Stuck on standby during a typhoon

Seeing my phone light up with notifications about work and school closures by region, my social media feed is flooded with posts like 'Got an extra day off,' and 'Typhoon days are for binge-watching dramas and eating instant noodles.' It would be a lie to say I'm not envious. For us telecom engineers, a typhoon day isn't a 'day off' at all. It's the signal to 'stay alert and be on standby.' As the wind and rain intensify and trees start to fall, that's when we get most anxious. Your video conferences, typhoon updates, communication with family, even emergency distress signals – they all rely on the invisible network and base stations we maintain. Many might think, 'It's okay if the internet is a bit slow or goes out during a typhoon, right?' But for us, a base station power outage or a fiber optic cable cut doesn't just dampen everyone's drama-watching mood. It could potentially impact the critical timing for disaster response centers, or be the only way for people in disaster-stricken areas to contact their families. While everyone else is sheltering indoors from the storm, we have to put on our raincoats, prepare our tools, and wait in our vehicles, ready to be dispatched at any moment. As soon as we hear about a signal outage or a depleted backup power source somewhere, we have to rush to the site immediately, even if it's windy and raining heavily outside, and the roads might be full of falling rocks or downed trees.