Stuff breaks...especially here. Our friends have explained to us that people would prefer to buy cheap and buy often rather than buy good quality and have it forever. This results in two circumstances. First is that it is very difficult to find good quality items. There just is not a demand for it. Secondly, most renters trash their apartments and do not take care of the place, so the landlords buy cheap stuff. Therefore we renters are stuck with stuff is already low on the reliable spectrum, but even lower since we are given worse quality items.
As a side note, our old city relied heavily on manufacturing for foreign companies that most Americans would easily recognize. There were a very limited number of flights everyday, so if we were flying somewhere is was a very good possibility we would be sitting beside some executive from one of these foreign companies. Once KB and I struck up a conversation with a guy who worked for Caterpillar. He told us that they make very good quality equipment to sell in US, but make lesser quality items to be sold in most Asian countries. He said the Asian countries will not buy the better quality items. My Asian friends told us from the time we arrived that foreign companies old sell poor quality items in Asia, but we did not believe them. However we have come to see it is true. Therefore our "investment" items we prefer to buy in the US and bring with us. Too bad I could not pack a clothes dryer in my suitcase.
Back to my story. The same understanding regarding buying cheap also applies to getting things fixed. They would rather fix it cheap and often rather than do it right and a bit more expensive. Since the day we moved into our new apartment, something has leaked in our bathroom. There is a constant puddle of water in our bathroom floor. I quickly gave up on using our bath mat because I was tired of it absorbing the "mystery" water that gathered on the floor. We called it "mystery" water because water regularly leaked from 4 different places in our bathroom, and since it all pooled in the same spot, we did not know where the water came from on any given day. First was the drip from our hot water heater. In most homes this drip is routed into the shower but for some reason was not in our home. This water is the lowest on the nasty spectrum. Second is water from our sink. Rather than use metal pipes under the sink, most Asian home use flexible plastic. Our pipe drips and sometimes completely falls off the bottom of our sink. This is a little higher on the nasty spectrum. Third is the water from the bathtub. Sometimes is backs up while draining and leaks from the pipes through our, apparently not sealed, tile wall. This is a bit higher on the nasty spectrum. The highest was the water that leaked from the bottom of the toilet. This is straight poo and pee water. It was gross, but unfortunately we never knew it if the mystery water was from the toilet, bathtub, sink or hot water heater.
Before having success a grand total of five "plumbers" visited our home to address primarily the bathtub/toilet issue. However, they wanted to witness the water leaking and since the leakage was sporadic, we could not make it leak on command. Also, we have learned that when a plumbing company is called, they send the least trained worker for the first visit. If he does not fix it they send their next most trained worker, and that is how we managed to have 5 plumbers visit our home before a competent one fixed our toilet...our bathtub is still leaking.
The first "plumber" (I use the word loosely) told us it is better to flush our toilet by pouring large amounts of water down it. Basically he did not want to fix the little flushing button. One "plumber" (I still use the word loosely) told us to drain the bathtub for about 30 seconds then wait about 5 minutes and drain it again for 30 seconds, repeating this cycle again until it is empty. This would prevent it from backing up. He expected us to do this every time we drained it. These were the first two "plumbers."
Finally a couple weeks ago we witnessed the water coming out from under the toilet and our landlord was able to make it to our apartment before it stopped oozing out. He finally believed us! He called his own personal plumber who completely removed the toilet and reinstalled it after fixing the problem.
KB watched the whole experience and had a few highlights to share with me. Apparently in the U.S. we usually use wax to create a seal connecting the toilet to the pipe below. Not here. The toilet was just sitting on top of the hole. Everything that fell from the toilet landed on the floor and eventually made its way into the hole in the floor. The only thing preventing the nastiness from making its way into the rest of the bathroom was a silicone seal around the base of the toilet...which was apparently faulty. So, yes it was poo and pee water in our bathroom floor. Also, the plumber touched all sorts of excrement and never once washed his hands, not even when he was finished. Seeing things like this explains why my husband is now a germ-a-phobe.
Although our bathroom floor is still continually wet, at least #1 on the list of nasty moisture in the bathroom is now just leftover bathtub water.
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