As I sit in this uncomfortable office chair at 6.47pm typing my 162nd blog post and hoping to kill enough time to avoid a gridlock on Third Mainland Bridge for the next 3 hours, I think about last night when I experienced something so eerie and yet so magical that I wished it elapsed for more than just 2 minutes – I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it…

It rained cats and dogs Friday night (and these were really noisy cats and dogs, complete with ‘strobe’ lightning and thunder ‘bolts’). Power supply was out in my neighbourhood (as usual) so I was in complete darkness after switching off my Tiger generator at 12.08am (and I know this because I finished beating my Wii Boxing record at that time…yes, I have issues). I was lying down on my bed and praying that all that boxing was sufficient to induce immediate Narcolepsy (minus the hallucinations) but one of my neighbours was still disturbing the peace with HIS own generator. Let me share how annoying this sound can be.

Just imagine this for a moment: Take a he-goat which we all know makes that heavy bleating sound. Picture yourself tickling the goat under its armpit (oh, I guess that’ll be a ‘limbpit’) and it starts blaffing (bleating + laughing…don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with all this…I think). Now, record that ‘blaffing’ sound and play it on a loop…on high volume – THAT’S what a generator noise sounds like…not all generators, just his.

To my surprise, my neighbour decided to put the ‘he-goat’ to sleep right before I decided to go outside in my PJs and put my foot up his ass (or better yet, any gruesome scene from Silence of the Lambs). And then…I heard it…it was (in the words of Simon and Garfunkel) “the sound of silence”. No crickets, no owls, no raindrops, and no leaking taps. Only the same sound you get from an audience after the below-par performance of an amateur stand-up comedian. But in my neighbourhood, some people can’t afford to endure a night without electric fans and so about 2 minutes later you can guess what happened next – the he-goats were back in full swing!  BEH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH!!!