You all know that I live in squalor in the heart of the French Concession – compared to most foreigners in Shanghai anyway. If it wasn’t for the location I would look for something with fewer rats and cockroaches but hey, location is everything so they say.
However, since the winter has set in I have found a new drawback of my current pit. It was after yet another blasted power cut and another knock on Mr Xiu’s door downstairs at 6:30am that it suddenly dawned on me what the problem was.
It seems that if I have more than two heaters on the whole system blows a fuse and I am plunged into darkness – and when I say dark, I mean dark as a cave. The flat is dark enough even on a summer’s day but on a winter’s night or early morning I am feeling around for the lighter or my mobile to illuminate my way towards the candles with no help from street lights. Now I know why there are so many candles left in the flat by the previous tenants!
So, I have got to the bottom of the power cut problem and have made a mental note of the limit of the supply; two heaters and all the lights are fine but if I want to dry my hair, make toast, boil the kettle or heat up some food, one of the heaters has got to go. This has been working fine for the past few weeks and I have not had to get Mr Xiu out of his bed at the crack of dawn as I leave for work.
However tonight I find myself sitting in a café down the road because yet again my flat is cold and dark. Mr Xiu has thumped the fuse box with his fist and fidgeted a bit with some wires. He does this each time but it never seems to work and he still has to get a man to come around to do something magic – perhaps hit the fuse box harder (Mr Xiu has, after all, only one functioning arm).
I waited for 15 minutes in the cold and dark of the flat running the battery low on my laptop playing minesweeper surrounded by candles, until I could bare the cold no longer and decamped to Wagas where at least I have the option of a warm drink and heating.
Oh for a bigger power supply and water pressure strong enough to wet my body without me having to run around the cubicle to get 100% coverage!