Two things have preoccupied our time in the past couple of days. First, our 5 month old Dell that we bought because our Mac crashed...crashed yesterday as confirmed by some lady named Margaret in Dell Support. Second, we have had some problems with our electricity.
The problem with the Dell crashing can actually be easily fixed. Fortunately nothing was on the Dell that was not also on our Mac, so although it is annoying to have to spend a few hours reloading everything, it was not devastating like when our Mac crashed. The problem with the electricity was a bit more time consuming.
We live in a developing country, so we should expect power outages, no water, exposed raw sewage, and most commonly a very very smelly bathroom.
Two days ago I noticed that our bathroom smelled like firecrackers. I did not think much of it because it was possible that someone had set off firecrackers outside and the smell drifted in. It was also entirely possible someone else had been smoking in their bathroom and the smell made its way to our bathroom. Other people's smelly smells are usually source of our smelly bathroom...it is the combination of everyone's stink coming up from the drain.
Anyways, that evening our power went out around 11:30pm. This happens often if we run our hot water heater, refrigerator, microwave, and I blow dry my hair at the same time. However this time the electricity in our entire apartment went out, not just that one circuit. This problem could not be fixed by just flipping the switches in our breaker box in our apartment. We had to get into the main circuit breaker down stairs. So KB had to go to down to the apartment management building and wake up the lady sleeping in the back room to open the breaker box. That was an adventure in and of itself, but that story would go on forever if I told it.
The next evening (last night), our power went out again. This time KB knew what to do, and within about 15 minutes he was able to restore our power. Later last night I went into the bathroom, and it smelled very strongly of firecrackers. I realized at this point that the source of the smell seemed too close; I did not think it was from another apartment. I looked around for the cause, and very quickly I noticed that smoke was coming from the outlet our hot water heater was plugged into. Yep, I was certain that was the cause.
We unplugged the hot water heater and below are the pictures of what we found.
We called our friend who called our landlord to explain the problem. Our landlord is cheap and lazy, and as a result he will always go the cheap and lazy route when fixing things. Our landlord said he would come over immediately - this was at 9:00am. He did not make it to our apartment before lunch. Because of the customary nap time from 12:00-2:00pm, I did not expect him until at least 3:00pm. However at 3:00pm still he was a no show. Finally I sent a message to our friend telling her that our landlord's definition of "immediately" must be entirely relative because he had not yet arrived. I love our friend. She has done business overseas and sees how smoothly things can run in a more ordered society. She seems to think it is perfectly fine to hold the locals to the same standard. I almost feel bad for the locals when she puts them in their place. Plus she is a bit older, so it would be disrespectful of our younger landlord to brush her off. Somehow she straightened him out and finally he sent someone "immediately."
The "electrician" who came was a bit scary. He pulled off the outside of the outlet and started poking around inside with his metal tools without even shutting off the power to the outlet. However when he finally got down to the business of changing the outlet he shut of the power. Then when he was finished we expected him to replace the plug on the hot water heater, nope. Instead he shoved that melted plug right into the outlet. We held our breath, bracing for something bad to happen, but the hot water heater turned right on.
About 5 people told us the reason we kept tripping the breaker was because we were using too much electricity (something we commonly hear every time we pay our electric bill), so in the end it was validating that it had nothing to do with our power usage, just a scary plug and outlet.
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