Calling 110....

This morning I had errands that needed to be done since we were out last weekend. First on the list was the rest of the laundry, then I need to pick up some groceries, and clean the apartment along with the floors. With all the construction, the floors are always dusty and we assume it will be this way for the duration of our stay.

I get up all bright eyed and bushy tail to begin my day. Things were progressing nicely and had one little last load of laundry to do. Went to turn the water on, and there wasn't any. Mmmm, I said that's a bit strange since I just put in the last load of laundry. I go to the kitchen, and no water. Okay, this isn't good. So what does any good wife do? Call her husband to see if he can use he spidy powers to make my problem go away. Wishful thinking.

The conversation goes like this, more or less:

"Honey, we have no water"
"Really, that's odd"
"Yes I know, perhaps I will try in a few minutes to see if comes back on, and then go to the management office to see if they know anything"
"Okay, or maybe we were cut off if we didn't pay our water bill"
"Don't you think that they would give us some warning, we gave the bank cash for the utilities".
"Maybe they posted a sign and we can't read it"
"Maybe"

I then trot off to the management office to see if I can figure this out. What I do know how to say in Chinese is "boo shway" which basically means no water and hope that they know what I am talking about. As I am making my way to the office the little light goes on. I will call 110 which is a translation number for laowais (foreigners). Chinese are so smart. What a great concept, except we keep forgetting that it's there. We're more for the butchering of their language to see if they can understand us. I managed to get someone who spoke fairly well and handed the phone to one of the people at the management office. Here she explains my plight and the gal responds back and passes the phone to me. No issues she says, they have shut the water off from 9am to 3pm. It has been posted everywhere for the last 3 days.

Seriously, it would help if we could read Chinese.