Darkness reigns

It was a sunny Saturday (we are getting a nice stretch of weather) but my apartment was dark on Saturday. The power was out.

From the time I woke up and into the evening, there was a scheduled power outage. There were likely signs up....but I certainly did not look (since they would be in Chinese and I could not read them!). So to me, it was a surprise.

During the day, it was fine because the sun was shining and brought some warmth in. I played Catan in the afternoon - and won. Then I started grading papers as I waited to meet up with some friends for dinner. Unfortunately, it starts getting dark here around 6...and dinner was not until 7. So I graded papers by the light of my Macbook.



Finally, I grabbed a flashlight to find my way down the stairs and out of the complex. It was dark and scary! My favorite was walking down the street, looking into dark restaurants and seeing people eating their food while huddled around candles. All I could see was the gleam of chopsticks as they shoveled morsels of food.

One other strange note from the week - there is a large gas station on the way home from school. This week, as I was riding home in the evenings, I noticed remarkable lines of cars (mostly taxis) waiting to fill up at the natural gas pumps. On Wednesday, the line EASILY stretched for a kilometer down the road. It made me think of the 1970s in the US (not that I was around then...).

AND, most importantly, Rachel arrived back in Chengdu. She is watching the NU game right now. (I already watched it this afternoon. I couldn't wait.) Go Cats!

-alan