In which she practices her spongebath skills

[zeborah]

So upon rising this morning I turned on the lightswitch to no avail. At first I thought the bulb had blown, but when I turned on another lightswitch with similar results I began to get an inkling of my predicament. Sure enough my shower didn't turn on either. My shower is a wonderful device that heats the water as it flows through the system, which is gloriously timely on the 364.4 days of the average year when I have electricity. But when there's no electricity it stubbornly refuses to emit any water either.

Fortunately I live in Christchurch, specifically east Christchurch, and I therefore:

1. possess at least four torches (in addition to the requisite candles; I also have a supply of glowsticks in my emergency kit and various solar-powered devices in the garden)
2. have plenty of experience with the routine of the spongebath, though post-earthquake this was mostly from after the electricity came back on but before the water was safe to look at, so used to involve boiling a kettle. It turns out to be much quicker to just fill a large saucepan from the hot water tap and have at it.

By the light of my dynamo torch I prepared for work as usual, except that without electricity I had no internet(1). So I went straight into work, though due to the vaguaries of the bus connections I didn't actually arrive much sooner than I would have otherwise. Called my power company from there, and they seem to have done the job since by the time I got home the lightswitches worked again.

(1) This is actually a flaw in my emergency-preparedness that I feel I should rectify, though I don't think any sparkmunication(2) companies sell open-ended "you don't get charged for this wifi until the apocalypse you start using it in" packages; they tend to prefer monthly deals I need even less than I want to pay for them.

(2) Telecom recently changed their name to Spark. An employee got the task of running find/replace over their entire website. Hilarity ensued.

Comments

[china_shop]

Re (1): You can get pre-pay wifi routers and pre-pay modem thingies you plug into your computer, jsyk.

[zeborah]

It's just figuring out if it *stays* prepaid or if that expires.

They say things like "The 1 month period starts once you activate your Vodem's SIM", which is fine. It probably requires making a phone call, and *immediately* post-disaster I'd want to keep phonelines free for emergency services, but I can wait a few hours if needed even if that's not really the ideal, because immediately post-disaster the radio has nothing on Twitter.

But without checking the fine print, I wouldn't trust that I could throw the thing in my emergency bag and trust that in a year or five it would still be honoured by the company. Heck, my prepaid credit on my cellphone expires once a year even though I'm actively using it.

(Not *very* actively, obviously, or I'd manage to get through more than $20 worth of texts a year. But still I'm a little bitter about them confiscating my leftover money, and have to make myself consider it a $20/year subscription rather than having paid for $20 worth of texts.)

[china_shop]

*nods* I don't know for sure but I suspect it's the same as a prepay phone, and I have no idea if you could activate it via a phonecall. So I guess it depends whether emergency wifi is worth a $20 annual subscription.