Looking forward to living closer to the ground

As I typed the last post the building fire alarm went off!  It wasn't your standard building fire alarm; it never is.  This one started with some weird static noise pulsating thru the speaker in the ceiling before rolling into a siren sound and then stopped as quickly as it started.  I'm on the 18th floor.

This isn't my first experience with this; I quickly and calmly put on my shoes, grabbed my purse that has my credit cards and passport and was prepared to unplug the laptop all before the noise stopped.

I paused, as I always do to see if they are going to announce anything and then ran to the door to see if anyone else on the floor is fleeing.

I then call down to reception; "Ring, ring, ring, ring, riiiiiiiiing, Ring, ring, ring, ring..."

No answer.  I look out the window to see if there is any trouble on the faces of the workers that are all around the building; the people here would rather see death and destruction unfold before their eyes than see the birth of their own child or save their own tails.

Workers in the equipment yard

workers on the side of a building & many people on the ground

workers in the building looking eye to eye w/ me

security guard at the base of the building

All the workers look the same so I call downstairs again, no one wants to run down 18flights of stairs for nothing!   Someone answers and in her thick accent I ascertain that there is no emergency, just an electricity blip, they have an engineer working on it.... "Don't worry Madam, no problem"

I put my purse down and open my computer to share...

It's official now, every building we have ever "lived in" over here has has at least one false alarm.  We have lived anywhere between the 9th and the 27th floor, they almost always happen at night or in the wee hours of the morning and Mark has only been home for one.  It always scares the living shit out of you and they never come over the loud speaker to let everyone know it was a false alarm, they just go about their day while everyone else in the building (at least me) are left to wonder if today is "the day".  Well they are all on the ground floor!!  They can just walk right out, "maafi mushkila" (no problem).  

I'm going to go pay good money for a bad coffee and buy some laundry detergent so I can wash our clothes and pack up for our trip home on Fri.

See you soon!

xoxoxxo