The lights are on

I'm bad, nasty and mean-spirited, as horrid as a kitten killer. I didn't turn my lights off for an hour during Earth Hour.

In Singapore, the commercial buildings and hotels downtown observed the practice. It would be bad PR not to. So they turned off their facade lights and "non-essential" lighting, according to a press release I saw.

My kitten killer instincts tell me that if these lights were "non-essential", then shouldn't they be turned off all the time and not just one hour every year?

I thought if I really wanted to reduce my carbon footprint and save the Earth, I shouldn't stop at turning off the lights, I should turn off the electricity. But I didn't want to miss The Clone Wars on TV, which fell within that hour.

Also, we had got home shortly before 8.30pm, the switch-off time, with groceries and needed the lights on to see our way through putting the food away in the fridge and also hanging up the laundry which L had started before leaving the house. I figured that since I had already consumed so much electricity in storing my food and washing my clothes, I might as well use some more so that I can see what I'm doing with my food and my clothes.

I found out about Earth Hour and the one-hour turn-off at 8.30pm on March 28 from billboard ads I saw at the bus stops when I was on the bus to work. These are giant posters mounted onto a class case which is lighted up from within by fluorescent tubes, so that the ads are visible, even at night.

And I bet you they weren't turned off at Earth Hour.

I should have gone back to the bus stop and taken a picture. The Earth Hour website invites people to send pictures of what they did during the turn-off. Kitten killer would have loved to send them a picture of their ad, lighted up brightly, from 8.30pm to 9.30pm on March 28.