Chiriquí Chatter

About 4:15 PM yesterday both of my PC’s UPSs started screaming, the fan died and the television went off. It was a power outage in David. As it turns out it was only in our neighborhood.

Across the street and toward El Rey from the apartment building I have taken photos of many times they were apparently doing some work. They had a large crane that was moving a huge steel beam and they must have lost control of the beam.

I went down to El Rey and saw that the street was blocked off. I went a different way and purchased my items and before I left the El Rey parking lot I walked down and took photos of the accident.

Here is a photo showing the crane in the background and the beam lying across the road after crushing the concrete block fence. I am not sure what the beam is for. Maybe in a day or two I will get some more photos and they will explain its intent.

Here you can see the fellow up the poll working on the electric lines that had been pulled down.

This last photo is looking down the intersecting street to the one running in front of the apartment building. It is just lucky that there wasn’t a car at the intersection waiting to cross when the accident happened of its roof might have looked like the fence. I doubt seriously that there was any security monitoring traffic while the work was going on.

While I was at the site I asked how long they thought it would be before service was returned. They said it would be around 11:00 PM. That was far too long to wait in a dark apartment. Note to self – pick up some flashlights at PriceSmart.

With no TV, no fan, no Internet it seemed like a good decision to go out to eat and then to a movie. I left around 7:30 PM and headed to the restaurant. My first thought was KFC. When I got there, I saw that it was overflowing with people. I guess the combination of Saturday night and people getting their food fix before heading to Dolega for the water festivities was the reason.

Since I was looking for fast food, I headed to McDonalds. It was full, but handled the crowd faster. The streets were full of cars. I guess it has been a while since I was out at night or it was just the effect of Carnival.

After eating my gourmet dinner, I went to Chiriquí Mall to see Déjávu. It was a very entertaining film with Denzel Washington. I considered A Night at The Museum, but passed on that one. A friend of mine had seen it at the theater next to Hotel Gran National and it was in Spanish there. At the mall it was in English with subtitles. Make a note that both theaters do not always show the same movies in the same format.

Well, as you can see, my service is back and was on when I returned from the theater. According to the clocks, it appeared to have returned a little after 11:00 PM. They must have given me a pretty good estimate. I am back up and running with the exception that my Linux PC is not seeing my keyboard that comes via my switch. I hope that it wasn’t damaged when the power went put. If it isn’t one thing its another. But one PC out of two isn’t bad.

Tags: Neighborhood