Beijing, Capital INCONVENIENCE

There are a lot of blog entries that I have wanted to post but just haven't seen to find the time. Last week, however, I had an experience I just have to tell you about. Just the words alone would somehow be ineffective to communicate the true absurdity of the situation from my perspective, so I added photos so that you can see what I saw.
I woke up on a Saturday morning to find that the electricity was non-functional in my apartment.This had happened already on Thursday night and had had the repair guy come up and turn it back on. Judy usually handles this stuff, but she was visiting Taiwan at the time. On Thursday when it happened first, I had to scour the apartment for this electricity card which you need to recharge every time your electric is low. They don't use bills here, it's all done through these cards which need to be recharged in the office in the basement. Which, in a place where the building layouts are truly baffling, it becomes quite the little adventure. So I woke up on Saturday with no electricity. This was at like 7:30 AM. I go down tot he door guy and ask him to help. He replies that the maintenance guy isn't in until 8:30. So I go back upstairs and wait an hour. Then I come down again and he tells me to go to B3. It's not the first time I've been down there, but I just have to show you these pictures.

My floor next to elevators

Basement Level 3 on my left out of the elevator

To my right on the same level

Through the doors sign to property management office

Turn left to follow the sign

End up here, must walk straight to the right

End up here to another hallway

To the management office

                    There's definitely some words that came to mind when I first went to find this place…three words in particular (see previous post). 

Then I get down there, add money and proceed to try and ask them to let me know that my card is low before shutting off my electricity in the middle of the night. They just keep telling me to call them to check it. And I keep telling them I don't want to have a problem and then call, I want to avoid having a problem in the first place. The woman I first talked to was very nice, but then the woman next door starts coping an attitude with me and telling me there was probably a notice slid under my door. Too which I said "pee lah!" which literally means "fart" but translates to "bullshit". Anyway, it was a stupid little interchange. I put the money back on my card and they told me to go to the first floor and tell the door guy to radio the repair guy to come up and enter my shit into the electricity grid. 

So I went up to the first floor and the security guy just had no fucking clue what I was talking about. So then he told me go upstairs and have a look, which I did. The electricity was still off. So I went back downstairs and he said the guy is on the way. So I went back upstairs and the guy came to my room and I gave him the card and finally had my electric back online. Oye! 

They do this for hot water too…so one time in the morning, my hot water turned to ice fucking cold water right in the middle of my shower and guess what, the property management office wasn't open yet! Lovely!

So floor plans in Beijing are nuts as I have already explained to you from my previous Carrefore adventure. Since then, by the way, I have been back to Carrefore like 5 times and gotten more adept at traversing what still remains a complete clusterfuck of a commercial area. I have another comical image sequence to show you. 

Side entrance to mall…welcome sign on door, otherwise I would have no idea

To this mysterious segue

With a creepy rape staircase on the left

To this

To this!

WTF!?

I'm just going to keep this post short and sweet. Beijing has got these creepy little idiosyncrasies about its architecture and I'm glad I could communicate it in pictures to you. It's so confusing at first. And that is just one of the many things that makes Beijing Capital INCONVENIENCE!

-Sloppy