It is 10:07 a.m. and L\u00e1zaro looks sideways at the living room clock. \u201cThey\u2019re already giving us seven minutes,\u201d he says, but instead of joy, his words reveal anguish.<\/p>\n
Five minutes later, his discomfort is evident. He\u2019s gone back to looking at the clock on the wall several times, at least once a minute, and he can barely sit on the couch and keep up with the conversation we\u2019re trying to have.<\/p>\n
Another five minutes go by before he finally gets up and he starts pacing nervously around the room. His eyes return again and again to the desperate clock hands and his anxiety ends up infecting me, pushing me into the agonizing pursuit of the minute hand.<\/p>\n
Finally, at 10:18 in the morning the power goes out<\/strong><\/a>. Suddenly, the echo of the building\u2019s turbine goes out, as does the voice of Rudy La Scala, who for a long time had been trying to torment me from a neighboring apartment. L\u00e1zaro lets out a sigh of relief and his expression returns to its usual affability.<\/p>\n \u201cAt last, compadre,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI just can\u2019t stand uncertainty. If they always turned it off at 10:00, which is for when it\u2019s programmed, it would be much better. Because then I don\u2019t enjoy those extra minutes, I spend them waiting for the damn power cut and, furthermore, it\u2019s not that they actually give you minutes, because later they often charge you. Let\u2019s see when they turn it on today.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like he says,\u201d adds Maritza, L\u00e1zaro\u2019s wife, who enters the room with three steaming cups of coffee. She also sits on the sofa and before taking the first sip of her cup, she tells me that she always watches the soap opera they put on at 2:00 in the afternoon \u2014 \u201cwhichever it is, it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s repeated\u201d \u2014, but that when it\u2019s \u201cthe solidarity\u201d power cut she can almost never see it from the beginning because \u201cthe electricity is turned on either ten minutes or half an hour later, especially when it\u2019s after 10:00.\u201d<\/p>\n I know exactly what they are talking about. We are neighbors and we share the same block for power outages, the third of the four in which Havana<\/strong><\/a> is divided for scheduled blackouts, officially four hours a day, between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. In addition, the planning announced weekly by the Havana Electric Company also contemplates outages at night, rotating as well as during the day, and lasting six hours, between 6:00 and 12:00 p.m., although these do not always last as long and, even may not occur if there are no \u201cunforeseen outages\u201d of generating plants in the country and the electricity deficit at that time does not reach high levels, something, however, quite unusual these days.<\/p>\n