Ready for Kong Rey

When Supertyphoon Chaba hit Saipan three years ago, I was left for days with no money (ATMs offline), no power (electric poles down), and no water (pumps can't run without power). I didn't mind it too much. It was nothing I hadn't been through before.

What made the experience unbearable was that there was nothing to do.

If Typhoon Kong Rey indeed passes right over the island, then we can be in for trouble—that is, waterless, powerless and, yes, Internetless days. Now, it's always been my fantasy to pass on in the most glamorous way possible. Death by boredom doesn't qualify, does it?

So I made a typhoon preparedness checklist and so far it includes:

• A fully charged laptop
  
• Half a dozen magazines (last week's Newsweek from the library, old issues of Time that I borrowed from The Reveler, a just-arrived and still-unpaid-for copy of National Geographic Traveler, etc.)
• A Calvin and Hobbes book to keep me up and Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat to help me doze off
• A reading lamp that runs on AA batteries
  
• A music player that runs on double As
  
• A DVD player that runs on double As
• Lots of double As
  
• A car with a full gas tank for the trip to the store, in case I run out of double As...