Electrician I am, not.

Imagine the kind of chaos we will face without electricity, to make it worse is not knowing when and how it can be restored.

Imagine...

... getting thru the night without fan or air conditioning

... waking up remembering that the notebook's batt is flat, so how do I charge it?

... without charging it up I can't access my mail to download that file that I  was suppose to work on

... and oh oh..without electricity the modem wouldn't work, so how I won't have access to the mail and facebook and you tube and .... everything.

..and damn it..iphone batt was flat too, so I wont be able to call out, use my phone as a modem, or even access the net via my phone.  

..and oh..now even the land line is on dect phone..so that wouldn't work too.

Yupe..life had been quite a mess!

In short, the main switch in my house had been tripping randomly for no particular reasons.  The first time it happened, we couldn't turn it back on.  Sorted help from a neighbour who came to did some tweaking here and there, it came back on, thankfully, but we couldn't find out the reason.  He said he will send someone in the morning to do a more thorough check.  It tripped again a couple of hours later and we were without electricity for the rest of the night.  Fortunately it was a cool night.

I managed to get it on again at around 9 the next morning, and who can guess what was the first thing I did?

CHARGE ALL THE IMPORTANT APPLIANCE ~ PHONE AND NOTEBOOK.

And access mail to download the file of course :D

The electrical guy came with his tools and such but everything was working fine.  So...he tried to do some testing, change some old parts which he thought might be the cause...tried to identify where the short circuit might have come from.  Which floor, which room, which appliance etc..but since everything was working well at that time, he really couldn't do much.  

He could only guess that it may come from downstairs, showed me the two fuse (or whatever its called) that controls the living room area.  He told me to do some trial and error by taking out and putting in the two fuse when the tripping happens again, hopefully by doing that we can identify the source of the tripping.

Something like an elimination process.

Cool.. 

Tripping started in the evening around 6ish.  So..I've been playing electrician.  The plan seemed to be working at first.  I took out the two fuse and it didn't trip anymore. 

Then I turned off all electrical switches on the ground floor, from the living room to the kitchen.

The I put back the fuse, and slowly turn on the electrical items one by one.

We were very close to concluding that the fridge was the culprit...it tripped again.  This time it won't work even after I pulled the so called problematic fuses.

So..the whole elimination theory..failed.

As of now,  we still do not the cause.  It tripped a few times last night, then it was fine for a while just before bedtime it tripped again, then worked for a while, then tripped again, and it went on like that for the whole night!  Grrr..

It tripped when I got up this morning, but was all good from 9 ish onwards for about 12 hours and it happend again just now when I was in shower.  It seems to be working fine now though.

Not sure if we will have a good sleep tonight.

Sigh~

As if life is not messy enough, my baby here, the Asus had been givng me problems while starting up after shut down and hibernation.  Technical support advised to update the BIOS, which I just did.  Have not shut down since, and I'm not in a mood to experience another fault tonight. so..I won't. shut. down.

Yeah..mood's been cranky, cos I finally went to see a GP about the flu. As usual, standard prescription - anti biotics, muscle relaxants, cough mixture, some tablets to clear the nasal congestion.

I can blog now cos I haven't taken any meds yet, will do it once I post this and I will be in la la land in no time..