It is Sunday, and I just spend the first night in my new apartment. There were some strange noises coming from the neighboring apartment, but other than that it wasn’t a bad sleep! I woke up to my mother in the kitchen making tea. Well, trying to make tea. She was standing in the kitchen holding the kettle with a look of confusion on her face. I jokingly told her that the next step to making tea was to fill the kettle with water and plug it in. She gave me a “smarty pants” look and said that the kettle was not working.
What is this? My kettle is not working. GREAT!
I fiddled with it for a few minutes, and then tried the light over the
stove. It was not working either. The fridge was, the stove was, but nothing
plugged into any outlets were operational.
With my limited knowledge of “fix-it type stuff” I figured it was a
fuse. But, where is the fuse box? Should I try to fix it? After installing that pretty light fixture in
my
I did a quick scan for anything else that was not in working order, and came up with a surprisingly long list. No light bulbs in the 2nd bedroom, a mystery outlet in the dining room that was missing a cover (we thing it was a phone connection at one point), the shower did not “spray” the water, but “dribbled” the water, the dining room light fixture was hanging by a wire, and still no screen in the master bedroom. We decided that it was definitely time to make a visit to the Super. However, at seven in the morning it would have to wait.
I was expecting the cable guy to come, so I started unpacking my entertainment unit while Mom began putting dishes away in the kitchen. I remembered that the phone would have been installed a few days prior to me moving in, and I left the unpacking to check the phone. I picked up the receiver, and heard the friendly dial tone. Finally, things were going along as planned. I would get everything unpacked in a few days, have cable, internet and phone by Monday, and then have a nice 4+ day vacation before starting the new job.
When Mom suggested
calling Dad, I had to re-think this plan.
When I dialed the number, a recording of a woman’s voice told me that
the phone was not in service, and to call 310
“Thank you for calling
Sprint
Ok. Guess this waits until Monday.
Now, by this point I was
starting to get a little cheesed off. It
was
“Leslie, the kitchen sink is spraying water everywhere” my mom calmly said. (I guess we were both so used to things going wrong, we were desensitized).
“Ok” I replied, entering the kitchen to see the hand help sprayer acting up. Drenched, Mom suggested we leave the kitchen and work somewhere else. Apparently neither of us wanted to tackle the plumbing.
At that very moment a loud, shrill siren blared. It was the fire alarm.
Now, I was very glad to see that my new home actually had a fire alarm, but seriously – this was the worst possible time. Also, the noise seemed particularly loud. Where was it coming from? It sounded like it was right beside my ear.
That’s because it was. I turned around to notice a speaker attached to wall in the hallway, blasting the high-pitched “Whoooooop, Whooooooop”. My mother started to panic, and it wasn’t long before we were both racing down the nine flights of stairs imagining the worst possible scenario.
“What if the building was set on fire by deranged city-folk? They keep saying that the city is full of crazy people, and who knows what could be happening. I bet it’s a bomb. Holly crap, it’s a bomb and the building is going to explode, sending the contents of all 6 of my wardrobe boxes flying across the city. We are going to be burnt to a crisp as well. Hurry mom, get out of this building before the flames reach us.”
As we flung open the ground floor stairwell door (extremely out of breath, I might add), we noticed no one else in the hallway. Not one person to be seen - just the constant Whooping coming from the fire alarm. Great. We are the last ones alive.
We began to exit the building when I spied the one of the managers. She informed us that there was no fire, and “90% of the time it’s a false alarm”.
So, out of an entire 28 floors, only my mother and I actually bothered to leave our unit. Either the building was populated with people who enjoyed risking their lives, or this happens so frequently no one pays any attention (I don’t know how anyone could ignore the shrill Whooping of the alarm, though).
We dragged ourselves
back up the stairs, annoyed at the disturbance.
My head was pounding from the noise, and all I wanted to do was run away
to
For the next 5 hours
the sirens blared. We were granted a few
brief moments of peace, then “Whooooooooop, Whooooooooop, Whoooooooop”. Mom and I grabbed some beer and duck tape,
and decided to fix the problem ourselves.
We taped two large pillows over the speaker, and retreated to the
balcony to drink the beer. Problem
solved.
That night I sat on the couch and surveyed the boxes left to unpack. Even with the bloody fire alarm we accomplished quite a bit, however not nearly as much as I originally hoped. I didn’t know I owned so much! I didn’t know it would take so long. I didn’t know everything I touched would fall apart!
We went to bed pleased that at least we managed to make a good dent into the boxes, and the dining room light fixture was still intact, and the Whooping of the alarm had ceased. Tomorrow it would all be better, or at least I hope.