The concrete delivery truck was three hours late this morning because the driver took the long way around — fuel is cheaper near the ring road if you know someone, and everyone knows someone. I stood there with the foreman checking the batch test results, both of us pretending we didn't notice the timestamp on the certificate. This is how things work now. Not corruption exactly, because that word is too clean. It's just... the way the system breathes. You learn to calculate the slippage into every estimate, every timeline. My daughter asked me yesterday why I looked tired all the time, and I couldn't tell her that it's because nothing here works the way it should and you have to carry the difference in your shoulders every day. The engineering is sound. The city just moves around it like water around a stone.
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