Off-electricity

Sitting in my new flat around 5 o’clock, with tea and a candle, in the middle of the daily 3-hours electricity outage, offline anyway, because the internet hasn’t been installed yet. The times of the outage are changing and have a predicted rhythm: 6-9, 9-12, 12-15 or 15-18 h backwards, not in the night. Every quarter in Beirut has up to 3 hours every day, outside Beirut even up to 6 hours. And if you aren’t lucky and yourself, your house or institution has not an own generator, you find yourself without the noise of the fridge, without light and elevator. And you start watching how much energy your computer has still left, realize that you should have loaded your mobile before…
Coming from outside I wonder, why this little country isn’t able to supply electricity all day long. Especially if there seams to be a lot of money around, if you’re watching the big fancy cars driving through the streets and all the new hyper modern buildings being constructed… I’ve been told that the electricity problem exists since the July war 2006, before it was only a casual problem. But I also heard that this isn’t the only reason – it has been more than 3 years now… – and some people make money out of it. Something still to be explained. I’ll keep on the track.
For the moment I need to remember the times to organize my daily life a bit according to them. Now it’s only ten minutes left. I’ll plug in my mobile first and also the connector for the water pump. What else?
I’ll smoke a cigarette meanwhile on the dark balcony. Since I am in Beirut I suddenly became a real smoker again, Gitanes blondes my new friends…
And then it’s suddenly back, 2 minutes to 6 o’clock, the freezer is noisy again and I open my eyes a bit more.