Monday, January 12, 2009

Frustrations about living in India

Last weekend two men came by the house to "fix" the fuse box. They said the electric load was not being shared equally and they needed to fix how the energy was disbursed (anyway, that's what I gathered from the conversation).

I must mention, we did not call to have our power supply fixed - and that should have been a red flag. Not much here is proactive.

Power was terrible all week. Losing power for hours at a time (losing power daily is a common occurrence, but these were prolonged outages). We got very frustrated because the weekend "fix" seemed to mess things up.

Erik lodged a complaint and the management said they would send someone to the house at 12:00p Monday.

Power went out at 10:00am today. I called to make sure the electrician was coming and he said yes, they were coming (I confirmed the appointment but not the time) At 12:30p no one came so I called again. They said someone was on their way. At 1:45p I still did not have any workmen at the house (and still no power) so I called again. They said someone was on the way. I had to get terse and explain that I was promised a workman at 12:00p and now it's almost 2:00p and no one has shown and I've been out of power since 10:00a. They said someone is on the way. So I said "When?!? When will he be here?!?" So every time they gave me a vague answer I kept saying "When?!?" Finally he took my number down and said he'd get back to me. At 2:15p he called and said someone would be at my house at 4:00p. I reiterated the 12:00p appointment and that I've been without power all day.

Power came on at 3:00p.

At 3:55p four men knocked at my door. (How many does it take to screw in a lightbulb?) They went to the main power supply on the side of the house and told me a new conductor was needed and it would cost Rps. 1,500/. I said I needed my power restored but I'd need to talk to the owner of the house.

By 4:45p they told me they were done. Showed me the melted old conductor and told me the new one would solve all our power problems... we'll see. :-)

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