An Offline Week

I remember the warm summer nights when we sat on our porch in Halmstad, watching the dark sky. I loved lightning and couldn’t understand how my cousin could be afraid of something so beautiful. Last Monday, I realized why. When we watched lightning from afar, it was beautiful. We saw a flash of lightning, counted the seconds between the flash and the thunder clap, and heard the distant rumbling noise. When lightning is close, it’s different. Last week, we had the worst thunderstorm and lightning I’ve ever experienced.

When I heard the first thunder I shut off my computer at once. As I was about to disconnect all the other electrical appliances, the power went off.  I couldn’t help but getting a bit scared when I heard the next sharp, explosive sound and pictures fell from the walls.  Next time lightning strike, I counted the seconds before the thunder clap. Didn’t even reach three. Not good. Every second stands for about 300 meters. Less than 30 seconds means the storm is less than 10km away. The chance that the next strike will happen within that 10km is 80%.

When I heard two more explosive sounds, I thought about asking my neighbors if I could sit in their car — apparently the safest place during lightning. I opened the front door, but didn’t want to go out because of the hail.

Eventually the thunder stopped, the hail ceased falling, I caught the first glimpse of the sun, and the lightning became the talk of the town. The only things broken were the cord and the AC adapter to my laptop, and the Internet modem which, according to Telia customer support, had lost contact with the station.

I went to Siba (where I bought my laptop), but they didn’t have the right power supply in stock and to repair the broken adapter, or order a new one, would take at least a week. I’m not a techie in any way and needed help to install a new Internet modem. Luckily our computer-skilled friend could help us the following week. Until then, I had no laptop and no Internet. I could go to Linköping’s library and make use of their “60-minute free internet a day for everyone with library cards” deal. Or I could lend a friend’s laptop, or I could go to the Internet café.

I decided to take an offline week. This might seem easy for some but when you usually check your e-mails twice a day at least five days a week, write a couple of blog posts a week, often read online blogs and magazines, and have regular online contact with people all over the world, it’s another story. Yesterday, my laptop was finally repaired and Internet worked again. Back to online work today.