No Water

12:03 AM

The entire day yesterday (Saturday), I didn't have any water, since around Friday at noon. I checked the website that runs my water service, and several areas have been affected. According to the article, some contractors damaged a 54 inch diameter pipe, and now some cities and areas don't have any water. This is the first time that I checked the website for any service interruptions, whereas I've experienced this dozens of times, probably totaling over 50 days without water, over the past 4 years I've lived in Puerto Rico, and I just lived with it. Ditto with the electricity, sometimes we just don't have any electricity for a few days or even a couple of weeks. Sometimes the Internet also goes out for a few days. All true stuff.

It doesn't matter where you live on the island either. I live in the capital of San Juan, a very populated city. I've also met a lot of people on the island, and it doesn't matter who or where, we all experience these issues.

My ex-gf from a few years ago in 2021, I remember the entire island having the blackout that lasted a day or two or longer, I don't remember it that well since it was a while back. She didn't even text me once during that time to ask if I was okay or anything. I remember crying that night due to the loneliness, not because of the power being out, but because I had to live alone and experience it alone. The entire island had no power though.

But yeah, due to these frequent water issues, I have many gallons of water saved up at home, around 30-40 gallons, not that I've counted. It takes 2-3 gallons to flush the toilet one time, so I only flush if I do a number two. I take off the toilet cover and dump these gallons of water in there. I don't drink any of this water that I've saved up, I would not declare them safe to drink, since they just sit in storage for years. I try to not even brush my teeth with them, as they have a very strong plastic taste. I wonder if other people also have water saved up.

For electricity, there is really nothing we can do about it if it goes out. I have some large batteries that are supposed to hold like 800 minutes of laptop battery power or something and can charge any device. They are pretty massive, weighing like 30 pounds each, but they don't work as advertised. One of them broke, can't even store any power, and I have never used it once where it worked, it just never worked since I got it. The other one, I can only charge a phone and laptop on it for like 30 minutes to an hour, before it dies. Terrible products. So if the electricity goes out, there's nothing I can do about it.

With the Internet, I've thought about cancelling my service and just getting one of those portable Internet services. I just don't know how well they work and if it's reliable. Though my current Internet also goes out a lot, so it might not be much worse.

What's interesting is I've never experienced any power or water interruptions even once in the United States. The area where my parents live, all the cables are underground too. All of the electricity and Internet fiber cables, all of the gas pipes, all of the water cables, everything is underground. I don't even know how they do maintenance on those things, but there has never been any service interruptions. The Internet did go down one time, but that was because the router broke or something, I don't know what happened there, but the ISP was able to fix it within the next day. It's just a different world.

Having no electricity, Internet, water, is the norm though. I don't mind missing out on these things for days at a time, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't know why anyone complains about most things, because nearly everything is a minor problem. Right now I can't shower at all, nor can I easily use the bathroom, or wash my hands, or brush my teeth. I can still do these things, but with added difficulty since I have to transfer gallons of water to the toilet tank, and I have to gather clean water for my tooth brushing. I can't wash the dishes, except with the storage water. It's still all just meh, to be honest, none of it is a big deal.

The funny thing is that people will use these kinds of inconveniences to hurt and kill animals. Even without any luxuries, I still don't eat any meat or animal products. Even when I was 19 in college, as a broke, unemployed, colored immigrant from a third world country, obese, in debt, and lots of other victimhood cards I could play, I was still vegan. Even when I got my first job, for several years the average I'd spend on food in the United States was around or less than $3 of food a day, all vegan. Yet it's weird, people online will make excuses that it's so difficult, that you have to be rich, or some other dumb excuse, when it is so easy and cheaper to be vegan, it is the most convenient choice for anyone objective enough. Having been through all sorts of life situations, I have been vegan through them all, there really is no excuse to hurt and kill any animals.

Even with the minoxidil face damage, I was able to fully recover. I've talked to people who in 2 years, have never recovered, and they eat animals. As Emma said, it's probably because I am vegan that I was able to fully recover. It might have helped that I also read thousands of hours of content on facial repair and recovery, and spent thousands of dollars trying out all sorts of cosmetics and products, while these people didn't. You really cannot just sit around with something as serious and traumatizing as minoxidil face damage and expect to heal just by time passing by.

Today I exercised a bunch again, and I'm slowly regaining my strength that I've lost over several months of not working out. Maybe I can go back to doing 300 push ups in a day again. The problem that I experience with working out, is that it's just tiring and takes effort. It's so much easier to just laze around and do nothing, rather than exercising. A few months ago I was able to do 12 pull-ups and 12 chin-ups in a row. Now I can probably only do 7. I just did 5 of both yesterday, but I wasn't going for a maximum amount or anything. It sucks to decline, because I was once capable, and now I'm not as capable.

