(no subject)

[muckefuck]

What would it be like, I wonder, to work in a building that didn't loose power several times a year and flood after every good rain? It seems to have mostly dried out, though there is still a large puddle blocking the door downstairs. My coworker was remarking that it had "never looked so clean" down there because a thin layer of silt was deposited in Nilotic fashion concealing all flaws in the floor. Fortunately, we long ago learned not to file anything on the lowermost shelves so nothing of ours was damaged. But, really, what the hell? On the other hand, they're finally fixing the roof after thirty years of leaks, so I suppose there's always hope the basement will be next.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

there's plenty of overhead power cables in England, though not many inside urban areas, now I think about it. There are fewer hurricanes in Europe, though, which might be more to the point - unless you're in Germany or Switzerland I doubt you can point to obviously better infrastructure than the US.

The lights would always go out during the Christmas storms in Cornwall and we'd cook on the Aga, or once, memorably, over the fire in the grate - my favourite part of Christmas, honestly. Only after I moved to a succession of major urban centres did I come to see power outages as miserable or threatening rather than fun, and the Big Outage of 2003 was the first time I really felt worried by one. By that time I'd grown used to thinking of Manhattan as a bad place to be stuck.