Surviving in Andalucia

If you want to survive living in Andalucia, in southern Spain, you're going to need, in addition to a huge amount of patience, the following:

A darn good battery backup for your computers. Every time a cloud passes overhead, our electricity for some reason shuts off — temporarily, for periods of about 10 to 30 seconds. And don't get one of the ones with an alarm. I generally know perfectly well when the power is out, and don't need my UPS honking at me in the middle of the night for these short outages. A whole lot of bottled water. This morning as I stood under the shower and turned on the water, I was doused with a new brownish variety of H2O. Seems the local water treatment plant had an accident, and large quantities of magnesium are being deposited into our water supply. We've been told the water can be used for "hygienic" purposes, but should not be consumed for prolonged periods. Yeah. A good lawyer. Looks like we'll be having our first get together with our brand new neighbors in court, as they've decided they don't like the remodeling we did to our apartment four years ago. What a way to start a relationship. I find it surprising that we have such spectacularly poor infrastructure here, given that just down the road you've got the White House replica of King Fahn from Saudi Arabia, where, until he passed on, he would come to visit every other year and spend a million Euros a day during the Summer months. Can't imagine him putting up with brown water, and flaky electricity. (Then again, maybe he had his own water and electricity systems...)

Anyway, good food, good wine, (mostly) friendly people, and 340 days of sunshine a year go a long way to making up for such inconveniences, but still.