Stranded

Finally, we got electricity back even though the water is regarded unsafe. So, we survived Ike "sheltered in place" as the administration called it. This basically meant that I went from my wooden cottage to a friend's brick house. I never thought I'd ever refer to the "three piglets' tale" as authority.

As the storm hit on Saturday evening... I slept like a baby. :) I didn't even hear a thing in that fortress I was staying in. It was bad that we lost power and tap water but sine we stacked up on bottled water and non-perishable food we had no problem with the survival part. I began to be really uncomfortable when I couldn't take a shower next day. The friend hosting me decided to fill up the bath tub with water the day before, so at least we could flush the toilet the old fashion way, that is with a bucket.



Once we lost power, all the hallways turned black and we lost cellphone coverage, as well. We found out the next day that if we went up to the second floor, the neighboring towers gave enough signal to phone, text or even browse the net from my Blackberry. You may remember that this part of town is pretty far from everywhere. And the wind stripped all parks like a bulldozer so trees were everywhere cutting down powerlines and thus almost all road were closed. So we decided to study for the upcoming mid-term exams. The professor told us we would have the exams on this Thursday if there are classes on Tuesday. Unfortunately, we will have classes tomorrow.



Anyway, the resident assistant supervising the building knocked on the door sometime at night and told us he just kicked out some looters so it was safer to go upstairs where the few residents gathered. When we went upstairs we found some 10 people dozed off from the tremendous amount of booze they poured into themselves. so after an hour of laughing at them we just went back down to finally get some sleep. Sometime early morning I saw water rising up just outside my window. Now that was really scary. Luckily, it drained by the time I woke up a couple hours later.



Today, we found out that some stores were open so we jumped into the car and went around town to see what we can find. Interestingly, traffic wasn't so tough except for one part of a highway. The funny thing was that the biggest mall was open, they had fresh food (I still don't like Chinese) and even some perfume shops tried to have people linger in. I actually bought a pair old jeans that were on sale. :)

I'll be able to move back to my original place tomorrow and school will resume on Tuesday, so I guess I better go back to my readings.