Sunday, November 7, 2010

Our poor landlord

I'm afraid to know what our landlord, Ma Long, thinks of us. I think I already talked about this, but a few weeks ago, the gas in our stove wouldn't turn on, and we asked Ma Long for help. He called the building engineer for us, who came and spoke to Ma on the phone in our apartment. Low and behold, the only problem with our gas was that the batteries were dead in the meter. Essentially, a building engineer came change batteries for us, while poor Ma Long (an engineer himself) politely explained what had happened. We figured he'd forgive us this one ridiculous error though.

Fast forward to right now. On Thursday, I added 100 RMB (15 bucks) to our hot water card, but when I came back, our hot water meter read 1.0, the same as it did before. We waited a few days to make sure there wasn't a lag in electronic update, then called Ma Long today, when I noticed the meter read 0.2. He had an engineer come over as soon as possible (so at like 10 pm on a Sunday night). As per his instructions, we called Ma as soon as the engineer arrived to translate. But, before Ma Long picked up the phone, the engineer showed us the meter, which read 8. Turns out, we have been inserting the card incorrectly, so that the meter can display numbers but can't get updated.
Ma Long was polite as always on the phone, but we're both pretty sure he thinks we have a few screws loose.

It's now past the point of embarrassment to pathetic.

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