Earlier this week our apartment complex posted a notice: "ting dian ting shui" on Tuesday from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm.
Here's your translation -
ting = stop
dian = electricity
shui = water
Thus, ting dian ting shui = stop electricity stop water. You will be glad to know this was actually one of the first Chinese phrases I learned. Let's face it, the water and power tend to go off WAY to often around here. Seriously, in my ideal world, I still wouldn't know (or need to know) how to say "power outage" in Chinese!
Anyways, in the spirit of "counting my blessings", I decided to just be thankful for the advance notice. Usually I discover a "ting shui" when I go to turn on the faucet. And nothing comes out.
This morning I hurried to check email (yes - our computer runs on battery, no - our modem does not). I had the coffee brewed by 7:30 and even remembered to fill up a mixing bowl of water in the kitchen sink (to soak dirty dishes). I moved a few things from our small freezer to our deep freezer (which stays icy cold for a long time if you don't open it). All in all, it's possibly the best I've ever been prepared for a water/electricity outage.
But the water stayed on. Power too. 8am rolled around, then 9am. It was sometime between 11 and noon that the water did go off. But, here we are mid-afternoon and the power is still on. I haven't been this thankful for water and/or electricity in a long time.
My old buddy Chad loved to say, "low expectations equals high satisfaction". So true. So very true. When was the last time I thought, "man, I'm having a great day, the water stayed on til almost noon and the power is still running!"
I do have a sneaking suspicion that the story might not be over yet. When will the water return? And what about tomorrow? Is the 12 hour outage inevitable? Or did we luck out this time? But for now, I'm going to ride the "low expectactions equals high satisfaction" wave and enjoy the privilege of opening the fridge without worrying that I am hastening the defrosting process!
2 comments:
It's really cold here and my parents keep their heat set on 65-I feel like we are having a ting dian! hehe. Well, it's 5:44 am-I emailed you around 12 pm and now I am commenting on your blog at 5 am-you can see how my night is going. Hope they don't turn it off tomorrow! miss you. EA
EA is right - it's cold here. But we can do Lynnette one better - we have yet to turn on our heat! It just seems somehow unfair to go from AC to heat within a week or so - what happened to our long, mild fall?
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