December 30, 2012

Finally, a quiet day in the apartment with only a brief interlude when first the cable guy showed up to connect the service and then the landlady came by bearing a small microwave and the router to get the Internet service connected. Money in hand, she left again and returned to get me set up for good before leaving for Issyk-Kul Lake where she would be greeting the new year with a group of friends.

Although she claimed her brother would be coming along with the electrician to solve the issue of a lack of outlets to plug appliances into in the kitchen and other small nuisances, the guy didn’t show up at all. It was fine with me as I already had the things that really counted at this point: Internet access, a microwave to heat my meals and access to CNN for the news.

The cable guy informed me I’d need to pay about $100.00 dollars to buy a special box that could convert almost any channel into the English language and then about $10.00 a month for the continuous service. He provided a list of the channels offered and I saw nothing of interest except for the BBC and EuroNews. It hardly seems worth it. I really don’t understand why satellite television is not more widely available here as it used to be in Tajikistan where I had access to three channels in Spanish and at least a dozen in English.

When it came time for lunch, I brought out the meal from the Soho Club, slices of beef covered with some kind of white sauce and mushrooms with a side order of white rice, and added part of the sauce Asel brought me for the house warming party. I let the whole thing simmer for a while to soften the meat and then served with some for the Korean salads I had in the fridge. It turned out to be a delicious meal.

Watched CNN recount of the most compelling stories of the year 2012 and thought they had done an extremely lousy job of it. Only superficial coverage, shallow assessment and talking heads for the most part. Bored with it, I switched to reading a book, “The Giver”, which I had borrowed from the Forum offices as I recalled it was a mandatory read at Forest High School the year I was unfortunate enough to have to teach there.