After a long flight, checked into the room on the 40th floor and then, the power went out. With lights still out after 30 minutes, decided to take the elevator and come down. Unfortunately, that was the last one before the fire department sealed the elevators for the evening.

Ended up spending the next 5 hours or so on the streets with everyone appearing so confused.


Looks like that blackout was far from imaginable.

Back in India and many developing countries, a power outage is something taken for granted. I once found it funny when a colleague from South Africa was explaining to my North American colleagues what “load-shedding” was. And they were pretty curious as well as surprised to hear such a thing existed.

No wonder I found this reflecting in product design where most Wi-Fi smart plugs did not have a concept of retrying connection after a power outage. I found just one brand (Indian) that had taken this into consideration.