The Little Things That Matter
My stay in America has not been without its issues. These problems, when they occur, do cause me quite an amount of stress. In retrospect I have realised that these are actually little things such as walking and heat that we have often taken for granted. Here I present the list, in no particular order, that I have grappled with.#1. Slipping on the Ice
It was naive of me to think that a nice pair of boots can solve this problem. I must have slipped like 6 times last week and each resulted in me falling backwards with a loud thud. I have learned that the ground is most slippery after a snow sleet and when the ice starts to melt away, and that for better friction you would have to step into the shoe imprints laid down by others when the snow was still soft. There were times I had to climb at a painfully slow pace to my house from the bus stop, even though the distance is only 100 meters.
#2. Getting caught with no heat
There was a particular windy day when I heaved a sigh of relief after reaching the house, only to find that the central heating wasn't working. I asked my landlord, "Has the gas for the heat ran out?"
He doubted me for a moment and went downstairs to check the heat in the kitchen. It was working. "Well, it is slow sometimes. Give it more time and the temperature would be up," he said, brushing off my suspicions and went back to his work.
I waited for half an hour and checked the thermostat. Instead of going up the temperature went down. I grabbed my coat and alerted my landlord again.
Finally it dawned on him what had actually happened. Apparently he put the heat to a low during the day in an attempt to save on the gas. When you do that, the water in the pipes freezes and no water to the radiator means no heat. Suddenly there were clouds in our heads, as we pondered the cold night in wait for us.
"Well, it happens," I said. It was more of a reassurance to me than to him that everything would be ok. I climbed into bed wearing my coat and covered myself fully with the blankets. Now I know how the beggars I saw in Boston Park felt. No, I think they had it worse, because my sleep didn't turn out to be too bad. In the middle of the night my landlord moved the temporary electric radiator into the room. I appreciate the gesture, but the electric one gave off a "ZEAAAA" sound all night and that made me wonder whether it would be better to do without the heat at all.
#3. The ATM refuses to dispense money
Weng Chew told me the ATM in the company premises would work. Well, it didn't for me. I attempted 5 times and all of that turned up "Transactional Error". Eventually I found one near my home that did.
#4. The ATM eats up my money
Even worse than not getting money is to see your money disappear into thin air. The 5 transactions that went wrong were debited from my account when I checked using internet banking. It was highly stressful seeing hundreds of dollars lost in cyberspace. Eventually they rolled back the errors after a week. Thankfully.
#5. The Internet Connection
Internet connectivity allows me to write this blog, do internet banking, watch soccer gamecast, read channelnewsasia, write emails, talk to my family. (No, I can't listen to Singapore's radio channels, for some reason they don't support US ip.) The first thing on my mind when I moved into here was to set up the connection. When it didn't work I was sweating. Even though I am a computer engineer it doesn't mean I can fix all kinds of computer problems. People tend to have that notion, I realised. In the end I did the hard reset on the router, and used the old WEP encryption instead of WPA. WEP is weaker, but it should be enough security for my landlord. Whatever. When I finally got it working my landlord said, "Wayne. You are a genius!" Yeah, he has that notion too. Sigh.
(I thank Eugene for showing me this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-DWGF9hzIo that had me roaring in laughter and gave me the impetus for writing this entry.
Uploaded album "Washington D.C")
posted by wayne @ 4:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home