POWERLESS
Thinking things would get resolved the next day, especially in this country, was a big mistake. Don't get me wrong, on the whole I love the slow and relaxed pace of life here, but it's been a week now and we still have no electricity. On Monday, thinking the electric company would be coming out, I returned to the house. Nothing happened. On Tuesday, as the day wore on, I decided to ask my friend if maybe we should call them to make sure they remember to come out. I called them, and they sent some guys out only to tell me that our problem is being handled by another branch. I spent two more nights burning up in that powerless house.
My friend believes the landlord had to grease some palms to get things moving on our problem. The thing is, though, the engineer in charge of our problem apparently got his money and decided to take a vacation. He hasn't been there since last Friday. This morning, another guy came out, one who possibly didn't get any grease, and he decided there was a laundry list of fixes that had be done to the house's system before they could turn it back on. Not only that, these changed would require approval by the city, and then have to pass another inspection by the electric company before anything would happen. That could take another week!
We called the landlord and he was furious. He went down to the electric company personally and I don't know what he did, but he came back with all the parts to fix the problem and word that an engineer would be out at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning to fix everything. We'll see if that happens. In the meantime, I am back at Hotel Sogo, where there is aircon and WIFI. There is a movie called Tokyo Love Love Girls playing on one of the special channels they have and I am writing this on my iPhone.
This makes me think about why I much prefer to live in a hotel or skyrise apartment rather than a house. There were certainly power outages at my apartment in Cebu City, but they affected everyone and, as such, were fixed in a matter of hours if not minutes. Certainly no single resident would ever have to deal with the electric company themselves. This whole situation made me feel powerless. Of course, there's considerable power to be had in money. If I had more money, I would be someplace else, like back in Cebu City.
When I first came here, almost a year ago, I stayed in a hotel, or pension house as it was called, and it cost less than half the price of my room in L.A. plus I had a staff to clean my room, make my bed and I never had to buy toilet paper, soap or towels. They even did my laundry. I had my Macbook and was free to do my work as I wished. The problem is, I didn't work as much as I should have. I made pretty good money creating digital content for different download sites, especially in Japan, and I saw the promise of what could have been huge if pursued with but a little effort. Now the time has come to correct that mistake.
If the electricity really returns tomorrow, I will return to the creation of digital content, especially for the Japanese market. Studying what other artists have achieved in this arena, this could bring in returns that will fund some amazing adventure!
My friend believes the landlord had to grease some palms to get things moving on our problem. The thing is, though, the engineer in charge of our problem apparently got his money and decided to take a vacation. He hasn't been there since last Friday. This morning, another guy came out, one who possibly didn't get any grease, and he decided there was a laundry list of fixes that had be done to the house's system before they could turn it back on. Not only that, these changed would require approval by the city, and then have to pass another inspection by the electric company before anything would happen. That could take another week!
We called the landlord and he was furious. He went down to the electric company personally and I don't know what he did, but he came back with all the parts to fix the problem and word that an engineer would be out at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning to fix everything. We'll see if that happens. In the meantime, I am back at Hotel Sogo, where there is aircon and WIFI. There is a movie called Tokyo Love Love Girls playing on one of the special channels they have and I am writing this on my iPhone.
This makes me think about why I much prefer to live in a hotel or skyrise apartment rather than a house. There were certainly power outages at my apartment in Cebu City, but they affected everyone and, as such, were fixed in a matter of hours if not minutes. Certainly no single resident would ever have to deal with the electric company themselves. This whole situation made me feel powerless. Of course, there's considerable power to be had in money. If I had more money, I would be someplace else, like back in Cebu City.
When I first came here, almost a year ago, I stayed in a hotel, or pension house as it was called, and it cost less than half the price of my room in L.A. plus I had a staff to clean my room, make my bed and I never had to buy toilet paper, soap or towels. They even did my laundry. I had my Macbook and was free to do my work as I wished. The problem is, I didn't work as much as I should have. I made pretty good money creating digital content for different download sites, especially in Japan, and I saw the promise of what could have been huge if pursued with but a little effort. Now the time has come to correct that mistake.
If the electricity really returns tomorrow, I will return to the creation of digital content, especially for the Japanese market. Studying what other artists have achieved in this arena, this could bring in returns that will fund some amazing adventure!
posted by - Terrence at
5:04 AM
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