Yesterday night at around 3am, I woke up brutally by a flashing, blinking light. I first couldn’t figure out what it was, but then I understood: for some reason the neon light-tube just above my window was flickering.
Still half asleep I dragged myself towards the window to switch off the light. I thought I surely didn’t push the switch fully before going to sleep.

When I touched the button an electric shock struck me. Still half asleep, but now heavily cursing, I pushed it again…and after the second shock I was sufficiently awake to examine to problem a little bit closer:
The switch was soaking in water because there was heavy rain outside, and my windows don’t close fully. I found it a rather funny idea to put an electric switch just under the windows, but that can’t be changed anymore.
And I also thought of the electrician now being fast asleep in a warm bed. He would never share with me the illuminating feeling of being awakened out of REM-phase by two electrical shocks.

Well. With closed and sleepy eyes I considered my options: I couldn’t go back to sleep with the flickering light and it might even be a little bit dangerous to leave it like this. So I dragged myself over to the fuse box to check which of the five switches would remove the potential danger.
Naturally it was the last switch I tried. But not only did it switch off the light, it also shut down about everything else I had in the apartment including the fridge.
Hmhm. I wonder what the other switches could possibly be used for…but since this wouldn’t solve the real problem, I dropped the thought quickly.
So what was my remaining option, then?

I pulled out my Swiss knife and started disassembling the switch. As soon I disconnected the cable from the switch, I cursed again the electrician in his warm bed and went back to sleep. What a night!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Short News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.