^^ Thanks VERY much! I appreciate your comments. The electricity came back on late yesterday evening - so I took the opportunity to try to push some energy into this old battery. At 6.30am precisely, the mains electricity went off again. I had 2 60-minute lessons to teach that morning. The first was fine, using the stored energy in the battery, but it failed at the end of the lesson and so the final lesson was taught just running on my laptop battery - but I bailed at 50 minutes before the laptop shut down! Now that the shops are open today, I went out and bought a new 12 volt car battery for 240,000 MMK, which is either $120 or $60, depending if it's a bank rate or money changer rate. I wanted to pull some money out of my Bangkok Bank account, but the few ATM machines in the town were all switched off and out of service. Luckily, by waving a $100 bill in the air, several local Burmese came running and I was able to get some local currency at 3,900 kyat = $1, which is ok. I bought the battery, installed it in my hotel room. Hurrah! The mains electricity came on and so I started to charge it and went out, intending to rent a bicycle to go to an orphanage a few km out of town. No bikes to hire, motorbike hire is banned for foreigners, no local taxis etc because of the fuel shortages. So I started to walk, but it really was too hot for old me and I surrendered to an iced latte instead at a local cafe. The best I managed was a photo of the local paddy fields.... I returned to my hotel and am posting this with the mains electricity off again!! I only have 1 more lesson to teach today, but 4 tomorrow. Truly, it is a real challenge to teach online. When the mains electricity is off, so is their wi-fi router, so I have to rely on mobile data. I need to quickly find out how to top up my data package (I can't use my UK cards to do this - the UK has sanctioned Myanmar. My Bangkok Bank ATM card sends an OTP to my Thai mobile number - well, that is really useful NOT!!.
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