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Lost power in Lisbon during a client call and had to finish the meeting from a cafe bathroom
Last Tuesday I was renting a place in the Alfama neighborhood of Lisbon when the power cut out right in the middle of a call with a client in Chicago. My laptop had about 20 minutes of battery left, so I grabbed it and ran three blocks to a small cafe I had never tried before. The only outlet was in the back hallway right next to the bathroom, so I sat on the floor and finished the meeting with people walking past me the whole time. The client never knew anything was wrong, but I started looking up backup power banks that night. Has anyone else had to scramble to find a random spot mid-call, and what do you keep in your bag for moments like that?
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mason.drew20d ago
Man, that cafe bathroom hallway story hits close to home. I had the same thing happen in Bangkok last year, power went out at my Airbnb mid call and I ended up in a hotel lobby plugging into a wall outlet behind a fake plant. What saved me was a power bank I started carrying after that trip, a big 20,000 mAh one that can charge my laptop through USB C. It gives me about a full extra charge, which is enough to get through any meeting even if the wifi is the next problem. I also keep a small travel router in my bag now so I am not stuck relying on random cafe wifi. The other thing that helped was switching my phone to a hotspot right away instead of wasting time hunting for a network. That setup has gotten me through two more outages since, and I never had to sit on another bathroom floor.
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