I went to America. Which I will write about soon, I promise. And while I was gone, the hot water in the master bedroom ceased and desisted. That was all well and good, because my roommates Chris and Lindsay could share the other shower while I was gone. Then I returned and called our landlord. Well, after a week of no responses, I began to fear my Chinese email was too unintelligible. Or that perhaps hot water had other connotations. I worry about this often. Idioms scare me. Anyway, yesterday he came in to town and tried to see what was wrong with the hot water. I “supervised” while the hot water “heater” was poked and prodded. Then he asked me (via his translator friend), “Does your hot water work in the sink?” I replied, “Of course. See those dishes? I just washed them five minutes before you got here. With scalding hot water. It burned my hand. See?” And his translator says, “Um, oh. He broke all the hot water then.” My landlord promised he’d come back the next day with a repairman. Good to his word, he showed up at 7, but unfortunately the repairman was running a bit behind and his translator couldn’t make the trip. My landlord speaks no English. None. And I had just gotten out of a 45 minute meeting about a technical product that measures statistics in which no English was spoken. I was Chinese-d out. Then the following conversation occurred. Well, it tried to occur. (Imagine this all in an unintelligible accented Chinese).
3 Comments
May 8, 2008 at 6:59 am
oh that made me lol
May 8, 2008 at 11:43 pm
him: he doesn’t have the face of a black man
me: like you’dfucking know.
great post!
May 9, 2008 at 4:49 am
“I agree” hahahaha, awkward convos with the landlord are at least a monthly ritual, like the time mine told me that the mexican place around the corner was really good, and not to be fooled by the fact that it’s run by Chinese people. I tried it. And I’m sorry, but Chinese people know nothing about Mexican food.
Moral of the story? Landlords are not to be trusted, viva Ke-lin-dun