I’m serious. Almost.

What a day. I drove my man to work this morning. Well, that’s what he calls it – actually he was going to stay in a many-starred hotel-cum-marina-cum-golfcourse-on-the-beach somewhere up north. Some seminar or something, so he says….hmph. I couldn’t go because I had already committed to give a talk on birds and migration at the Kota Kinabalu Wetlands Centre (Bird Park) for the Malaysian Nature Society tonight. AsI say, hmph.

Anyway, we buy a newspaper on the way, and the first thing I read is how Tenaga (the local mostly govt owned power company) has “made money hand over fist”, record profits this year, etc. Good on them. Praise all round.

I come home, sit down and do an hour’s work on the power point presentation – and then, wham, no electricity. And I didn’t have the batteries in the laptop cos my Toshiba has such pathetic batteries that if you leave them in, they are useless in 3 months. AARGH. I go to put the battery in, but shove it in around the wrong way and it jams. (OK, yes, this is the woman who just wrote a whole blog about her husband and his washing machine illiteracy….)

Ten minutes later I manage to get the battery out and put in right way up. Only to find it was dead. AARGH again.

Ok, I do have some of the Song of the Shiver Barrens printed out for line edit. I work on that. And work on that and work on that… Sweat drips (no fan). I cook lunch and manage to burn it (no lights in a rather dark kitchen). 3 p.m., still no electricity. What happened to the plans implemented by Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali when he headed Tenaga? About always having the power back on in 2 hours by using portable generators if necessary? Ah, but then they kicked him out when he reached retirement age (56 in Malaysia- with maybe a grace year or two for special cases). Can’t have senile old men running the country. Oh, unless they are politicians, of course. All right, all right, I digress. I’m hot and mad by then, and my powerpoint presentation is still not done.

Husband rings to tell me how wonderful the hotel is. And the beach. And the pool. And the food.
My cell phone dies and I can’t recharge it (no electricity). I look around the house hunting for torches. I find six. Not one works.

Have a cold shower and wash hair. Forget that my hairdryer works on electricity…

In the end, I drive to the Bird Park (hair damply lank) and use the outlet in their resource room to power up the computer and finish preparing the presentation. On the way back there’s a traffic jam…..no traffic lights working, you see. AARGH again. I buy new torch batteries (in a very dark unventilated shop), just in case.

Walk up the stairs (no electricity for the lift), feeling my way in the pitch dark because although I now have batteries, I hadn’t brought the torch with me.

And the jellyfish? Well, it’s like this. Two nights ago, I woke up with an excruciating pain across the skin of my back, almost into my armpit. About 3″ in a line, as if a jellyfish had trailed its tentacle along… and the pain is still there if my skin is touched lightly. There’s not the slightest sign of a rash. My skin is as smooth and unmarked as the baby’s bottom in between bouts of nappy rash. So what is making it hurt?

The only thing I can think of is that it is the forerunner of a dose of shingles, which as you might know is a truly horrible, horrible, horrible thing to get. I haven’t been to the doctor yet as I have nothing to show… but frankly, I am hoping that I have a jellyfish somewhere in the bedclothes, and I just haven’t found it yet.