Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Not Sure How This Happened

Nobody drinks the tap water here. Everyone has one of these little water coolers (that heats the water instead). Whenever you run out, you just call the number on the jug, and a guy will come and deliver a new bottle. When he comes, he puts these little plastic wraps over his feet, comes inside, wipes off the nozzle of the new bottle, wipes off the hole it goes into, and just generally wipes down the entire thing. He puts the new jug in, and you pay him. Normally it costs about 6 or 7 kuai for a bottle, you can buy cheaper tickets in bulk, and just use them instead of the kuai.

Normally, when you call for more water, they just use your phone number to tell where you live, but it doesn't work that well for us. Saffron ordered water today, and left me to make sure someone was home when it arrived. Normally, it will arrive here after a couple hours, depending on when you order.

For some reason, however, our water always ends up going to Dane's place. Twice now that we've ordered more it has been delivered to him. I was actually on the phone with him when it got there.

Me: I'll take you to the package place later. It's easy to give directions there, but hard to find.

Dane: Ok. Hold on, there's someone coming up the stairs. I just buzzed them in.

Me: It's probably my water. Saffron ordered some today. I bet it got delivered to your place by accident.

Dane: Yeah. It's a guy with water. I'll try and direct him to your place. *Inaudible Chinese* There. Hopefully he'll be at your place in a bit.

He got here about 15 minutes later, looking somewhat annoyed. Probably from climbing up and down the six flights of stairs to Danes place. That's twice now that this has happened. I think I'll start keeping count until it stops.

3 comments:

Mark's Blog said...

Did you tell them your address?

Because when I was in Xi'an last month, I always tell them my address whenever I call them

Rambler said...

I don't know. My roommate ordered the water.

Anonymous said...

hahahahahaha! What a smusing story! It's fun to read Americans's blog storied about China.
Not sure why that guy could find your apartment either. You might want to write it down in Chinese to show him when you see him next time.

tl;dr