load shedding

The 2-3 electrical outages every day are the way that Bangladesh deals with not having enough electricity and is called load shedding. If there is a predictable rotation, I'm not sure what it is. So we lose electricity usually once in the morning, once later in the afternoon and usually between 8 and 10 pm. Sometimes it's for an hour or so, sometimes a little longer. We must be on a dividing line because our back neighbors have electricity when we don't, but the front ones are out when we are.

Last night I was talking to Shaked and Nitzan in LA when the outage hit. Usually I'm ok about the lack of electricity, but sometimes it's a little harder to accept. We do have a flashlight that sits on our head, like a miner's helmet, so I can just go on reading or doing whatever, but obviously no internet. Lately our backup generator which provides one light and fan has also been out. sigh.

Yesterday was mostly productive. I stayed home (sometimes I think I need that after a particularly full and intense day) and worked on syllabi and cello acquisition. I finally talked to the owner of the store in Kolkata and he does have cellos available within our price range. Hope that Matan finds a good one. I think we're going to fly out next Thursday afternoon, spend Friday looking at cellos and fly back Saturday morning. Our backup, if the cello isn't allowed on the flight even if we buy a ticket for it, will be to take a bus on Sunday. Feels like a lot of uncertainty -- but I'm working my way through it. I need to be flexible about taking a bit of information from one source (there are busses, but no bus station address) and then go to a map and start searching for the bus station that goes with that bus company name. Also spent some time tracking down other possible cello sources in Dhaka, but people seem to have their cellos having brought them from somewhere else.

I also found a Bangla language and culture course starting on Sunday. It runs 4 weeks, 8-10am, 5 days a week. I can sign up for one month at a time. This is really exciting. They also have city tours and information about holidays, politics, religion.

Other than that -- Matan is still limping and I'm trying to figure out when to say, yes, you need to see a doctor. There will be one at his school tomorrow, so I think that's what I'm going to insist on. Hard to tell because he's still doing everything at school (like playing baseball and volleyball practice).

A different kind of load shedding -- not that I've lost weight (though I probably have), but the exercise I'm getting in walking and going up 5 flights of stairs, along with doing laundry by hand, seems to help my back a lot. Or maybe it's the very thin mattress on slats. In other words, so far, I seem to wake up a lot more limber! Cheers!