Well as our days living on Pos 7 are coming to a close, we got to experience one more (we hope our last) extended power outage. Last Saturday as it commonly happens during my Skype call with family the power goes out. Okay not to worry this happens often, it's just one of those annoying things that seem to happen regularly, during my Skype calls. Later in the day the power does return but it is already after my window of opportunity for finishing my visit with family. Oh well, there is next weekend. Well the day was a bit breezy and so the power was off and on a couple more times that afternoon, but still no big deal. Then a little after 10:00 p.m. the power goes out again. Still not a big deal other than it gets a little warm without the AC's. Usually the power comes back on in a couple of hours but this time we wake up Sunday morning still without power. We just thought maybe a tree fell on the line last night and they'll clear it today, however it is Sunday so who knows. It turns out that a new building that was under construction was built too close to the power lines. It's a miracle no one was killed working that close to the high voltage lines. Anyway the wind was swinging the power lines enough that they were contacting the building and shorting out the whole town of Sentani. Later on Sunday it comes to light that there is a power struggle between the power company and the building owner on who is going to budge. Either the building corner needs to be trimmed back or the power lines moved. And then there is the question of who is going to pay for it. This all is happening of course Sunday when offices are closed and decisions can't really be made. Which means the the power stays off. I'll be honest it was hard to keep a good attitude when driving by the problem area Sunday night and the area with the offending building still had power and everyone else down line was cut off. It seemed a bit hopeless as the only motivation for the building owner to do anything was pressure from his neighboring community as he still had power.
Thankfully we have a great team of friends here that helped clear some space in their fridges and freezers so we could keep our food from going bad. Eating by candle light is a nice change every once and while.
Monday roles around and I head off to fly my schedule like any other day thinking that this situation at home without power could go on for days and maybe we should move to the base earlier than planned. However it's amazing even here where things seem to take 2, 3 times or even longer then they should to get resolved, the was power back on at the house by the time I returned from my last flight of the day. Turns out that the builder did in fact have a proper building permit, and so the power company decided to pursue the Government to pay the bill to move the power lines being that they issued the permit to build in that location. As you can imagine there was a great cry of joy when the power came back on.
In other news our house is upside down in the middle of our move back to base in a little over a week from now. Julie and the kids made some good progress yesterday while I was out enjoy the skies of Papua. Today I'm at home helping were I can as well Julie and I will start to plan out our home assignment that is coming this summer. We will be back in Alberta sometime late July and will be returning to Indonesia end of October. As we work out details of where we will be and dates we'll be sure to communicate that as best we can. We would like to see as many people as we can so don't be shy please contact us if we don't contact you first.
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