Earth hour self-portrait

(This post is written in two parts: one as a tongue-in-cheek humour and the other in all seriousness)

Note: I'm writing this in the dark with my monitor switched off. Are you taking part in Earth Hour? Shame on you if you are reading this before 9.30pm.

Here is a picture of me and my wife at home on the sofa, in front of the television set, me wearing my favourite collarless T-shirt and my wife in her house coat, taken not more than five minutes ago and uploaded to this blog. You can just make out my aunt's knee intruding into the picture at the lower left corner, where my name is. Told her to remove her knee from the camera's view but she purposely poked it out in front of her just as the camera's timer went off. Spoil sport.

So that's how my family observed Earth Hour today on 28 Mar 2009 at 8.30pm. How are you enjoying yours? Note: You can click on the picture to view a higher resolution. (My experience with Earth Hour continues below the picture.)

UPDATE at 9.35pm: But seriously, I am proud to say that there were households in my neighbourhood, Taman Jernih in Bukit Mertajam, that were aware of this campaign and had switched off most of their lights.

The street where I live. Lights off in my porch and the two houses across from me. This picture was taken with my Konica Minolta Dimage Z5 set at ISO 100, one-second shutter speed and an f-stop of 2.8

It's been raining quite consistently since this afternoon but minutes ago, I returned from a drive around my neighbourhood and noticed many houses with dimmed lights. Rough estimate? Maybe about 50 percent of households. Many of these houses were like mine, with the porch lights extinguished and unecessary lights turned off. I've seen houses - with cars parked fully in their compounds, meaning there were people at home - that were in complete darkness. My son had gone to his friend's birthday party in the housing estate across the road. I passed by the house and it was totally in the dark too. Also, I noticed that the St Anne's Church was in darkness. I tried visiting some websites and was pleasantly greeted by this message that popped up on TheStar Online. So yes, people are playing their parts to make a statement that we have had enough of global warming and we need tough action on carbon emissions and climate change. It starts with us.