Brown out, black out, power outage; whatever you want to call it. I’m down at Blue Mango and sure enough, the generator is running. Supposedly for 2 months, the power will be out daily.
How does this happen? After a typhoon, they can get it up after 5 days but now the entire island is without electricity for 2 months, every day, during peak usage times.
Isn’t this supposed to be the crown jewel of the Philippines? The pinnacle of all tourism efforts both local and abroad? Akelco is allowed to raise and lower its rates without notice…now the power company can simply cut off power?
I seriously suspect a bullshit decision that benifits certain fuel distributors here on Boracay, Aklan, and where ever they come from. Thats a lot…a LOT of fuel thats going to be used by the resorts. I suspect that someone noticed the increase in sales duringthe typhoon.
AaaaHooo!!!!
5 Days now the power has been out on Boracay. The typhoon “Frank” (I know) came in as a mild warning on Friday…nothing special expected here and was supposed to peak around 2pm that day.
Whoops.
I have too much cleaning up to do now that the power and water are back on so I’ll post the details later. The
house smells like mildew. The winds drove palm fragments/fronds all the way thru the house. Water made it from the back balcony, left turn, down the hall, right turn (and under a few doors), into the living room, onwards to the kitchen. The hillside smells like a huge urinal. Palm trees are down. Electrical and cable lines were down, some still are. I have no idea why I have internet because I can see my coax cable drooping almost to the ground under a fallen banana tree.
I had some good partying, and some bad decisions….but still enjoyed most of it. A bunch of boats were lost including the Blue Mango boat. They pulled it as high as possible to drydock, but the water came up even higher. I have video of one that broke free out front and crashed to bits a few minutes later on White beach…give me some time, I’ll post it online.
It’s bad enough that I partied too hard, but is it really necessary to punish me with more power outages? A lack of aircon during the hot season while I’m dehydrated and in agony, this stuff is not what happy-times are made of. Brownout. I don’t much like them. Once again, I closed out Sumer Place. Gawd was I trashed.
Oddly enough, it was nice hanging out with all the ‘working’ freelancers. I think I know almost all of them by now. Even Pocahontas was chatty with me about how slow the night was. I don’t really like using the term prostitutes anymore. Perhaps ‘entertainers’ or even better, the one that Club Med used to use… GRO for Guest Relations Officer. I had more fun hanging out with them than last time I went out with a bunch of crackers.
I have to roll back the date on this one to accurately capture the date of the brown-out, again. When did that one go out? Around 09:00 am and lasted until about 13:30 afternoon. Man, it was hot as heck that day. Power outage, not even in the high demand for consumption. Boracay at its best…erm, well I guess I should say at it’s average. Philippines most famous island…can’t even keep the electricity on.
I’m beginning to sound like a broken record since every post is about the brown-outs here on Boracay. Today, we had three of them. Not one, not two, but three (3) brown-outs in a single day.
Actually, I should count it as 4 since there was another one last night after I had gotten off the computer. I was down at Blue Mango last night playing with a friends new puppy and sure enough, the power went out.Bbut being a business, they have backup battery lights and a large generator.
Earlier today, we lost power a little after noonish for about an hour. Then we lost it again shortly before sunset but I was napping so I dont know how long it was. Finally, we lost it about 20:00 tonight (8:00 pm) for only about half an hour. That one was dangerous since it started with down-volting then surges - power outage then back up a few seconds later - then down aaaand then up - and finally down for half an hour.
I’m going to keep track of every brown-out that happens here so bear with me. I don’t know why no one else on the island is reporting this stuff. It definitely has to be affecting tourism. I mean, all these smaller places on Boracay don’t have generators and when the power goes out, their guests are in the same boat as myself and at the whims of the weather. (more…)
Can you guess what happened last night? hmmm…here’s a hint - it fits into a certain theme on here. I was updating a bunch of posts that I had saved as drafts accidentially and sure enough, at 19:45 pm the power went out again. It was off for only an hour this time but it pretty much threw off my night. I started watching an old movie called Altered States on te laptop battery supply so when the brown out was over, I wasnt motivated to do anymore work online.
