FRIDAY 02/19/10
I headed to the center to meet a few attorneys to discuss ABIL and then went down to Puerto Madero (waterfront) to have some lunch. The restaurants didn’t open for an hour, so I finished the book that I had been reading about the “desaparecidos” (the Argentines who went “missing” during the dictatorship from 1976-1983) while sitting partly shaded on a park bench on the boardwalk. After lunch, I went home, as the clouds started to roll in.
The rain began around 5:30 pm, and our street converted into a river again within about half an hour. This time, however, the apartment stayed dry (aside from the leaking room).
(our street)
(our street)
(Tyrone)
Then, at 7:00 pm, as I was talking on Skype with my grandma, the power went out. Tyrone said it had happened before I moved in, and it only lasted an hour or so. So, we did what we could with the dimming daylight and conservation of our electronics. We each took little naps – just to pass the time, since we couldn’t leave the house with the mixture of rain and sewer water streaming down the street. Around 8:30 pm, we both agreed that we were too dependent on electricity and needed to get out of the house, as the air was starting to get stuffier and the heat was rising without our fans. So, we trekked out in search of some dinner (the street had drained by this point). Not only was it a challenge finding a restaurant that had electricity, but one that was open at 8:30 pm – since most open around 9:00 or 9:30 pm for dinner. We did find one, had a mediocre meal, and returned home in hopes of the lights being back on. Our excitement started growing with each block closer that had electricity…we turned the corner of our block, and there was light!...but not in our building. We went in just completely let down, and both agreed that we couldn’t sit in the apartment, and neither of us was tired enough to go to bed at 11:00 pm. So, we went on a quest for candles. As we went to the main intersection, Santa Fe and Juan B. Justo (each street is about 8 lanes wide), all power was out, there were news crews all around, and police directing traffic. Turns out we weren’t the only ones without electricity. We walked around to find cars pushed up against trees and buildings from the water pressure and people just wandering in the same aimless direction as ourselves.
(cars against trees)
(car against building)
(water randomly coming out of building)
(one of the very few drains that we saw)
Needless to say, nobody had candles. We went back to the house around 11:30 pm and decided to watch a movie as long as we could before my computer ran out of batteries. Just as Tyrone was mentioning how depressing it would be if we woke up in the morning and the lights still hadn’t come on, there was a flicker of light, the air started to move again from our fans, and we had electricity! We let out a joyous shout and both immediately retreated to our respective rooms to catch up on the 5 hours that we had gone without our precious plugged in devices.
It turns out that a great deal of Buenos Aires was out of electricity that night, and ours wasn’t the only area to get flooded, ‘though it was one of the worst parts. I guess I’ll take the occasional flood to many feet of snow.
I headed to the center to meet a few attorneys to discuss ABIL and then went down to Puerto Madero (waterfront) to have some lunch. The restaurants didn’t open for an hour, so I finished the book that I had been reading about the “desaparecidos” (the Argentines who went “missing” during the dictatorship from 1976-1983) while sitting partly shaded on a park bench on the boardwalk. After lunch, I went home, as the clouds started to roll in.
The rain began around 5:30 pm, and our street converted into a river again within about half an hour. This time, however, the apartment stayed dry (aside from the leaking room).
(our street)
(our street)
(Tyrone)
Then, at 7:00 pm, as I was talking on Skype with my grandma, the power went out. Tyrone said it had happened before I moved in, and it only lasted an hour or so. So, we did what we could with the dimming daylight and conservation of our electronics. We each took little naps – just to pass the time, since we couldn’t leave the house with the mixture of rain and sewer water streaming down the street. Around 8:30 pm, we both agreed that we were too dependent on electricity and needed to get out of the house, as the air was starting to get stuffier and the heat was rising without our fans. So, we trekked out in search of some dinner (the street had drained by this point). Not only was it a challenge finding a restaurant that had electricity, but one that was open at 8:30 pm – since most open around 9:00 or 9:30 pm for dinner. We did find one, had a mediocre meal, and returned home in hopes of the lights being back on. Our excitement started growing with each block closer that had electricity…we turned the corner of our block, and there was light!...but not in our building. We went in just completely let down, and both agreed that we couldn’t sit in the apartment, and neither of us was tired enough to go to bed at 11:00 pm. So, we went on a quest for candles. As we went to the main intersection, Santa Fe and Juan B. Justo (each street is about 8 lanes wide), all power was out, there were news crews all around, and police directing traffic. Turns out we weren’t the only ones without electricity. We walked around to find cars pushed up against trees and buildings from the water pressure and people just wandering in the same aimless direction as ourselves.
(cars against trees)
(car against building)
(water randomly coming out of building)
(one of the very few drains that we saw)
Needless to say, nobody had candles. We went back to the house around 11:30 pm and decided to watch a movie as long as we could before my computer ran out of batteries. Just as Tyrone was mentioning how depressing it would be if we woke up in the morning and the lights still hadn’t come on, there was a flicker of light, the air started to move again from our fans, and we had electricity! We let out a joyous shout and both immediately retreated to our respective rooms to catch up on the 5 hours that we had gone without our precious plugged in devices.
It turns out that a great deal of Buenos Aires was out of electricity that night, and ours wasn’t the only area to get flooded, ‘though it was one of the worst parts. I guess I’ll take the occasional flood to many feet of snow.
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