putting things in perspective

I have a kitchen infested with ants...
I have been waiting all day for an A/C repairman who did not come...
I have just discovered that most of the cards I got for my birthday were partially ruined...
I have sweat dripping down my face after just a couple of minutes in my kitchen, trying to kill the ants...

BUT

I have A/C in my bedroom that mostly works

AND

I am not a sex slave wondering if someone will ever rescue me

Our worst S. Asian night

I know I said my next post would be positive, but I have not uploaded my birthday pics, yet, so you get to read about our worst S. Asian night instead.

We moved to a new flat several days ago. More on that in another post... Our new bedroom has a king-sized bed, an A/C that mostly works and a ceiling fan. The night of my birthday I woke up around 3:30am sweating. The power had gone out and it seemed it had been out for about an hour. No A/C and no fan. I was miserable and could not get back to sleep. We decided to open a couple of windows to catch a breeze and all we got were two mosquitoes that ended up biting me. So, we closed the windows and tried sleeping in our sauna bedroom. Well, the mosquito bites were itchy and because of the heat and my sweat, my eczema started acting up and itching, too. It was horrible. I really needed the sleep b/c I had to get up at 6:30am to leave for a trip to a village. I could not take it anymore and after some more whining, "I'm hot! I'm itchy! I can't sleep!", at 4:30am we decided to pack some things and go back to our tiny flat and sleep there on our twin bed since we still have the key. The power might have come back any minute, but we did not want to risk it. Fortunately, there was power and A/C at our old flat and we slept for two hours until it was time to get up and start another day.

I commented to Jerry that I am not tough enough to live here. The next night that proved to be true when I tripped/slipped (but did not fall) and ended up with a bad bruise and big bump on my leg. It was so bad that it hurts to walk!! (Incidentally, even before all of this happened, Jerry and I had been tossing around ideas on how to make me tougher after watching Die Hard 4 where Bruce Willis keeps on getting up after repeatedly getting knocked down. If it were me, once I got knocked down, I would never get up. I would just wait for Jerry to pick me up and then nurse me back to health in A/C comfort.)

Back to the power outage... the power goes out here once or twice a day - even at the 5-star hotels - for usually 30 minutes to an hour. It is annoying, but not too too bad because the lingering A/C keeps things cool and once it gets really hot and we start really sweating, the power usually comes back on. Not so the night of my birthday. We talked to our neighbor and he said the power did not come back on until 6:15am! He also said that the building had not experienced a long power outage like that since the mid-80s!!!!

WHAT have we gotten ourselves into??

I just have to keep remembering, "His grace is sufficient for me."

Argh!

It took us 50 minutes to drive to a place that should take 5 minutes to get to. First, it was the rush hour traffic, then it was the vehicles who decided to make a two-way street a one way, then it was a huge crowd of marchers blocking all the streets we wanted to turn onto, and finally it was half of those marchers who then decided to SIT ON THE GROUND in the middle of the street, forcing all the cars to reverse and find alternate routes. Jerry commented that most of ground-sitters probably did not even know why they were marching/protesting/sitting in the first place. I must say that I agree. And what were the police doing? nothing.

I will try to write something positive next time.