Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Power Went Out…

…this morning; but it didn’t last long.  We’ve been lucky that the outages really haven’t been an issue…well, except for about two weeks ago.  That time it was out for almost eight hours.  It wouldn’t have affected us much except for one small detail.  Battery back-ups only last for so long; then they run out of juice.

Now, our back-up is only hooked up to parts of our dining room and the master bedroom; nothing else.  Not the refrigerator, or A/C units, or television or even the hot water geysers.  And no power for that long, combined with the heat here, can equal bad news for everything in the refrigerator.  Luckily it was fairly empty and it was Saturday; which is grocery shopping day.  Paul and I were showered and ready to head out, but were dawdling.  Once the power went; so did we. 

We took the elevator down, walked to the front of the complex and hopped in a rickshaw.  As we neared the mall area we spotted a traveling craft market and decided to check that out first.  I’m glad we did as in addition to getting some great trinkets, we bought this treasure; a hand carved wall plaque that is almost three feet wide. 
Of course it wasn’t a quick transaction, much negotiating needs to take place before both the seller and buyer are happy.  The craftsman wanted 4,000 Rupees and Paul told him ‘no’.  He then reduced the price to 3,000, at which Paul still balked and offered 1,000.  The craftsman said ‘too low’ and we proceeded to walk away.  After about five minutes the craftsman came and found us and they agreed on 2,000 Rupees. 

After the craft market we had a leisurely lunch and then went to the grocery store.  Beside the usual staples, we had to get a new frying pan and we stocked up on Diet Pepsi because it was on sale.  We pushed our cart to the rickshaw queue, found one to take us back home and barely fit all of our purchases in it.

Once back, we hauled everything to the elevator door and pushed the button.  The elevators in our building are slow so we talked about what we were going to do that evening as we waited…and waited…and waited…until it dawned on us.  The power was still out and apparently the battery back-up on the elevators had run out of juice.  We ended up having to carry all of our groceries, including the frying pan and the twelve liters of Diet Pepsi AND the wooden carving up twelve flights of stairs…in one trip.

Thank goodness the power finally came back on because needless to say, all we did that evening was lay around and watch TV.

5 comments:

Blondefabulous said...

Damn! 12 flights of stairs?? I'd have paid a boy to do it for me!! They do that over there, right?

Expat No. 3699 said...

@ Blondefabulous
I would gladly have paid someone to do it, but there was no one around and the rickshaw driver had already left.

Sheila said...

That is a gorgeous carving!

I'm sorry but I'm totally laughing, picturing you and Paul trudging up all those stairs!

Expat No. 3699 said...

@Sheila
What...like we're old or somethin'?

Nej said...

The plaque is awesome!!!!!!