First day in Cairo without human contact since arriving (around 50ish days now). Also first day without contending with house fixups. Just me, my music, and drawing table.
Penciled in half a page of TSG so far today and figured out that I have around 30ish [uninterrupted] days' worth of work to bring TSG to a close once and for all. The “uninterrupted” bit is the tricky part, for days like today are evidently extremely hard to come by, at least until all work on the house is complete.
Two long trenches cut through my place now, the result of a plumbing job. Already got the tiles to cover them up, but don't want to do that before I'm through with the electric work which will involve tearing into the walls. No drywall around these parts, it's all brick and concrete, so it's bound to result in a big mess. Four days' worth of a big mess to be precise.
Electrician was scheduled for this morning, but he never showed up and wouldn't even answer his phone. Dude just threw away a big payday for some reason. By the time he called back, I'd already given the job to someone else, who comes through end of the week.
That's many more days than I would've liked to be living with these trenches in the house. Cairo's the kind of place that tests your limits in more ways than one.
Not sure why big bulky A3-sized printer/scanner/fax workstations are far more easy to come by than straight up A3 flatbed scanners. I've looked everywhere since arriving and couldn't find a single one, so I had no choice but to get me the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730 Wide Format. Big bastard of a thing. Twisted by ankle hauling it down the stairs to the studio last night, almost fell over but caught myself, stood my ground, and landed with all that weight on said twisted ankle instead.
I am now incapable of standing. Getting old sucks.
And I finally have internet.
No fiber optics in my neighborhood, so I had to apply for a phone line. Once that was finally installed, I applied for a wired DSL connection, once I got that up and running, it became apparent that having a connection isn't so different from not having one at all. It's that bad.
But an electrician who was here to work on something else entirely pointed out to me that all the phone wires in the building were aluminum!
So until I get those replaced with copper, I went ahead and got myself a 5G wireless DSL. It's capped at 140 GB a month, but it's smooth as butter and I'm no longer isolated. Installing it is also a breeze. You just go to the store, pay for it, bring it home with you and plug it in. Wish I'd done this from the get-go.
I haven't read a word, touched a pencil, or even looked at email since getting here. All I've been doing is getting the place in just enough of a working order to be able to sleep, shit, shower and work. Still no kitchen installed, still unclear when that'll happen, as there's a whole bunch of plumbing and wiring that needs getting redone first.
I imagine I should be able to get back to the drawing board in a couple days regardless.🤞
As I dismantle my workspace and pack up my life (and realize I own way more stuff than I'd like to admit), I'm noticing an uptick in “for sale” and “for rent” signs pop up around the neighborhood. Willing to bet this is just the beginning, and many of these places will remain vacant for many years to come, unless prices are brought down to a tenth of where they are now. This is something that will of course not happen given that very few of these places are owned outright; Most home-owners are in fact beholden to banks and the unreasonably high mortgage-payments they're entitled to.
The American crash is a-comin'.
Computer decided to stop working a couple weeks back and only managed to get it back online today. Also happen to be going through another one of those major life upendings.
Both Mythomatic and Garage.Ganzeer taken offline in the meantime. Newsletter likely to commence before they do.
Here's a link to the web edition of the latest RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 219: The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us.
In other news, one of my bookshelves made the Shelfies newsletter. Really delightful initiative by authors Jared Shurin and Lavie Tidhar.
A new RESTRICTED FREQUENCY is scheduled. Titled The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us, it goes out in about 15 hours.
Here's the link to the previous RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 218: Between Venice, Rome, and Cairo