There's many peaks in my life where I was really good at something, and then I would decline after months or years of not doing it. Like at some point I was doing a lot of coding and programming problems problems. Let me see what rank I am on CodeWars, this programming challenge website, similar to LeetCode, it has probably several millions of users. Let's see what rank I am right now, after years of not participating. After logging in the first time in years and checking my profile, it says I'm rank #2185 which is in the top 0.304% of users (my username there is megawatt if you want to verify).

Even after years, few people have surpassed me, I was once in the top 0.1% probably at my prime. Doing some basic arithmetic, 7500 is roughly 1% of users, times 100, that's 750,000 users on the website, and I'm rank #2185 out of them all. It's like this in a lot of areas, I was in the top 80 or so on the website TypeRacer, literally one of the fastest typists on the entire planet at one point in time. I even got to race Arenasnow2 or Sean Wrona at least once, he is a legend and formerly the fastest typist on the planet.

This sucks to admit, but I'm not as good anymore in these coding challenges. If I read my previous code, I don't even know if I can understand them now. At some point I was at a master level, and then a decline. Same with typing, at my fastest I typed 191 words per minute. It was always my goal to reach 200 words per minute, but I stopped practicing. And yes I was already vegan during all these things too.

No one can relate either. I've reached a master level in a lot of areas. Many I don't even want to talk about, because they are more private and should be kept private, but experiencing decline makes me want to cry. I just checked my TypeRacer profile, my username on there is "realtyperbest" and it puts me in the top 99.9th percentile of typing. I'm seriously in the 99th percentile in a lot of areas. Even in all my brain training apps, I use 5 of them (Impulse, Peak, Elevate, NYT Games, and Quick Math Daily), it puts me in the top 99th percentile in all of them, except NYT Games since that doesn't have any percentile ranking system. I'm literally rank 1 in every category in Quick Math Daily, out of 100k users or something, rank 1. Is it supposed to be hard to reach the 99th percentile of something? Why does it seem like I achieve it so easily? Even in Habitica, I have everything unlocked, everything, so that probably puts me in the 99th percentile there too.

As I age, I realize I will be surpassed in every area I was once good in. It doesn't even matter that I am rank 0.3% on this coding website, out of 750,000 users, that was my former self. I can't compete at that level anymore. Of course, I realize every master experiences this. A random rank 1 winner in a 2016 global coding competition for example, where are they now? Have they retired or are they still going? Can they compete with anyone in 2025? Would they even rank in the top 100 if they competed today? Maybe if they brought that particular version of themselves from 2016 into 2025, they could compete. But if they haven't practiced in years, they wouldn't stand any chance. My past peak self could compete. Me today? No, not in that area.

But yeah, it's literally like this in a lot of areas. I need to pick something I will be good at for my entire life, and keep at it for my entire life. Exercise should definitely be in there. Declining from 12 pull-ups and 12 chin-ups in a row, to only being able to do 7 of each in a row, sucks. It sucks. Especially since it was only a few months ago that I reached 12.

See, I think these kinds of problems are much more worrying than just not having any water. You can solve the water problem easily by storing 30+ gallons of reserve water. If you run out, you can buy 1 gallon of water for around $1, which sucks and adds up over time especially since it will cost $2 to $3 to flush the toilet once, but it's still an easily solvable problem. You can also go to a river or something to gather water, I've also done that before. But the problem of decline, that one hurts so much more.

I am not even mentioning the problems that are bothering me now, that make me feel like crying. They are too painful to write about. It's so painful and no one will be able to help, it will also reveal more private things in my life, so there's no point in writing about it. But these kind of problems are agonizing. Someone who complains about not having water, will have a mental breakdown if they experienced even a sliver of what I am privately going through. I have seen some people go mad over similar things. It would be nice to have someone to hold in these situations, but I have no one.

The thing is I can build up my skill and expertise in any area I was formerly good at too, if I wanted to. I'm not doing any coding challenges or anything now, because I just don't care so much about those things anymore. The things I do care about... Why am I not working on them? I really need to get my act together. So frustrating.

Oh yeah, yesterday, these raw copyrighted skincare ingredients that I ordered arrived. I mixed them into a skincare concoction that already has Matrixyl 3000, Argireline, Vegan Collagen, niacimide, and hyaluronic acid, and I put them on my face. The products I used were: Actifcol, Cellynkage, Citrustem, and Co2llageneer. Previously I've also tried out Actigym, and I have adifyline as well which I have never used.

This is not a trend at all right now, no one has heard of any of these products, but I am doing DIY skincare where you order specialized products and ingredients and you mix your own concoction at home. I'm not sure if it will ever catch on, but I noticed that everything I am into or discover earlier than everyone, usually the rest of the population catches up on as well. I was on YouTube since 2005, and I have a few accounts from 2006, I had hundreds of thousands of views on my YouTube back in 2006, and I had a website since I was in 3rd grade in 2003, and lots more examples. I just really need to resolve my problems.

Anyway, that was my day today.