Electricity... blessing and a curse

The dependency upon electricity is such a blessing... and a curse! Monday was Cinco de Mayo, and seeing that there are lots of Americans here who are big fans of Mexican food, I hosted a party to celebrate that wonderful Mexican-American holiday! And yes it is a holiday for both... do some research... we reenacted the whole battle and such... good times! Anyway back to electricity... so I had come home at lunch to fix something to eat, and get stuff ready for the party and while I was there my electricity went off. This was around 2:00 in the afternoon... I had a pot of tea on the stove steeping, and lettuce sitting in the permanganate sulfate - the stuff you have to soak fruits and veggies in to make them safe to eat raw, then wash in filtered water... well no electricity equals no filtered water. So I used like a whole bottle of water to make the rest of the tea and to sort of rinse the purple off the lettuce to stick in the fridge... no biggie I'm not worried because the electricity has never stayed off too long, it will be back on by the time I'm home from work, or so I think. and I'm still ok using that bottle of water because I have 2 more in the fridge, keeping in mind the cardinal rule of always have 3 litres of water on hand per person for just in case. I'm only left with 2 but that's ok because power will be back on soon.
So I get home from work and what's the first thing i notice?? No electricity still! yuck! So one of the other girls had walked home with me, because of the party... so she prys about it, that L we need electricity, lol! Still nothing. All through party nothing, turned on 1 fan, but waited as long as possible to turn on a light... I do have a battery backup that runs just a few things, not my fridge! So party gets over, street lights are on, but still Laura has no power. then I noticed that the light outside my door was on... hold the phone! I should have power, so I go upstairs... yes they have power. so my landlord comes downstairs to check it out... he can't diagnose the problem. So I say "well i'm ok without it i'm just worried about my fridge." he wants to know if there's anything in there i'd like to put in their fridge... umm yeah some beef, but i can't very well ask that of a H'ndu, so I say no it's ok. agghhh!!! electricity won't be back in my apt till tomorrow at least when he can get the electrician here, silly electrician wouldn't answer his phone at 10:15pm when landlord called him, silly huh!! meanwhile door got opened a lot throughout and there were tons of mosquitos all around my apartment just biting me away!!
Went to bed around 11... only to wake up around 2 because I was so freakin hot!! My fan was dying of juice, slowing down, so I knew my battery back-up was gonna go at any minute. I laid in bed trying to decide what to do. That's when I got the great idea of a wet washcloth. So that cooled me down a little bit, but I had a new worry... I was itching in different places all over my body. The door got opened a lot, and although I do have little bug killers, but they have to be plugged in to work, so they weren't really working. I couldn't begin to count how many mosquito bites I had by this point. I couldn't fall back asleep so I gave up on sleep around 3 and picked up the ipod to watch a movie. Later I counted around 15 bites... To say this was a miserable night would be putting it mildly!
Turns out the problem with my electricity wasn't anything an electrician could fix... it was in the pole which then became a government problem, so my landlord went and bribed a govt person to come and fix it... I now have electricity, but lost some food in the outage. I know, I know, it could be worse! But take this into account along with stomach acting up last week and I completely recognize that I'm living in a foreign country!!! =)