Terrifying dependence

I was in the middle of a tutorial when the whole of Wellington experienced a massive black out. Needless to say the tutorial was totally disrupted - with our tutor losing his access to online tutorial material and hence his flow. We patched things up, of course, but all in all, it was less than perfect. Then we could not get out of certain doors because they were automatically locked down. And the ATM was out. I wanted an ice-cream, but obviously EFTPOS was out of the question. My friends said - imagine if you were typing your assignment, and it all went kaput. And it was due in 20 minutes.

I told my friends - this is very exciting. Of course they disagreed. Perhaps rightly so.

As I was nearing my house, a thought hit me - I can't cook. My cook top is electrically powered. The microwave will not function. No boiling hot water either. And worse of all, food may start to rot in the freezer.

Now this is not exciting. I've cooked for tonight, thank God, but what if the power didn't come back up even tomorrow? Or the day after?

More than that, actually, I was terrified because power cuts never happened in Wellington before. I mean, not to me. So, it was not just the question of what you can't do without power. This went deeper - this was about my sense of security. I mean, for example, we take for granted that power cuts never happened here so we remove our notebook batteries to preserve their lifespan. But what if you were writing your assignment just now? Wouldn't you have cursed yourself for having removed that darned piece?