Generally speaking the power in Chennai is fairly reliable. Certainly nothing like the US, it goes off almost every day during the “summer”, but it is almost always at the same time every day, for my part of the city that is from 4pm till 5pm. Today however for whatever reason it went out around 10am. Usually even an hour without power just means I’m giving my laptop battery a workout and doesn’t really disturb my work. Today however the power reminded me just how dependent I am on computers. Even the books I want to read are mostly e-books on my computer. When the power still hadn’t come back at 11:3, I gave up waiting and went to run some errands. Returning at 1pm, the power still wasn’t back. Again I waited trying to find work that didn’t involve my computer, but eventually I gave up and took my laptop down the block to the coffee house. I’ll probably spend most of the afternoon here, since it is entirely possible that the power won’t be back on at my house until late afternoon.