BLACKOUT!

Major power outage in Sydney CBD. Now that was fun! At about 4:45pm this afternoon, everything went ZAP! And all the computers shut off. We all looked around. There was a few minutes of joking while the office manager ran to find out what we should do. I sent an SMS to the Snook saying that our power was out. His reply: “Ours too!” Okay, THAT changes things! (His new office is at the Rocks.) Somebody noticed that the traffic lights were all out on William Street. We stood at the windows and looked down at the growing rush hour traffic chaos. Somebody joked, “You should be twittering this.” HELL YEAH, I should! I grabbed my iPhone but the 3G network kept crapping out before my tweet went through. I called my friend Kunaal whose office is at Wynyard, but oddly they had power! (But no Internet, so he had no idea what was happening.) Eventually most of us decided to leave, so I shuffled down ten flights of fire stairs with everybody else. Then I hiked up to the park and towards the city. While waiting for a bus on Castlereagh, I managed to get through to Twitter and did a search on blackout. That’s when I discovered that everyone was attributing it to zombie attack. Oh man, that was fun. I tweeted* all the way home. Snookums managed to train it to Central and met me at the house. Thankfully, Chippendale seems to have power (and Internet). And now here we are, enjoying a beer and feeling sorry for all those still trying to head north over the bridge!

* I really think this may have been a turning point in my relationship with Twitter. The explosion of the zombie blackout meme was fun and addictive. I told the Snook it was like this amazing spontaneous virtual chat room with folks from all over the city. Plus I picked up seven new followers thanks to my tweets!

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  1. But you left out the important bit – how was the Snook’s first day?

  2. Our office was lucky, we are in an Energy Australia building. Not even a blip yesterday. We were like an island of working electricity in the middle of the CBD.

  3. Ha. It was very good. He told me via SMS: “Office seems extremely nerdy. Foosball, arcade machine, giant cardboard battle axe. The usual.” So I think he’ll settle in well. 🙂

    I was impressed that they sent him an SMS that morning at 7:30 welcoming him aboard. I was even more impressed when they sent him home with a giant fruit basket! They seem pretty friendly.

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