Another thing at that I got my electric bill yesterday and it was a whopping 6,800 pesos for one month! What the hell ?!?! I’m walking down to the meter in a few minutes to see if it really says that and to se if it looks like anyone has been getting into my line. I cant see how we could possibly use that much electricity - especially with all the black-outs! A bunch of thieves, thats whats been going on around here.
Its not enough that Boracay has a brown-out every day but now there are these weird power surges and drops. Down in the dive shop, appliances have been blowing up. In the house here we have gone through three extension cords, an external hard drive, a camera charger, two cell phone chargers, a soldering iron, a hot-glue gun, and a set of bed sheets. All destroyed from these power fluctuations. Well, the bed sheets were burned when a drop-then-surge caused an extension cord to catch fire on the corner of a bed.
There is one good thing though, well its not so much good as it is just a lack of bad weather. By bad weather, I mean ‘normal’ hot and humid weather here. I don’t know why Filipino travel sites extol the virtues of vacations here during the summer. They use terms like escape to Boracay during the sizzling hot summer days. I’m thinking..uh-huh, its more humid here than in the cities and much clearer skies (read: hotter). But recently, there has been a lack of hot weather…oh its still hot at times but we have been having daytime and nighttime storms and the coolness has been accumulating a little bit to where I don’t use the aircon for most of the night.
But anyway, back to the power surges. A surge is always bad but most modern appliances can handle it. Even computer cords. These, however, are drops in voltage then you can hear in your fans and air conditioners that it starts fluctuating up and down really fast and finally spikes upwards before settling down. Not good.
And another thing to complain about while I’m at it: this has been going on for years from what I’m told. Do they sell surge protectors here? Not a single one to be found! I went to the only electronics shop on Boracay and two of the three staff members didn’t even know what I was talking about. Very nice people, but not very electronics knowledgeable. (dont ask them for a 200 gig laptop drive with external enclosure, they don’t have a clue what youre talking about and will try selling you a desktop IDE model).
It doesn’t stop. Another brown-out. Didn’t they used to be called black-outs? Is it a power outage? Is there a reason like over consumption? No, its not that as told by the government itself a while back. The trunk cables under the channel can only carry so much power and they keep blaming it on the over development of Boracay by insisting that we are using too much power at the same time.
Really? golly, just how much power is getting used on a cool and comfortable night at 0400 in the morning? Yea, I didnt think so, but yuppers, thats when the power went out this time. Four in the morning. At least it only lasted a few hours and the weather was nice for a change.
The weather in Boracay is pretty bad right now. It will get really cool for about 10 minutes in the middle of the night, then it will rain a downpour, then get warm again. The next day it will be massively hot and humid. People who wish to travel here for now are going to really not like the outside weather. There is no wind, perfectly calm. No breeze of any kind. Humid and sticky.
Boracay is still having power outages also. Travelers dont ever get told that their hotels might have aircon but no electricity / power. I would be upset to travel here on a vacation and find there was no electricity. Even though the modern marketing electronic age is increasing tourism, its going to also make it easier for would-be tourists to find the truth. Power outage.
The water has also been really bad lately. For people that travel here on vacation, here is the trick … be sure they don’t open your water bottles for you. A lot of places advertise free bottled water for guests but its not bottled at all. They reuse plastic bottles and push down on the cap when turning so you can hear popping sounds as if it had been sealed. Truth is that most places boil the tap water and refill bottles for cooling. My point is this, the tap water from both sources has been having silt and dirt in it lately. In the small bottles, you cant see it. In a large container, it looks downright brown.
I was starting to feel bad about sleeping all day and waking only after sundown … not any more. I would be highly upset as a tourist right now.
