I live at the Foreign Experts Guest House on campus. Sounds flashy, but it's really a fairly decrepit old building greatly in need of renovation as half of it is off limits in danger of collapsing and the other half that is in use is cockroach and reportedly rat infested. Okay, I have to remember that I AM NOT IN AMERICA and need to be flexible. I bought a nice blue bedspread and puffy purple pillows and put up pictures of family and the drawings my nieces sent with me to brighten my living space. It's now a bit cozier and I'm slowly settling in.
I really do want to be flexible and don't want to complain, but I decide I need to tell the front desk about the light bulbs that are burnt out in the bathroom, the hallway, and the other nondescript room I inhabit. A good friend of mine, who is visiting for the day, passes this information along to the staff here and they agree to fix it for me. Later I walk my friend out and when I get back to the front desk, Red, the manager, tells me that my lights all work just fine and the maid will escort me upstairs to show me how to use the light switches. Interesting...okay.
So the kind maid follows me to my room and we enter the front door. She flips the hallway light on and off for me. See? Okay, yep. Got it. She then turns on the bathroom light, then goes into the other room, performing the same routine. I have lived here for over two months, so they MUST know that I've needed and used my lights some time during that period. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they felt it necessary at this point to show me how to use the basic light switches in my apartment. It's as if they wanted me to think the lights were fine all along, but I know they replaced them after I asked (and before the maid "showed" me how to use my light switches) as the new bulbs are a completely different shape than the ones that were there 30 minutes ago. Go figure. If you have any idea what was going on, feel free to share!
6 comments:
Wait a second...so when they flipped the switches on--did the lights suddenly work then?
The lights did work then, but they were acting like they wanted me to think the problem was not that the bulbs were burnt out but that I didn't know how to use them correctly. Weird.
Still confused...if the light bulbs were burnt out, how did they go on when the switch was flipped?
1. I requested they replace the burnt out light bulbs.
2. They replaced them.
3. They brought me up to my room and "showed" me how to turn on the lights.
Make sense?
Got it. I guess I'm a little slow. How did you keep from laughing at them?
I think I was too confused to laugh!
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