or dangling from Flavor Flav's neck). A few hours of spasmodic sleep followed, and it was 3am when I finally became aware that the power was back on; the clock was duly reset, and I am happy to report that I managed to make it to work on time this morning.

Considering the fact that I spent the previous post relaying my tales of boredom, I suppose one could say that at least this week has started with a bit of excitement, but when the only excitement here is an event that stops you watching TV and makes you go to bed early....

M'lud, I rest my case.

Food for thought

My internet connection has been more down than up over the last few days, and yesterday morning we had a power cut, not an uncommon feature in these parts. Normally the power comes back after a few minutes, but this time it was out for over an hour, which is really hardly any time at all, but it was enough time to make me frustrated.

There was no TV, no internet, no phone and no running water (everything is interdependent here).

I of course went outside to make sure that it was not just my house that was affected, and when I found out that it was indeed a village-wide blackout I was able to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in the fact that everyone was in the same boat. The power eventually came back, but I think the whole episode has made me realise that perhaps I have not become as detached from my material needs as I believed I had.

Food for thought indeed (but not the type of food that needs an oven to cook it in case the power goes down again).

Maybe a cheese sandwich for thought...