Технический Перерыв

As you may know from my previous post, I'm taking a little break from Russia for a couple of weeks. Thus, I'll follow in the wise footsteps of my friend Lyndon at Scraps of Moscow and declare a brief "технический перерыв" (tekhnicheskii pereryv).

In a post dedicated to the subject, Lyndon provides a variety of technical definitions for the term:

Деловая лексика (business lexicon):
перерыв по техническим причинам - interruption for technical reasons

Техника (equipment):
перерыв по техническим причинам - maintenance outage

Телекоммуникации (telecommunications):
перерыв по техническим причинам - out-of-service

But of course, in Russia, there is often a gap between practice and theory. Lyndon writes:

"In practice, though, as anyone who's ever needed to (just for example) urgently change money in a one-exchange-booth town knows, it's a phenomenon that can occur at any time, although generally at an inconvenient time, and for just about any reason. One cashier and she has to take a bathroom break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." The paper receipt roll in the cash register ran out? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." Smoke break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." You get the point."

And so, I'm going on my own технический перерыв for the next couple of weeks. It's possible that I'll be able to sit down and write a bit, as I'm sure I'll be wide awake in the middle of the night for the first few days. But even if I don't manage that, I can assure readers that there are a lot more stories rolling around in my head, waiting to be liberated upon my return to the Motherland.

До скорого,
R