I’m in bed listening to the rain and thunder outside, with no sense of urgency to ever get out of bed on a Sunday. Isn’t that the best feeling in the world? It does brings me back to a time in Seoul when I had nothing to do or rather when I couldn’t do anything but sit around in my room and wait. In total darkness. With no electricity running.

Well, ok. We had light coming in from the huge screen display on the shopping mall across the street but the electricity got cut off when I was in the shower. Not exactly the best time to be having a blackout. It was blindingly dark when you are in a tiny room and worse still when you are in a closed shower stall.

It was so dark that I couldn’t even see my hands! Trying not to freak out, the best that I could do was slap my hands randomly where I thought the door handle was. Unfortunately, the door opens inwards so you can probably guess that I was pretty much trapped in there unless I find that handle.

I was literally running my palms all over the door just to find that one small knob on the door when the lights flickered back on. I was so happy, I just shot out of the door as fast as I could without even dressing first. My only thought was to get out from the suffocating darkness.

And then the lights went out again.

So we waited. Went out to the corridor to find the whole corridor just as dark so we figured that it was the building and none of our fault.

Called the room owner to update him and found out that there was a fire at the power supply building which knocked out the electricity to our area. He offered to come up to our room because he felt bad for us being stranded in our apartment. We told him it’s crazy to even attempt it because we were on the 12th floor.

So we ended up waiting. With nothing to do but to stay in bed. There was no Wi-Fi, no television, no lights. We hoped the room would, at least, remain heated even with the electricity off or we would soon be freezing cold. With nothing much to do, my cousin ended up going to bed early.

I ended up sitting right next to the door while waiting – listening to the conversations in the corridor and trying to make sense of them with my limited Korean. At one point of time, there was such a commotion, I thought that someone was trying to pick a fight!! And I was right there trying to eavesdrop on everyone.

So what if there was no television for me?

Being trapped in the toilet, waiting in the dark and amusing myself by eavesdropping on people.

I’ve never been as entertained as this in a long while, even better than in a drama if I can say so myself. 😉

Waiting in the dark