Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Heat: Who Needs it?

I'm going to preface this post with the two following points:

1) I have a tendency to label everything that I don't understand as dumb. Flawed, but this is how I'm wired.
2) All of the other people that I know in Korea (three) are able to heat their apartment whenever they please.

Onward:

It went down to 2 degrees Celcius the other night. For those of you not familiar with how Busan works, this qualifies as mother fucking cold. Essentially, Busan waited until the 1st of November to turn on Autumn. Just last week, I was wearing a skirt and no sweater. Last week.

Being mother fucking cold, I decided that it was time to retire the air conditioner and turn on the heat. Having a heated floor is more or less my favourite thing about Korea. Unfortunately, my floor's failure to cooperate killed my buzz. Six hours and no dice; it was still mother fucking cold.

Anger began to set in. I cursed at Korea in my head several times before doing the productive thing and whining about it on facebook. I then contemplated cursing at myself for not knowing what the words on my heating control mean (really, there's no excuse for that at this point), before retiring that idea on account of absurdity (it's never my fault). Finally, I made a last ditch effort to push all of the buttons on heating control until presto! It worked. It turns out that I had left the shower-timer on and could have avoided the anger phase entirely had I known that was what that button did.

This is how I do Tuesdays.

The next day I spoke to a friend of mine, who was complaining about the heat in her building. It turns out that she's not an idiot, and the her building is actually broken. The rules, which apply to every unfortunate apartment in her broken building, are as follows:

1) The heat will only work between the hours of 4-6am, and 8-10pm.
2) If you wish to preset the heating control so that it is ready to go at those times, should you not be home or alert when it's time to flick the switch, you must pay for gas during the time that it wasn't actually working.
3) If you aren't available during the 4 hours that the building allows you to heat your apartment, and you don't preset the heating control, you may as well open all of your windows and hope that a warm gust of air blows in, because your apartment is going to be mother fucking cold. Buy a hat.

"That is too dumb to be true", was the only possible response. Part of my brain died as she explained that her fiance, who is Korean, had argued the matter at length with the building manager, to no avail. Not only is it true, but it's not just a matter of Random Foreigner Not Getting It (as is occasionally the case with yours truly).

Since hearing of this, I have made a point of complaining about it several times a day. Frankly, I don't have any of my own shit to complain about this week and don't feel entirely whole unless I do. This serves as an appropriate substitute until trouble finds me again.




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

1) I tend to mentally label most of your posts "dumb"

2) Nobody I know in Korea (hundreds of people) whinges half as much as you do.

Anonymous said...

Then you never met my ex-coworker who never spoke a good word about Korea, EVER. At least Barb makes her whinging fun and interesting to read. The best part is I can CHOOSE whether or not to read her complaints. Being stuck in a small office with my co-worker who whinged NON-STOP was much harder to avoid unless I was teaching. Oh, and I had to share an apartment with the woman. If I had the choice, I wouldn't have had to put up with her but unfortunately I had to for 8 months. Man was I ever glad her replacement was much more awesome than her. And seriously Anon, only a sado masichist who hates this blog as much you do would keep coming back to read what Barb writes and then whinge about it. Find something else to do with your time. You'll find there's a bigger world out there than the net.

Anonymous said...

I don't hate this blog. I just think it's dumb. That requires a lot less energy and doesn't place as great a demand on my time as you seem to think.

And if admittedly calling things you don't understand "dumb" can be considered "fun", then really what grounds do you have for pissing on my good time. (Doesn't say much for your sense of fun either, I might add.)

Mrs. Kim said...

"I have a tendency to label everything that I don't understand as dumb."

This honesty is great! I enjoy your blog. I find it more refreshing than the other Korea blogs where they detail every boring second of their Itaewon shopping afternoon complete with pictures.