My bathroom, kinda sorta still a death-trap

As part of the long series of mostly useless training I had before coming out here (your tax dollars at work), I had to take a "security refresher update." As the schedules didn't work out, what I in fact had to do was take the whole damn security course over again. Which turned out not to be such a bad thing; I think I must've been surreptitiously trying to finish my Thai homework the first time 'round, or something. Anyway, one of the more interesting segments was on home safety, in which we were taught to be alert to, and assertive about, housing conditions that might endanger life and limb, because the officers supposed to be taking care of us sure as hell weren't going to be. (They may not have phrased it exactly like that.) Part of the presentation included a slideshow in which potential hazards were depicted, with the speaker prompting us to identify the risks. One slide was a photo of a shower with an electrical outlet directly above the showerhead. She didn't even have to explain; everyone just laughed.

Fast-forward a month. K and I have just arrived, at 3 AM, in our new apartment. We've just released the cats, and we're exploring, with equal parts giddiness and exhaustion, the odd layout of our new home. I have just found where the bathroom is. I call out to K:
"The good news: our shower is famous! Now, the bad news..."

The thing is, the original General Services Officer here, who takes care of such things, was a woman with an attitude worse than mine. She was burned-out; she was in over her head; all the residences and offices were crumbling around all our heads, and she just locked herself in her office and tried to avoid all of us. I might have had a modicum of sympathy for her, until she led the Housing Board in denying our appeal to move at our own expense, and kept us in our little cave by the freeway. Even now, I wouldn't wish her job on anyone. Between the official corruption, the local staff's adherence to a different standard of upkeep and cleanliness, and the salt, humidity and pollution in the air, it'd be next to impossible for even a really good GSO to keep things running smoothly. And she wasn't really good; she royally sucked, so you can just imagine.

Anyway, I didn't really push the issue with her, because I knew we wouldn't get anywhere. K and I dutifully used the one shower that wasn't wired like that, even though it isn't in the master bath. But we recently got a new GSO who isn't yet jaded and overwhelmed, and I cautiously and informally broached the subject with him. He sent a staff member to take a photo. And then called me immediately.
"Oh my GOD! This has to be fixed RIGHT AWAY! DON'T USE IT!"
Well...yeah, I thought a rational person might see it that way. While the workmen were here, I asked them to also fix our persistently-leaking water heater, and they did.

Yay, me. "My bathroom, a death-trap no longer," I scribbled in my pre-blog. And then, over the weekend, K and I were sitting at the computer, doing the crossword playing tetris, when we heard the sound of rushing water. Some pipe had burst in the sink. I called the duty GSO staff, but K managed to shut off the water.

Yesterday, at work, I got a mysterious e-mail from the GSO foreman. "While checking on your work order on the water heater," it said, "we decided to replace. Work will continue tomorrow."
"Great, thanks!" I wrote back. But then started thinking: what the hell? While checking on your work order? When does that happen? I phoned K.

"It exploded," he reported balefully.
"It what now?"
Apparently, the work crew had done a somewhat half-assed job on the water heater repair (I'm shocked -- shocked!), which wasn't in great shape to begin with. Then, while futzing about with the replacement sink pipe, they did something that temporarily increased the water pressure, with the result that the tank burst like a water balloon. A two-hundred-gallon metal-encased water balloon, suspended six feet off the floor. Needless to say, the bathroom is in something of a state of disrepair, and we're without the shower on the main floor. Luckily, we have the two other showers, whose outlets are now...six inches away from the showerheads. Sigh.

In the pre-blog scribble, my optimistic pronouncement was to be followed by a solicitation of interest from visitors, now that I can could offer you non-electrocution on your stay, noting that K and I planned to travel to the Pushkar Camel Fair in November, and asking for travel companions.

But, suddenly, things are in a whirl here, and it's starting to look as though I might achieve escape velocity sooner than expected. I don't want to jinx any of the possibilities by elaborating. Stay tuned.