Coping and adapting to a foreign environment is every traveler’s basic survival instinct. Coming from first-world Singapore where efficiency and practicality is rule of the law, Nepal showed me the real Asia.

Patience with ingenuity is sometimes the only way to work around the various problems that plague almost every still-developing nation. One such problem is load-shedding. An English phrase that, before stepping on Nepali soil, was as familar to me as the Devanagari script used in the Nepali language.

Nepal is hardly a fully-developed country, so I did not come here with high expectations. Prior to arriving, I had heard of the dusty and confusing roads of Kathmandu and the infamously frequent power cuts – popularly known here as load-shedding.

But reality did not sink in until I first experienced it. Worse, the backup battery had run out completely at the guest house we were staying in. So my friend and I ate our self-cooked Christmas dinner by candlelight. How apt.

A drastic change of lifestyle was inevitable. A typical morning — even before I brush my teeth — in Kathmandu begins with checking the load-shedding schedule given by our landlord.

On good days, I make my morning cup of coffee using the hot water dispenser easily in a minute. On bad days, I sit shivering in the cold, marbled-floor office and work on articles and photographs until my laptop battery runs out.

The thought of laptop batteries going dead in the middle of writing an important research paper seems like the worst nightmare to students like you and me. But that does not beat short-circuiting one’s laptop while trying to restart backup power when load-shedding kicks in.

Besides home, the load-shedding schedule has also become the star attraction at my internship office tasked to churn out two magazines monthly.

Despite less than four hours of power during working hours, I am amazed at how the editorial team has been able to keep to their strict routine of writing, editing and laying out pages.

True, one can always get the interviews and fieldwork done before load-shedding kicks in. But with the increasing frequencies of protests, roadblocks and traffic jams, one can hardly get anywhere around Kathmandu to get any form of reporting done.

I wonder how my peers back in our air-conditioned nation will do with so little electricity and yet so much time on their hands. Surf the Internet? Oh wait, that needs power.

Talk on the phone with friends? That requires some form of electricity too.

Go out and catch a movie with friends? Well, provided the movie theatres have backup generators to screen the movies during load-shedding.

My Nepali friend was curious to know what youths in Singapore do in their leisure. When I mentioned the above, she remarked that all these activities cannot be done easily here.

However, instead of complaining about the lack of electricity to get anything done, the Nepalis have found ingenious ways to cope with whatever problems that plague their everyday lives.

No electricity at night? Let’s use candles and write on paper.

Unable to edit photographs and layout pages during load-shedding? Let’s try to get double the work done when there is still power.

Moreover, this is the same nation who went through a long and bloody civil war. The people’s war may have been officially over, but the power is still stuck with the ruling parties and all the common Nepali wants is to get the power back.

As the government announces yet another record-breaking increase in load-shedding to 16 hours a day, the resilient Nepali will take things in his stride and get on with his life.

Before the lights go out.

The writer is currently on internship with two lifestyle magazines in Nepal. She managed to finish this article just before the lights went out.

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