So you might have heard on the news that there was a major blackout on Tuesday (25-Jan) that affected large swaths Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The blackout hit me at almost the exact moment I had signed off of Zoom from my first class. Consequently my second class didn’t happen. The power stayed off for 12 hours and the water stayed off for about 10 hours. The heat’s been out ever since.
This morning, the radiators are starting to feel warm and the towel warmer near the shower is now hot again. So things are basically back to normal.
During the blackout, I pulled out all the food I had. As you can see, I had some bread, cooked potatoes (which I ate cold from the fridge), raisins, peanut butter, oranges, and some cookies. Not the most well-balanced diet but my plans for Tuesday had included going grocery shopping to pick up meat and more fruit. Oh well! I did have enough cash to pick up some bottled water. In this case, the fact that this is largely a cash economy worked in my favor because the small stores don’t use computers; the cashier is a guy with a calculator. He adds up your purchase on that calculator, shows you the total, and you hand over cash and go.
Boredom was basically my biggest issue since I couldn’t hold class, grade homework, work on my laptop, read (it gets dark early in the winter, of course) or even play games on my phone (as I was rationing battery power in case of emergency). I did finally decide to let the laptop’s battery run down and watched some movies. Then I turned in early and was awakened when the lights popped back on around 11:30 p.m.
Blackout and its aftermath. Sorted.