Fishy Stories and Other Tales of Darkness

In my neck of the woods, we didn’t get power back until 1:30 Monday morning. That’s eight and a half hours–five and a half longer than the three-hour estimate initially given for restoration of power.

At first everyone blamed the jellyfish. Things began to get jittery when people started talking and found out it was not only metro-wide but Luzon-wide; "coup" was the first thought on everyone’s mind–which should give you an idea of how safe and secure people feel these days.

As areas around the metropolis started lighting up–some as early as 9 pm–and we were still in darkness, I called Meralco but all their lines were either busy or forever ringing. When I finally got through, the woman put me on hold even before I finished my question–and on hold I listened to guitar music until a recording came on to say all operators were busy answering calls "due to the Luzon-wide brownout" and that complete restoration of power was expected at midnight. The only problem was that it was then already past midnight!

It turns out that this time it wasn’t jellyfish but a "trip" in the system (how up to date can they get? "Trip" the movie starring this week’s cover girl Kristine Hermosa wasn’t even playing at the time!). According to Napocor, a "failed automatic transfer system", an "inadequate protection system", a "grounded igniter fan meter" and still to be determined causes brought about the massive brownout. With all that mumbo-jumbo, I’d really rather have the jellyfish.

A few months after the last great jellyfish attack (50 tons worth!) in December 1999, I found myself at the dinner table with a couple of guys from Southern Energy (now Marint) which runs the Sual power plant in Pangasinan. They said yes, it really was jellyfish–nothing more sinister than that–but when I pressed them to explain how jellyfish got the better of a multi-million dollar power plant, they copped out by saying they were finance men and not engineers.

Authorities haven’t really decided yet what it was that made us go back to star gazing after dinner that Sunday night and solving crossword puzzles by flashlight, but I went ahead and exacted my revenge on the jellyfish. When we were forced to move Sunday family dinner to the nearest Chinese restaurant with a generator, I made sure our first course included–you guessed it–pickled jellyfish.