BANG!

My dira is suddenly plunged into total darkness: the main fuse has blown for the 4,000th time this week. And it's only Sunday night.

You'd think that we'd be used to it by now, but every time the power blows, it somehow still comes as a rude, unexpected shock (har!) to everyone. And as the guys perform various rituals related to getting the power going again, I begin to think if there is anything I can do about the situation.

I suppose I could write a really nasty post about the situation. It wouldn't help matters much, but it would definitely help me blow off some steam, although considering how cold it is these days, I don't think I could afford any. Besides, there is always the lashon hara aspect of things; in fact, this is actually my third attempt at writing this post - I scrapped the first two drafts despite putting a lot of hard work into them, because I was worried that they contained too much negative information. So let's see if I can try to give a somewhat impartial analysis of the problem:

The main fuse has been blowing steadily for at least the past two months. Nighttime is bitterly cold these days, and apparently, the building's power supply can't handle all the heaters in the dira. It is getting to the point where I am tempted to tape the breaker into the "ON" position, fire hazard or no fire hazard. Worst comes to worst, the wires will catch fire, which will probably make the dira a lot warmer than it is now.

See, the problem is that our main breaker has a capacity of 40 Amps. In laymen's terms, that is a lot of electricity for a one-family dwelling, perhaps, but a pitifully small amount for 21 people spread out across 3 floors. Four electricians have allegedly been here already, and they all claim there is no way to increase the amount of incoming electricity without the cooperation of the electric company. The electric company, in turn, refuses to cooperate because a good deal of the dira consists of (surprise!) an illegal extension.

Meanwhile, pretty much everything here operates on electricity - the lights, the heaters, the hot water boiler, some people's brains, etc. - so we naturally have a bit of a problem. You know how those old-fashioned car radios had a row of buttons that could have no two buttons pushed in at once - whenever you pushed one, all the others would pop out? That's kind of what it's like in my dira: we can have lights, heat, or hot water, but we can't have two of them at the same time. The heat and hot water in particular do not coexist well; if you try turning on the hot water heater (or "dude", as it's called in this country) while too many heaters are on, then BANG! - you can guess what happens next.

The temperature in the dira is also not helped much by the fact that the window above my bed is faulty: thanks to the brilliance of the rocket scientist who installed it, I have a window frame that is about two inches narrower than the opening it is supposed to fill, and that gap lets in an awful lot of cold air. It is slated to be fixed (like everything else around here) sometime during the next century, and in the meantime I have taken to stuffing the gap with all sorts of otherwise useless garbage - towels, plastic bags, politicians, etc. It doesn't really help much, but it's the best I can do for now.

Perhaps the problem wouldn't be so bad if people here had common sense. But simple ideas like turning off your heater - or at least putting it on a lower setting - before turning on the hot water boiler just doesn't seem to occur to some people. "What," they say, "are you crazy?! I should shut off my heater?! It's WINTER, man!"

I've all but given up on trying to educate these people. I've also all but given up on trying to get the yeshiva to do anything about the problem - they claim they're working on it, and I believe them, although I frankly don't know why I do. Somehow, I get the sinking feeling that if this were, say, the Beis Medrash, it would have been fixed ages ago, by hook or by crook. But in the mean time, I'm just gonna have to learn to live with--

BANG!

Sigh. Where's my flashlight?