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If you have been following along with this adventure then most likely you read at the end of Zine Entry #56 – Breaking the Boring Ice about how everyone, especially me it seems the most, wants this power back on. But since we have no control all we can do is make the best of a bad situation. I’m not too good at doing that at times, and this is one of those times. I know that if I had more activities to do, here and away, then time would go faster for me, but most likely I would still have the hot sweaty nights to put up with until we can get another portable fan. One that they haven’t jacked the price up on because of the brownout.
So we made it through another night with no power. It wasn’t so bad last night because it was not so humid. Lita now burns one of those mosquito killer coils at night, so I don’t have to worry so much about being sucked dry of all my blood while I sleep. Yeah I heard that those things are suppose to cause cancer, but I heard once that beer causes cancer too and I haven’t stopped drinking beer. Heck I heard that drinking cold water after a meal can cause cancer, so it’s hard to believe anything that you hear. I just do what I want to do anyway.
I went by the internet cafe again this morning. I got there early and in fact had to wait for them to open. I was not the first one there, but I was close enough to be able to get on the computer right away. They assigned me to a computer and I waited for them to turn everything on and log on the computers. While I waited, they changed me to another computer in the enclosed area in the back. It seems to be cooler in there, so I didn’t mind. I needed to check my fantasy football and get another message back to Texas. I check the football first because it was getting close to game time and I didn’t want to miss out. I had a hard time with it because it was so slow. The 1 hour limit was still on so I had to hurry also to be sure to get my message out. Well the connection only got slower as I went along. The guy came by and told me that my hour was up, but I told him that when I first got here, I waited around for 20 minutes, just waiting on y’all to get the computers up and running. He let me stay. I still was not able to get the message out though. I had to go sign up for another hour and wait my turn because by then it was really crowded again. The next hour was even slower and I could not even log into Google on the machine. It took me almost 45 minutes to get that one message out. I just addressed it to everyone in my address book in the US that might be concerned about us here. I logged out and got the hell out of there. So slow, but better than nothing, barely. I doubt I’ll be going back though. Where or where is that power?
Mar returned my phone from being charged at his house with his little generator, but there is a problem with the phone. It seems that it will not turn off so by the time they got it to me, the charge was 1/2 gone. The power button stopped working for some reason. Now I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you just take the battery out of the phone? Well they said they tried that, but when they put the battery back in, the phone just came back on. I just figured they didn’t take the battery out long enough, so I took it out, waited about 1 minute and put it back in. The phone came back on by itself.
The warranty is good for 3 months so Juvic and I are suppose to go back there to explain to them what the problem is. Juvic is there to make sure they understand it better. Ramil says that they will probably need to send the phone to Manila (since Tacloban is destroyed) so I better try to get a phone to use while it is gone. The Philippines is notorious for being slow, so there is no telling how long it will take. More on this when we actually get ready to go to Christainson’s to explain about the phone.
When/If I ever get the phone back, I will get a sim card from Smart to put in there also. I have a dual sim phone and I already have a Globe sim. I suppose I will get a load for each of them because you never know which one you can use since the phone system is wacky here. The minutes on the card expire, but as the expiration date gets close, I can share a load with one or more of the relatives that use their phone a lot. Titing and Juvic I think use theirs the most. I just don’t use it that much, but I figure, just in case.
Jun and his oldest niece here went to Tacloban to check out the situation yesterday. They arrived back today about 2:00pm. They didn’t give me an update, but I’ll see what I can find out secondhand, which is how I get most of my news anyway.
Our truck from Tacloban showed up today. I guess they are finally letting traffic over the San Juanico bridge. The truck is running fine. It did have a little water damage, but nothing about P5000 couldn’t take care of. I noticed that it also needs at least 2 tires. The spare on it has almost zero tread. Those tires cost about P15,000 each, used. I wonder how my lottery tickets did last night? (not a winner).
Lita and I are still seriously talking about staying for a couple of weeks at at the Marju Krisel. Most likely though, if we do, it won’t be until the beginning of December (payday). I’m hoping that by that time it will all be a moot point and the power will be restored. But, as I have said, Samelco has not exactly instilled confidence in anyone, ever.
I’m going to stop here simply for the fact that my next entry starts a new day, Monday, November 18th. I looked for a good stopping point in my notes besides this one, but I couldn’t find one. So how many hours has it been with no power? What about my phone? Will the power ever come on? I guess I will try to answer these questions and more in the next post. I hope you are around to find out the answers.
Salamat, Y’all
If you still had you car you could have started it and slept in the car with aircon going,like out camping.
You’re right Wayne. I did that many times in Texas, especially when I decided to just wait for Lita at work. She would be cleaning a house that would take about 4 hours and I was unemployed so instead of wasting power at the house, I’d just wait there for her and use the a/c when appropriate.
It would have kept the mosquitoes from eating me too.
UJ, you can always try what the old pioneers did before AC in the desert. Take a very thin sheet, wet it, wring out the extra water and use that as a blanket. Heard that from an ole guy who was raised in El Centro CA. where it got to be 115 in the summer.
You know Scott I have heard that also. It just never occurred to me during the brown out. I suppose that if we put down some plastic or something, that would work on the bed. Or maybe I could just sleep on one of our bamboo benches. Oh well maybe next time if we don’t get the generator in time.
You need a mosquito net?
No thanks Mark. We have one, but it’s just such a pain in the ass to put up.
I remember those moaquito coils from my childhood. Don’t think it helped much. I still got bit by those mosquitos. With the heat, humidity, and mosquitos, those 3 would be good enough reasons to stay at a hotel to get a break.
I think it’s more of a psychological thing, but it usually keeps me sleeping. Believe me, that hotel was high on my mind. I needed to get a good nights sleep without waking up sweating.