I woke up yesterday feeling good. For the first time in a long time, nothing hurt, there was nothing to cough up or blow out or stretch out. It was aaaallll good. Crazy was sleeping, so I, quiet like a mouse, got on the internets and proceeded to send out various emails and do general internet doings. Then, suddenly, as if struck by god, the laptop beeped a pitiful beep, once, and then died. I went to investigate. Turned out the fridge had suffered a similar fate, and none of the lights would turn on. So there you have it. No electricity. At this point I'm thinking "Oh, the fuses must have blown out." So I briefly wake up Crazy to find out where the fusebox is located and go to check it out. Nope. It's not the fuses. I go back to Crazy and inform her that we must have not paid the electricity bill because the electricity has been turned off. Crazy gets full-on angry and goes to check on the fusebox herself. I follow her and only at this point do I notice that none of the hallway lights are on either. Oh! Duh! This is the Soviet Union, where they just randomly turn off your electricity wheather you've paid your bill or not. Truth be told, it kind of reminded me of my childhood, so it was a bit nostalgic at the same time.
As it turned out, one of the apartments in our building was being renovated, and the Dagistani gentlemen working on the project decided to use enough power tools to literally set the electrical board for the entire building on fire. So technically, no one turned off our electricity. It turned itself off. It also took the heat with it for some reason. It then proceeded to stay off for the rest of the day. Welcome back to the U.S.S.R!
I also had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of this very nice young Russian girl a few days ago, who explained to me that no one gets paid here until they've been at a job for at least a month, and sometimes even then you kind of have to beg your boss to pay you. So no salary yet. Welcome back to the U.S.S.R!
On a positive note, I went to get some personal grooming done in the nature of waxing, and to my total surprise discovered that they use a completely different kind of wax here that doesn't rip of ten layers of your skin along with the hair. I was surprised because I generally expect everything here to be like in the U.S. only crappier. And yet here it was. Something like in the U.S. only better. They use some kind of wax from Spain here that's painless and not sticky. Welcome back to Europe!
It's not all bad though. As I've said before, there is always this lovely element of the unexpected in this country. You wake up one morning thinking that you're going to spend your whole Sunday lazily lounging around the apartment with a book, but because your electricity and heat unexpectedly get turned off, instead, you get forced out of the apartment and into a nice Japanese restaurant and then a gazillion photography exhibitions. Life is just nicer and more productive this way, so I'm not really complaining.
As it turned out, one of the apartments in our building was being renovated, and the Dagistani gentlemen working on the project decided to use enough power tools to literally set the electrical board for the entire building on fire. So technically, no one turned off our electricity. It turned itself off. It also took the heat with it for some reason. It then proceeded to stay off for the rest of the day. Welcome back to the U.S.S.R!
I also had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of this very nice young Russian girl a few days ago, who explained to me that no one gets paid here until they've been at a job for at least a month, and sometimes even then you kind of have to beg your boss to pay you. So no salary yet. Welcome back to the U.S.S.R!
On a positive note, I went to get some personal grooming done in the nature of waxing, and to my total surprise discovered that they use a completely different kind of wax here that doesn't rip of ten layers of your skin along with the hair. I was surprised because I generally expect everything here to be like in the U.S. only crappier. And yet here it was. Something like in the U.S. only better. They use some kind of wax from Spain here that's painless and not sticky. Welcome back to Europe!
It's not all bad though. As I've said before, there is always this lovely element of the unexpected in this country. You wake up one morning thinking that you're going to spend your whole Sunday lazily lounging around the apartment with a book, but because your electricity and heat unexpectedly get turned off, instead, you get forced out of the apartment and into a nice Japanese restaurant and then a gazillion photography exhibitions. Life is just nicer and more productive this way, so I'm not really complaining.
2 comments:
Hurray for Spain! Actually, I was first introduced to waxing (which never worked for me) by a Romanian co-worker of my mother's (in NY, who proceeded to lure me to her apartment, wrestle me down to her kitchen floor, wrestle my pants off me and use some of the bad, US wax on my legs. I was less than greatful...
Yeah, no, that kind of waxing is painful as all hell. I actually get my upper lip waxed on the regular, so that used to be really painful. But here, yay for spain indeed, it's not.
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