My apartment was flooded

Time to write some more. I am on a plane going to visit the OEM that is manufacturing my product to finalize some of the design issues. So I have a few hours to write.

2 weeks ago I got up one morning and heard dripping sound coming from our kitchen. I tuned on the light and saw the water was dripping from the ceiling in several places and there was a large puddle of water on the floor. "Adventure time!" I told myself, while having a big grin on my face.

My roommate was not home so I called her and told her the story and then went to work. After an hour she called me back and said that we had to go home and wait for the repair person to show up. So I try to wrap up my conversations at work and go but it takes about 15 min. By the time we get home about 20 min later the apartment management guys are gone. So Sungmee has big argument with them for 10 min over the phone. Then she translates for me what they had said: Basically they were mad at her for not being there when they showed up even though she had told them that we were not home. But the absurd thing is that they said we should wait at home and sometime in the afternoon they would come back most likely after lunch. And no matter how much she insisted that the problem was not in our apartment and was probably caused by the apartment above us they insisted that they have to come and visit our apartment to confirm that there is a problem first before they would go investigate the cause of it.

Well, that was pretty stupid. So I said that we should go investigate ourselves. We went up one floor and we see that water is coming out of the apartment above us into the hallway. J That solved the mystery. So we called the apartment management but they still said that we should go back home and wait until they come and investigate the problem. And because we had reported the problem they have to first come to our apartment to verify things. Man, what a comedy! I knock on the door and after a few min a 17 year Korean boy that was half asleep opens the door. He was standing in 4 centimeters of water and has no clue on what to do. He didn't speak any Chinese or English. Eventually we find out that they are 2 students of the Chinese language school close to us and that they had been asleep and did not know what happened. Fortunately Sungmee is Korean so she could talk to them in Korean. I go in and find the main water valve and shut it off and that stops the leak. Then I teach them how to scoop the water and clean up. They were clueless. So I asked Sungmee to clearly explain to them that they had to clean up the water immediately or all of it would come down in our apartment and then we had to clean it up.

I tried to convince Sugmee, to no avail, that we should go to the apartment management office and tell them the story and have them send someone to help the kids. I don't know what they had told her on the phone but she did not want to do it and wanted us to just wait at our house for them to show up. So we wait for an hour and no one comes. Eventually we give up go back to work and hope for the best.

I live in a cheap house apartment building in the university district. My roommate and I pay about $400 a month for the 2 bedroom apartment and we split that evenly. There are many foreigners living in the Wudaoko area. Most of them are students that go to one of the universities around us. I wanted to live in the cheapest apartment that I could reasonably live in order not to be isolated from common Chinese people and problems. I love the fact that there is a taxi cab driver that lives in our apartment and he parks his car in the courtyard. And there are a lots of old people that hang out outside of my building and play cards. I have not seed if they do Tai Ci in the morning. There is no point to come all the way here to china and then live in an expat building in the expat district that just looks like Milan or Chicago. I am here to learn things; it would be a big wait of opportunity if I isolate myself from reality.

What I pay for rent is still twice as much as salary of a teacher. But any lower that this it would be just too painful to live in. Cheaper apartments don't have elevators or hot water 24hrs a day. Also there is only 2 of us in a place where 10 Chinese students could easily live in.