Time to go home

It is half past 2 and I'd planned to go home ages ago. It is raining so hard that the chance of getting a taxi, let alone a taxi at a near to normal rate, are between 0.0 and 0.5 %. It hasn't rained this hard since the beginning of the monsoon season. I'm sure that big parts of Yangon. like the downtown area near Sule, are flooded as they often are. I hope that it is OK near our house. We haven't had much trouble with water yet and I hope it stays that way. But these are a lot of extra drops on an already waterlogged Yangon. It has been raining heavily for the last 2 weeks or so.

Xenne and Thandar are happily playing computer games in the ICT-room so they don't mind too much. Unfortunately, lunch is at home. Though it looks like lunch is going to turn into linner or dunch, it already being this late and it'll take us another half hour at least before we're home.

High bloodpressure ??

Something that makes me laugh here ever so often is how easy Myanmar feel sick. Whenever they have a slight headache, they go to the doctor. An upset tummy gets you a week's worth of medicine, and a small scratch or scrape needs to be attended to by the school nurse.

Admittedly, my reference pool is based mostly on school experience (students and teachers) and my home base of course. Here, the nurse is always taking everybody's blood pressure. For the simplest of reasons. When we have the flu going around, let's measure your blood pressure, slight headache... measure.. At one point last year I saw several of our office staff using the blood pressure thing on each other since they felt slightly queasy.

I find that soo funny. Of course, there are plenty of occasions  when more professional advice is needed, but not at the slightest 'I feel less good than normal'.

Today again. A fellow teacher was filling her cup at the watercooler. She told me she needed to take medicine. I asked her what the matter was. Upset tummy... What happened to good-old-'let's wait a day or to to see if I'm really sick?'. Maybe I'm just not culturally adjusted in this way.. 

Back on schedule

Unfortunately a  schedule that I'd rather not be on... the electricity-schedule...   We were warned in early April that it might happen but I hate it when it does happen...  We have the following rotation... 1 day we have power for most of the day, and it goes off in the night at around 11 pm. Power comes back on the following morning at about 6am. That evening at around 6 pm the power goes off again till 11pm (we h ad that last night), today we have power (I hope) and a 'normal' day and tomorrow we start again with a whole day no power, power  back on at around 6 pm, the next day it'll be a night, followed by an evening...

Luckily it didn't happen during the incredibly hot summer months, but still it is very annoying. The night is actually the easiest at the moment since temperatures have dropped considerably (from around 40 degrees Celsius to around 30) and we have bought one of those rechargeable table fans. At the time it was the last one and it really has been a very good investment. We're considering expanding our collection of those useful objects....

I do hope I'm correct on the 'we-have-power-today' since I have to bake brownies, baby teething biscuits and make pasta for dinner.

An update on email, weather, electricity, and more

So, yes, the internet connection works. I can't say it works fine though. Yesterday i could't get a decent enough connection to actually view a single web page. Today I've already been disconnected 3 times in the past hour. But... I've just read my email at home, reviewed the BBC news pages and am typing this in the hope I can update my blog again....

It is late December and this is usually the only time of the year that I like here in Myanmar. It is WINTER (at least, that is what THEY call it). Normally, I would wear a scarf in the morning since it can be slightly cool but this year that hasn't been necessary yet. It is supposed to be my 'yes-I-can-make-it-through-the-rest-of-the-year' - cooling down period but temperatures are still 30+ degrees Celsius in the afternoon... What kind of WINTER is that???? I hope January will bring the annual relief from the heat otherwise I'll definitely feel cheated...

Electricity.... Prices will go up 50% in January. The promise is that electricity supply will improve. I do hope so. I don't mind the price hike so much if service will indeed get better. It is rather difficult to bake bread or cookies when there is a power outage in the middle of your baking process (very frustrating I can tell you).

For the rest... not too much. There are definitely more tourists in Yangon. But even now we comment on any westerner we see, especially when the seeing has been done away from the usual sites. We saw 4 young, western guys the other day way out of the tourist hotspots and we think they were expat kids (though not 100% sure). That really gave us conversation for the next 5 minutes. So, even though it is obvious that there are more people visiting this country, it isn't exactly overrun yet....

Electricity (or the lack of...)

X was watching TV the other day and the Power Puff Girls were on. Mama, he said, look the Power Out Girls! Of course I had to laugh.... But he has a point. The past two years the electricity was pretty goo din our neighbourhood. We had our share of the power outages but they usually occurred in daytime. Lately, we have many outages and at all times. In the evening they are still usually not more than half an hour but on Tuesday the power went off at 4:30 in the afternoon and was still not on when I left for work the next day.

Now I'm only hoping that we won't get the same situation as a few years ago. We went on a power supply schedule that started in early November and lasted till early June. We were living in a condo building at the time and eventually we got a separate cable supplying the elevator. We had no power from 5 am till between 5-6 pm for two days and then the third day we got electricity at around 11 am till 5 pm. Then we sat in the dark until 11 pm when the power would come back on. We started that time with an inverter so we still had lights and could use the TV but that thing only lasted for 2 months...

Now we have a small generator outside. It makes one hell of a noise but fans and light work so I'm pretty happy. Though, of course, you can't let it run the whole night... I keep my fingers crossed that it won't get any worse.