We moved this week, to a brand new building. The refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer were still in boxes in the kitchen. A mountain of cardboard and styroam subsequently began to grow on every landing of the 10 floor building; on ours, the seventh, with two apartments, the pile reached 8 feet high and nearly as wide. So very, very sad to think it is all destined for the landfill on the southern coast. We have heard that huge chunks sometimes fall off and into the sea.
The brand new building has a generator, but it isn't working because apparently the exhaust blasts into the building close behind ours. One wonders if the fact that our building completely obliterates the other's Mediterranean view has any bearing on the outrage voiced by its occupants. And I'm curious how they will correct the problem...and how long it will take. The power in Beirut is generally only out for three hours a day, on a usually predictable schedule (three hours earlier each day). But with elections coming, there are more frequent outages, and at unpredictable times. This is to save electricity so that it can be run all day on election day Sunday. Go figure.
About the election: I read that 19,000 overseas Lebanese had arrived in a 48 hour period. We hear incoming planes every few minutes. They have to be here to vote--in fact they have to go to their home village to vote, so there will be a lot of coming and going. Jimmy Carter arrived this week, along with 44 members of the US-based National Democracy Institute and a delegation of 35 Arab election monitors representing 17 countries. Local monitors have found 4,000 - 10,000 forged identity cards. All businesses are closed Saturday - Monday, and schools closed Monday. We have been advised to stay in. Sigh.
This would be a good time to be well-informed, and I am frustrated that we have no TV or internet at our new place. No telephone line either, but thankfully we have a cell.
In between sweeping up tiny balls of styrofoam and unpacking boxes, I read the refrigerator manual while taking a rest. No such luck with the front-loading washing machine manual, which is all in Arabic. I tried to run a load and got shocked when I touched the wet laundry (which hadn't spun dry for some reason). It's an adventure, and there are multiple frustrations until things get worked out, but it is a lovely apartment, with a nice Mediterranean view and a welcome breeze in this humid climate.
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Things look better the next day. I have found not only my underwear but the BBC! I do like to think of being one of maybe milllions huddled around a scratchy radio to catch BBC World Service news (blip blip blip blip BLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIP, on the hour). I found it on the AM dial of the Chinese built radio I bought last year.
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