Loadshedding - An Integral Part of My Daily Life

Before I moved to Pakistan, I'd never heard the word 'loadshedding' before. I actually remember the moment when I learned the word. I was starting a new adult ESL class and we were statements with the verb "like" in negative and positive. One student, Kamran, made the sentence, "I don't like loadshedding," and I had to clarify what it was. At that time, in 2006, the power cuts were only a few hours a day. Several people who have been following this blog are planning to move to Pakistan, so here's a little snapshot of the daily loadshedding as of January 2009.

The power cuts are generally on the hour and go out for 60 minutes. Each neighborhood has a different schedule that changes after a few weeks. The schedule always seem to get out of whack when it rains for some reason. For the last week, the loadshedding schedule in Phase IV Defence has been as follows during the day:

6am - 7am Electricity
7am - 8am Electricity
8am - 9am Loadshedding
9am - 10am Electricity
10am - 11am Loadshedding
11am - 12pm Electricity
12pm - 1pm Loadshedding
1pm - 2pm Electricity
2pm - 3pm Loadshedding
3pm - 4pm Electricity
4pm - 5pm Loadshedding
5pm - 6pm Electricity
6pm - 7pm Loadshedding

Then a real treat, from 7pm to 1am (5 whole hours) there is electricity! Between 1am and 6am I'm not sure what the schedule is as I'm usually sleeping. I go to sleep around 9 or 10, so having such a long stretch of electricity so late at night doesn't do much good for me on weekdays. In a few weeks the schedule will change and we'll adjust our schedules all over again!