Things I learned:
1. Have patience. Shipping from China takes a long time, and if it’s short then it’s because you got lucky.
2. There’s a whole world of fun to be found in messing with electronics. Soldering especially is almost a form of art.
3. Daytime often calls for more torch usage than night, no matter how long one or the other is at the time of the year. Especially for me, as I live in a location where the spring and summer days are longer but tend to be darker than the winter ones because of stormy clouds and power outages that don’t happen when it’s cold but savanna-dry and windless.
4. Being in the dark but with a convenient, easy and cheap (per watt) light source at your disposal is a liberating experience. Nowadays I don’t hesitate to sleep in absolute darkness, and got blackout curtains for precisely that effect.
5. Over time, good quality lights and batteries pay for themselves. They ease a good chunk out of the monthly electric bill’s cost too… as long as you don’t live with muggles that insist on having the overhead lamps on at all times when the sunlight isn’t getting directly inside the room.
6. Flashlights are hilariously misrepresented in media and fiction. Either their runtime isn’t a concern but they’re dimmer than my faith in the political system, or they’re as bright as a modern LED light but run out of juice in seconds. Not even minutes, seconds. Then again, most authors are muggles.
7. Tangentially related, but lighting and effects thereof are fascinating when used properly. Interior design and architecture that exploit it are even more interesting to me now.