Really? All the shades were down at boarding on the last longhaul flight I took. I get it if it's blazing sunlight outside and there's a broken APU, but at 11:45pm, that's odd. I thought shades needed to be up for safety during take off and landing? (or am I thinking of another airline? SQ definitely started saying that after the Taipei crash...)

And, as for the cabin being too dark, no risk of that earlier in the week - the strip lights above the windows were stuck on the on-position over several J seats on my last flight, so the cabin was nice and bright for 14 hours all the way through the night