The dark

The blackout during poll count in GE 13 still lingers in my mind, as it created uproars nationwide. While blackout could be inconsequential at times, at the moment when you terribly need lights and fans, the effect would be awesome.

This happened the night after the Moon Cake festival in Sunway Monash Residence.

I could recall vividly at 11:15 pm, my body ranted for its lethargy (thanks to some soporific homework) and I went out of room to brush my teeth. While I was turning into the bathroom, out of the sudden, all equipments and amenities in my room turned black, as if they vanished in alchemy. The only exception was my phone, reminding me that it was off from the power source. “18%. Connect your charger,” it begged.

Blackout happened.

While adults usually find it depressing and devastating, we, however, acted as if adrenaline shot into our brain and sprinted into dining hall to see what was happening. To our misfortune, the whole residence went into ominous darkness, together with Monash University.

Adrenaline continued to fill my head, and this time the whole residence was apparently hosting a post Moon Cake Festival Party. Torchlight supplanted conventional light bulbs, and apart from that some SMR residents devised some other sensation of the night: playing with artificial torch, screaming like people recently escaped from asylum, amplified volume of MP3 songs, and having “live concert” with guitar accompaniment, making a girl shouting unabashedly in the public, “are you singing for me?” The whole unit of A03-04 went nuts, and this happened to most other units which the residents I’m familiar to, too. As a result, one of my housemate (who was awaken by our intractable behavior) went irate and denounced the whole noisy crowd on Facebook.

It was not until the midnight when the condition went censorious where some residents treated the rules and regulations profanely. Some threw ignited matches onto the parcourse of the residence, while others adulterated it with papers and toilet rolls, causing some residents to yell “f*** u” stridently at them (more of a prank, though). As expected, guards took action by scrutinizing the whole block, and detect any wrongdoing as soon as possible.

The sensation of the night then reached its climax when two international male students did more than this: running and star-jumping naked in the parcourse. More or less, this incident changed my belief of illegible behavior being only available on *o*n website. Having our balcony just above the parcourse, we, innocently and accidentally, witnessed the whole unfortunate scene, from the moment of them running into the parcourse to the moment they disappeared. They began to stop their flippant act after some other residents mischievously made it overt, using the torchlight. Nevertheless, they gained notoriety as “naked runners”.

The party environment began to cease when we were bored with it, and I realized that all our scream and ebullience were pointless: in spite of my apparent enjoyment of screaming, there was awkward emptiness in my heart gradually filled by worries: worrying for my phone battery; worrying for my unfinished IELTS reading practice paper (due next morning :O ); worrying how I was going to sleep.” I prayed hard for the electricity to resume, and utilized the torchlight to finish my work. The effort proved futile and I finished only 1 of the comprehension paper, giving myself the benefit of doubt that the tutor wouldn’t have time to discuss the other passages. 12:40, time to sleep while betting for the resume of electricity.

10 minutes later

While I was trying hard to get into slumber, a thread of brightness penetrated my eyelid, followed by the double-click sound of my phone. I then realised that whole incident was quelled and again, I screamed out of my joy until my housemate reminded me not to do so. Heart relieved, and finally I earned a good sleep.

—

This incident showed the eccentricity of teenagers, except a small portion which behaved in proper decorum. People may treat us as mad students, at least for a night. But as long as we were within the rules, should we abjure ourselves from enjoying life for a short moment? But frankly, one night was more than enough for us.

Ps: In adjunct of this, there was a carrot fight 2 weeks after, creating “ping pang” noises in the midnight (no blackout). Eventually carrots abounded the parcourse. Is this another form of eccentricity?