My wife and I had the unique opportunity to live and work in Myanmar for about 6 months in 2004. It was the experience of a lifetime and one that I thought worth sharing with Global Expats. While I was there I wrote a Travel Log detailing our experiences.
We were hired to teach English as a Second Language at ILBC (International Language and Business Center) which is a highly regarding educational institution within Burma. It caters largely to the military's children. We were there totally legally on work visas.
What follows is Travel Log 2 in a series of 3 written 5/18/04. Hope you enjoy it!
P.S. Think of downtown Baghdad today as you read this.
5/18/04
ELECTRICITY
I want to write today around the theme of electricity. I'm motivated to write about this today because we were informed late yesterday afternoon that the electricity at school would be off all day today due to the generator being moved. Why couldn't this be done on a Saturday or Sunday? Answer: Because!!
Our school, you see, operates solely on its own private generator - city power supply is too unreliable. Of course nothing sensible like cancelling school could be done either so here I am, outside, under the covered gym, trying to capture what little breeze there is on this hot, muggy day. I have discarded my shirt and tie and so far am managing to stay relatively cool. It's only 8:50am however. I've got to teach this afternoon. Luckily it's the kids swimming day so they'll have their swimming suits. I remembered to bring mine too. Might have to be a water classroom day!!
Power, or the lack of it, is an ever present fact of existence in Myanmar. As you walk the streets of downtown Yangoon, the capital, you can here the loud buzz of generators emanating from every corner. At night checkerboard outages can be seen across the city nightscape.
Although the apartment building where we live has its own generator, it is used just for backup, relying on city power for most of its needs. It is common, therefore, for power surges to occur 20 - 30 times each day; each one resulting in all appliances and lights fading into extinction. Of course this requires one to go around and reset air conditioners, VCR's, VCD's and computers. It makes for a relaxing evening especially when trying to watch a movie or see the news.
To add further intrigue and convenience to this system, in the times when power is on, only selected things within our apartment work at any given time. One night the air-con will work in the bedrooms, but not in the living room. On other nights just the opposite is true.
Many nights we go to sleep with our air-con on only to have it click off during the night and us waking up drenched in sweat. Attempting to sleep with the windows open usually results in smoke from a nearby field or house wafting through the room. Of course that was only during the recently ended hot season. Now that the rainy season has begun we have switched to rain blowing through the bedroom.
Other curious quirks occur randomly throughout our place also. On some days the plug-in for the rice maker decides not to give power. All else is OK. About once a week the doorbell rings when we turn on the hallway light. All other times it doesn't.
Our TV reception consists of one English channel - BBC News. It often doesn't work at all and when it does has a very fuzzy picture and scratchy sound quality. About half the time there is no picture at all - only the scratchy sound.
For about 6 weeks we had the luxury of having a VCD player to watch movies on. It broke down 2 weeks ago. For some reason it started to spin at varying speeds when the lid was closed but never fast enough to play the VCD. However, when you opened the lid the disc took off like a bat out of hell the opposite direction. We are now trying to get it repaired.
Before attempting to plug in my Apple laptop, I thoroughly investigated and purchased an expensive surge protector device. So far, fingers crossed, it is weathering the storm and functioning perfectly.
That is our personal story of electric woe. Others we work with aren't quite so lucky. The apartment our supervisor lives in has his power outages based on a schedule. Basically 24 hours on and 24 hours off.
His neighbors have resorted to using personal generators which are on the balconies on either side of his apartment. During power outages he enjoys stereo generator noise complemented with the fragrance of diesel fumes.
Hitting his tolerance limit, he decided to take up the issue with the apartment manager. Of course nothing could be done about the generators, but they did provide an extra bed allowing him and his wife to rotate between bedrooms to mitigate the stench and noise.
They have resorted to a converter system of power backup which is basically some large batteries that charge during power times to be used during outages. This allows them to run a fan, 1 light and a TV. It does not provide enough energy to run the refrigerator however. As you can imagine, food storage is quite a challenge to say the least.
I could go on and on with electric tales. Suffice it to say I now step into elevators with a healthy dose of trepidation. So far, knock on wood, I haven't gotten stuck!
Any of you ever-ready durracell die hards want to come visit?