a terrible day!

Almost everyone of us had bad days in office, and I’m no exception at all.
Though I have had so many bad days in office before, but this recent one was really weird and twitchy.
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

I’m working as managing director for an IT company established by myself, called daedal technovations pvt. ltd. the company works to develop a wide range of IT solutions ranging from software applications, web solutions, internet marketing, search engine optimization, IT consultancy, training and education etc.
Obviously, the office consists of several computer systems, without which you can’t imagine an IT company at all.
All the computers and other devices deployed at the office use electricity and we are not using any backup devices except UPSs attached with almost each of the computers.


It was Monday, around 8:30 in the morning, I reached in the office after a relaxing weekend.
All set to work, i’ve started the computers, the servers, printers, as well as other necessary devices in order to start working.
I’ve started looking the day’s to-do list, opened email account, entered user name and password, and just when i’ve hit enter on sign in, the power went off all of a sudden.
Oh no! it was dark all around, UPS beeping and also, sound of heavy rain drops poring outside
I kept checking the emails expecting that the power will get back in a few minutes.
I kept on checking, responding, and writing new emails to staff, clients and others as my daily routine.
The beeps of the UPS got faster and faster, and finally it has given the last beep so I had to turn the computer off before it could do by itself.
I still wasn’t that worried, and have been thinking that this power cut is momentarily
Minutes turned into hour and I’ve started getting calls from clients asking me to send their works. I just assured them to send shortly and continued waiting for power to come.
There wasn’t anyone other then me and a peon at office, because it has been raining so high outside and people couldn’t come.
I thought to listen some music for time pass, so turned my laptop on. Heard few songs, and goodness, it has beeped for low battery.
My next option to kill the time was mobilephone, where I had copied some good new songs just on Sunday.
Played few of them, and my luck, it has also shown “low battery” status.
Actually, I just forgot to charge my laptop and mobile phone due to relaxing ambiance of weekend. 

Oh no!
It was 11:00 on the clock, and I was left with no further option to amuse myself.
The rain was continuing with the same high pace, so noone could come to the office still, neither I could go out anywhere

Monday, uncertain powercut, clients shouting for their work, dark in the room, heavy rain outside, all alone in office, unable to talk with anyone, mobilephone and laptops discharged, bored, scared, bemused and helpless, still waiting for the power to get back, it was really so awful.

Trust me, I just kept on waiting forlorn for something better to happen, but neither the rain got stop so that I could run off from this place, nor the electricity restored so that I could work.
Trust me, i’ve waited till around 4:30 in the evening when the rain got lower and i finally got a chance to come out and get back home.

Gosh, what a terrible experience it was.

The incidence made me to think that Electricity has become such an integral part of our daily lives, yet it is easy to take it for granted. Practically everything we do revolves around electricity
in one way or another. What would happen if we woke up tomorrow and there was no electricity available? Would our lives change that much? Let’s consider
the various activities that would be affected if electricity disappeared one morning.

If you set your alarm clock the night before to wake you up in the morning, chances are you probably slept in. Unless you happen to have an alarm clock
that is powered by batteries, you will be likely to awake late to a powerless alarm clock. Even if your alarm clock has a battery backup, how many of
us really check to make sure the batteries aren’t dead on a regular basis?

After you light a candle so you don’t have to stumble around your house, you may find yourself heading straight to the kettle to make a cup of tea. You
can imagine your frustration when you go to boil the kettle only to be denied by a lack of power.

Now it is time to shower and get ready for work. If you have an electric shower you will immediately encounter a problem because it won’t work. If you
use an electric shaver likewise, hopefully you have a disposable razor stashed somewhere to use as a backup. There are other morning related accessories
that require electricity including your hair dryer.

Tired, Overslept, no coffee, no shower - bad day at work
Getting to work is going to be a nightmare. If it is wintertime it will be dark and there will be no streetlights. Think about the number of traffic lights
that you pass through during your commute. Every one of these lights is likely to be shutdown. Even if they have a backup power source, chances are that
they are reliant on electricity in one form of the other. They probably won’t be working properly anyway as most these days are controlled by a computer
system, which will be likely to have shut down.

After sitting through hours of traffic you may finally make it to work. Depending on what you do for a living, there might not be much work for you to
take care of. Fax machines, computers, and many other pieces of office machinery will be out of service unless your company has a backup generator. That
will leave you sitting in a dark office chatting with the rest of your fellow co-workers who were able to make it in.

As you climb into your car to head home, the low petrol light pops on when you turn on the engine. The traffic that you endured going into work has depleted
your fuel supply. While it might seem easy enough to stop at the petrol station, remember that the fuel pumps are powered by electricity and the computer
tills will all have stopped working.
No petrol = Mad Max!

By the time you do get home, the thought of a nice cold bottle of beeror softdrink from the fridge will seem pretty good. Too bad that bottle of beer is no longer
cold. Whatever food you have in your refrigerator and freezer is likely to go bad quickly with no electricity to keep it cold. Hopefully you don’t have
a microwave or an electric range to cook with. Neither appliance will do you much good in this situation. A quick look through your camping gear may
reveal an old cooking stove that you can easily prepare meals on.

Clearly life as we know it would change completely without electricity. It is easy to think of all the little things we would have to do without if electricity
ceased to exist. Along with all of the luxuries like TV, there are many bigger and more vital things that would be affected by the lack of electricity.

Think about your drinking water. Chances are it is run through some type of purification plant before it ever reaches you. If there is no electricity to power the different systems that a purification plant relies on, there will be no clean water to drink. The same can be said for our waste disposal
plants. Think about what would happen if all of our waste began to build up; cities would start to stink.
All the water will be horrible as well….

Hospitals would barely function without electricity. There are numerous different machines that doctors rely on to help diagnose different ailments. There
are also machines that are used to monitor certain vital signs during procedures. Without electricity, illnesses could go undetected and patients could
fall into cardiac arrest without anyone noticing.

The food industry has greatly benefited from the use of electricity. Think of the sophisticated packaging plants that exist and the different types of machinery
that each one relies on. How would we get food from the farm into each of our houses without electricity?

While so many aspects of our lives would be altered without electricity, it is not the end of the world, but the consequences would be pretty disastrous.
Economies would collapse and there would be major public unrest. There would certainly be growing pains as we discovered new ways to accomplish different
tasks. It is important to realise that we existed for thousands of years before electricity became a major influence in our lives. We would eventually
figure out how to exist without it once again.

Just looking back at a few of the daily activities, there are already alternatives for some of the obstacles we might encounter. Open fires can be used
to cook our food and candles can be used to provide light where it is needed.

It is easy to see all of the bad things that would happen if we were to lose our electricity. What might not be so obvious are the good things that might
happen. If we are forced to walk more instead of driving our cars everywhere, our health would improve. Without things like cars and factories emitting
greenhouse gasses, our planet would be much healthier.

Having said that it wouldn’t be much fun and life as we are used to living it would be gone.

Oof, I’m tarified just by thinking about it, but then, we better have to be ready for any.
Calamity. The incidence has given me this lesson that how important it is to have backup batteries, power generators and other backup devices.
Also, I now have brought a non electrical guitar, drum and some other instruments in office so that I can do something productive when something similar happens again. Oh, but I still hope that my luck won’t be that dam adverse to let me see this all again!