From 90 to 50 in 3 days
Degrees that is - in my apartment...
Last Thursday and Friday it was 90 degrees - so hot I had to sleep with the window wiiiiide open, and thought I was going to die of asphyxiation. Then our heat and hot water went out for three days. Oh there were times when it came back on briefly. Just none of those times happened to coincide with me being home to take a shower.
Now I'm a tough woman. I've been to 10% of the world's countries. I've slept in a thatched shack on stilts in a coconut grove in the far reaches of Indonesia's eastern islands, where the bathroom was a tiled floor, open to the sky so you could see billions of stars as you used the facilities late at night. Where the bak mandi was filled with cold water that you ladled over yourself in order to bathe.
I've also had a mandi in the disabled toilet in Jakarta airport after 30 hours of flying from London via Frankfurt and somewhere in the United Arab Emirates.
In fact I've gone without showers before - sleeping overnight in villages in Vietnam, once in Sapa, where to bathe would have used far too much of the village's water supply, and once in the Mekong, where out host had kept us up the night before drinking banana palm wine till we were totally drunk and stumbled to sleep on whisper-thin mattresses on the ground beneath mosquito nets.
I've had a freezing cold shower in winter in Spain before leaving a hostel because the hot water wasn't turned on until half an hour later - no exceptions! I've developed an entire bathing system based on 2 plastic bags and a door handle to cope with showers the size of portaloos in unisex bathrooms in Italy. And I've negotiated the difficult twist and press method of getting hot water and water pressure out of showers in Cochabamba in Bolivia.
But when I came home yesterday after fighting my way through crowds at the supermarket, dragging my shopping up the hill, with just enough time to shower and get to my friend's Oscar party, and got in the shower only to discover the hot water wasn't on again, I almost cried.
And when I got home from the party - in a snow storm - to find there was still no heat or hot water, I only got more upset. And then this morning - still no heat or hot water, and to top it off, my light blew as I was trying to get ready for work in the semi-dark.
So what did I do? Well, it was as if I could hear my mother's voice from some long ago distant memory of childhood blackouts and baths taken by the light of oil lamps. I put a large pot of boiling water on the stove to heat the apartment, and filled up the tea kettle and let it boil.
Then I had a warm bak mandi with the tea kettle water mixed with some cold water in a bucket in the shower.
I am nothing if not resourceful... ;^)
Today I came home to hot water and heat and had the best shower I've had in a long time.
But I'm afraid that I may have jinxed my friend who had the Oscar party. Because today she emailed me to tell me that her heat and hot water went out the day after I was telling her about mine...
Last Thursday and Friday it was 90 degrees - so hot I had to sleep with the window wiiiiide open, and thought I was going to die of asphyxiation. Then our heat and hot water went out for three days. Oh there were times when it came back on briefly. Just none of those times happened to coincide with me being home to take a shower.
Now I'm a tough woman. I've been to 10% of the world's countries. I've slept in a thatched shack on stilts in a coconut grove in the far reaches of Indonesia's eastern islands, where the bathroom was a tiled floor, open to the sky so you could see billions of stars as you used the facilities late at night. Where the bak mandi was filled with cold water that you ladled over yourself in order to bathe.
I've also had a mandi in the disabled toilet in Jakarta airport after 30 hours of flying from London via Frankfurt and somewhere in the United Arab Emirates.
In fact I've gone without showers before - sleeping overnight in villages in Vietnam, once in Sapa, where to bathe would have used far too much of the village's water supply, and once in the Mekong, where out host had kept us up the night before drinking banana palm wine till we were totally drunk and stumbled to sleep on whisper-thin mattresses on the ground beneath mosquito nets.
I've had a freezing cold shower in winter in Spain before leaving a hostel because the hot water wasn't turned on until half an hour later - no exceptions! I've developed an entire bathing system based on 2 plastic bags and a door handle to cope with showers the size of portaloos in unisex bathrooms in Italy. And I've negotiated the difficult twist and press method of getting hot water and water pressure out of showers in Cochabamba in Bolivia.
But when I came home yesterday after fighting my way through crowds at the supermarket, dragging my shopping up the hill, with just enough time to shower and get to my friend's Oscar party, and got in the shower only to discover the hot water wasn't on again, I almost cried.
And when I got home from the party - in a snow storm - to find there was still no heat or hot water, I only got more upset. And then this morning - still no heat or hot water, and to top it off, my light blew as I was trying to get ready for work in the semi-dark.
So what did I do? Well, it was as if I could hear my mother's voice from some long ago distant memory of childhood blackouts and baths taken by the light of oil lamps. I put a large pot of boiling water on the stove to heat the apartment, and filled up the tea kettle and let it boil.
Then I had a warm bak mandi with the tea kettle water mixed with some cold water in a bucket in the shower.
I am nothing if not resourceful... ;^)
Today I came home to hot water and heat and had the best shower I've had in a long time.
But I'm afraid that I may have jinxed my friend who had the Oscar party. Because today she emailed me to tell me that her heat and hot water went out the day after I was telling her about mine...
ohhh myyy goodddd uisn't that Ameriky you live in? The land of the brave and the free and they don't have reliable hot water??
Come home babe.. they are obviously barbarians.. *wink*
Posted by
kimba |
February 27, 2007 at 8:23 AM
ah.. you see originally I was going to say this is what happens when you live in the hood and pay very cheap rent. But then my friend, who lives in a very nice apartment in Hell's Kitchen, had the same problem, so can't just blame it on landlords ripping off the less privileged members of US society by not fixing the furnaces.
And of course, this doesn't happen everywhere in my neighbourhood - when I told the ladies at the laundromat about our lack of heat and hot water for 3 days they were a little suprised at how long it had been.
Posted by
Ness |
February 27, 2007 at 9:51 AM