I never stop admiring my people.
I just drove around my neighborhood in Bucha -12 C (10 F), a gray frozen sky, and a windy snowfall.
There’s no electricity, which means no heating either (unless you have gas and can power an individual boiler from charging stations).
And yet:
The barbershop is open.
The sushi bar is open.
The pastry shop downstairs is open.
The supermarket is fully running on a diesel generator and all the stores inside are working too.
Paying with Apple Pay is, as always, no problem. People are sitting in cafes with laptops, working. It’s cold inside, so both staff and visitors are wearing coats and gloves, warming up with tea.
Mobile service works. The internet works. Nova Poshta is operating, no delays with parcels at all. The car service around the corner is open too.
The moral of the story: praise the modern capitalist economy, markets, international trade, technology, and plain human diligence (and of course, first and foremost, Ukraine’s defense forces).
Because only thanks to all of that can you, in the rear during wartime -- under missile attacks, with the power grid and heating being destroyed, in the middle of an unusually brutal winter -- casually take five minutes to buy a hot pizza from a warming cabinet in a supermarket.