8 hour 'brown-out' .. arghhh!

it's almost 3am, and i'm just back from over 8 hours without power, what the locals (euphemistically?) call a 'brown-out' .. from what I am gathering, power-cuts are a regular occurrence here, i've experienced 3 in the past 2 weeks, normally about 3 or 4 hours, but today was a real whopper. Apart from being unceremoniously dumped off internet in the middle of a conversation that was important, everything that was in my fridge is now suspect, and i'm working at 3am to make up for the lost evening ..

I wonder what makes the power here so unstable .. first time round, a couple of weeks ago, power dropped due to strong lightning, but today the weather was calm and there was no indication.

I think a generator is in the offing !!