Abu Dhabi: Baby when the lights go out...
Written by Stephen Baines   
Saturday, 28 August 2004
Today was the start of the second week of training. I was hoping that now the back had been broken, it would be a little easier this week. Little was I ready for today.

The day started easily enough, Manar picked me up, I got to the hotel, we went upstairs and set everything up. The first hour went fine. In fact, the first hour went plenty fine. I said that due to the way this course was nearly all theory and they had worked with Continuum before we'd probably make good time. Stupid mistake.

9:30am - bang! The lights went out, the PCs powered down, and so did the AC. Now, a lack of PCs and projector I could cope with - that's what flip boards are for - but THE AC WENT DOWN! Aaaargh! We'd been working for an hour and my comfort was gone. The temperature started to soar really quite rapidly. Within 15 minutes the room was starting to get quite stuffy. Then at 25 minutes the power resumed, I breathed easy.

We made some progress, and I gradually started to go through the course as normal. Within a short period of time the temperature started to drop again, and I started to feel comfortable again, and I breathed a sigh of relief. With the benefit, it was that sigh that knocked out the power again. And this time it was serious. About 10:30am the power went down again, and once again the temperature started to soar. By lunch the temperature was no longer comfy, in the restaurant I didn't feel like eating quite so much as normal, and so lunch was over in no time.

The afternoon session I started, I felt myself getting hotter and hotter and making more and more stupid mistakes. I could feel my brain turning to slush as the heat started to melt it. Stuff I knew backwards suddenly became a huge effort, and still the temperature and the humidity rose. 4 O'Clock came, and my brain had had enough. The delegates were too polite to comment, but I could feel that they knew enough was enough, too. So class finished, and I took the opportunity to pack away some of the kit that won't be needed again on the course. Better now than the end of the week, and at least at the moment I could handle physical stuff, if not mental.

As we left the manager said that the hotel power was still off, and that our tower and a neighbouring tower were knocked out by the works on the new Corniche. Hopefully power would be back in an hour or so (it was that this morning, too). Manar commented that an hour really meant at least six, and to make plans for burmuda shorts and t-shirts tomorrow. Last time she knew construction workers knock out power it was three days before the power returned.

Three days? Three days? Hey, I don't care about the lack of lights, I can open the curtain. I can explain networking and the principles etc without the use of Powerpoint and a projector. But I want my own AC.