Mate Lampu

Anyone living in Lombok will be used to the frequent mate lampus - or powercuts. In the Kuta area they can be several times a day.

One night last week I was introducing Marty to ET, he was just getting into it and enjoying it but then just at the point where Drew Barrymore's character first sees ET and screams, ETs neck goes up and he screams.... the power went out and we were all thrown into darkness - and Marty screamed

It only took a minute or so to get the generator on but by then Marty was burying his face in my shoulder crying no, no and refusing to look at the movie again. Even the next day in daylight showing him the ET box, he would say no, no and run away.

I guess that mate lampu was one I will remember. Though scarey for Marty I have to say we had a bit of a laugh at the timing of it.

What are your memorable mate lampus?

For us we seemed at one stage to have a really long run where the power was on most of the day (maybe one or two short outages), and then it went off right on sunset for at least a couple of hours. Right when you want to have dinner and/or a mandi. No electricity to run the pump from the well, so no water. Can't see to cook. We usually ended up going into Senggigi for a warung meal, and so did quite a few others. I speculated if the warung owners were in cahoots with the power company

Yes - for the first 5 years at least that I was in Lombok the power was off several nights a week from 6-9/10pm. My understanding was that there was not enough power at that peak time so it was switched off on rotation throughout the island. Now though it is still frequently off it is really random when and for how long however evenings still see a drop in our supply, with all the lightbulbs going dimmer and not enough power for everything sometimes. At least these days we have a decent generator! Back then I wasnt keen on candles because of the risk of fire and the wax drips everywhere when you walked around with one. Then we moved onto the kersosene lamps (like the fishermen use - not sure what they are called really) and then we discovered the rechargeale neon lights - but even they dont last so long after a few charges.