Earth Hour

March 28, 2009, 8:30 – 9:30 in the evening is the world’s observance of Earth Hour and Arvid Matthew’s one of the people in 1,000 cities in the world who turned off the lights to help save the Planet Earth and to promote awareness about the destructive effects of global warming.

For an hour, the street where we live turned black except for the dim flickers coming from burning candles. This reminded me of the nights when a “gasera” or traditional lamp was the only source of light in my grandparents’ house. Those were the times when darkness wasn’t scary even when the houses were mostly made of bamboo. A lot has changed since then…a lot.

Not only were the lamps forgotten, even the olds’ preference to hard work was brisked away by the coming of new age and materialism.

Perhaps, that explains why the turning off of lights now happens only once in a while and is now considered a great part of man’s history.