Blacking out for Mother Earth

I never thought I could do it - spoilt brat that I am, but I did.

Sleep without aircon I mean.

For the past 2 months, we have been sleeping without the airconditioning on. It did not start out of altruistic green ideals of saving the earth and reducing global warming, but just because Owain was coughing a great deal in his sleep. We suspected the cool air had something to do with it. So for his sake, we pulled the plug. It helped that the next couple of weeks after that, Singapore experienced a cool spell with temps sometimes dropping to 22deg at night. Lovely!

Sleeping with the fan on and the windows wide open was actually cool enough. I adjusted quite quickly and so did Owain and Trinity.

With that, it was time to introduce the joys of fan-life to the other kids. They protested vehemently against this of course. But finally about 3 weeks ago, KH and I went fan shopping. We bought this state-of-the-art stylo-mylo fan that could tilt up and down, rotate 360deg and came with its own remote. This went to the girls' room while Isaac got his own fan too. To ease them into it, we allowed them to switch the aircon on for the first hour and thereafter programme it to turn itself off.

So far so good.

KH is pleased - it means considerable savings on the electricity bill, which is reaching record levels in our home. I am pleased too - it means no more pails and bathtubs at the foot of the bed, no more listening on tenterhooks in half-sleep for new drips and leaks in the middle of the night and of course, no more nasty coughing in the middle of the night for Owain. It also helped my sinus problem considerably and I find myself hardly sneezing in the morning anymore.

The only drawback is that night sounds become a great deal clearer - for example, I noticed the neighbour's five dogs start howling every night at 11pm sharp (I don't think I want to know why!), the lone speeding car's revved up engines sound especially abrasive and I had the 'pleasure' of being party to my neighbour's son yelling at his uncle for being "nothing but a drunk!" And I guess if I can hear them so clearly, I bet they can hear us clearly too with the windows wide open at night. So we're careful to keep our night sounds down too.

With a much reduced aircon usage in the house, taking the bus and MRT instead of the cab, we're slowly cutting back on energy use. I'm still a long way away from being a green activist though. The other day Lulu joined me for lunch and we were just talking about the Rs - reduce, recycle, re-use. She's more enthusiastic and dedicated than I am in living the three Rs. She even tried making her own plastic bag out of all the used bags! It is inspiring (not to make the bags, but to walk the talk)!

I will keep on trying and doing my own small bit to save Mother Earth. Refuse more bags when I shop (I now either stuff what I buy into my bag or I stuff them in my foldable shopping bag which I always have with me in my handbag), separate my trash more religiously, stop ta-paoing food from the canteen, refuse offered disposable cutlery when buying food, avoid sanitary napkins (try the mooncup one day) etc. I need to work on my shopaholic tendencies to fit the reduce and re-use profile, but that takes time and hard work. :-)

Meanwhile, there is one thing I can do.

This Saturday, the Chongs will join over 250,000 individuals (I am individual number 259, 503) and more than 19,000 organisations worldwide in the Earth Hour blackout. There will be lots of activities going on all over Singapore on that night. So if you're in the mood to celebrate the event with the rest of the human tribe, there are lots of options.

But for us, I think it would just be a good idea for the kids and I to just stay home, have a candlelit meal, read by candlelight etc, just for that hour - knowing that by doing so, we would be contributing in our own small way, to creating awareness and reducing energy use.

Naysayers may think we are just one tiny family in this big wide earth, so how much can we do? But if there are more and more families who just make the tiniest of efforts, so much more can be done. I am reading Six Degrees: Our Future on A Hotter Planet - and it can be quite frightening a scenario if the global temps go up by even 1deg. I may die by then or be very very old before any of these prophecies and projections come to pass, but not my children, and not my grandchildren. What do we leave for them when we consume so recklessly today?

So if you're not planning on doing much on Mar 29 2008, Sat night from 8pm to 9pm, turn off your lights, turn off your aircon, turn off your tv, turn off appliances, light up the candles, have a meal, sit around, read a book, tell stories, nurse your babies.

For sure, you know a tiny yellow house on Riang will be doing just that.