Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Ass Backwards Day


Ass backwards is the only way to describe our return to HK.  The airport was easy enough.  Thanks to my HK residency card we blitzed through the line to our baggage in minutes flat and quickly found a painless cab ride home.  Then things grew dark…literally.  Thanks to the benevolence of Lauren’s lovely parents we were bestowed with a brand new black (and striking awesome-looking) Nintendo Wii for Christmas (thank you Derald and Shirley).  Since I had the following day off work and little else to do I aspired to set up our new entertainment system whilst Lauren unpacked our suitcases, did laundry, and cooked dinner (thanks, babe). 

A brief run-down on electronics worldwide before I continue: American electrical outlets (and their corresponding appliances) operate at 120 volts, whilst outlets in HK run at 220 volts.  Since our American laptop, electric razor, toothbrush, etc all work well-and-good at this foreign voltage with a simple power adaptor I hypothesized that our new Wii would fare just as well.  Unfortunately my theory was invalid.  Whilst Lauren unpacked I headed downstairs to one of the four electronic shops in the mall beneath our building; I found an adaptor in the fourth shop.  Bristling with excitement I placed this new adaptor onto the Wii power cord and plugged it into the surge protector.  Thankfully I did not plug the cord into the Wii prior to this act because as soon as I plugged the cord into the surge protector I heard a pop, saw the lights in our room go out, and smelled smoke.  Luckily I was able to fix our situation by flicking the fuse box and opening the door to the balcony; however, the Wii was still an issue.

We headed back downstairs to the same electronics store where a kindly gentleman told us to buy a power converter in the Golden Computer Arcade 4 subway stops away in Sham Shui Po.  This place is amazing, it’s like a wet market for electronics where any electrical appliance need (save mine) can be met.  In one painless stroke we managed to get a Japanese power cord for the Wii at the first shop we went to. 

Then we went home. 

Once again bristling with excitement, I plugged the cord into the wall and Wii to no avail.  It didn’t work.  I tried every outlet in the apartment except for the ones in our roommate’s room and it still didn’t fucking work.  Well no big deal.  As I said before, I didn’t have to work the next day thus I could put off such problems until then.  Lauren cooked a great spaghetti dinner and we fell asleep at 8:30 P.M. due to jet lag.

            Then I woke up.

            Lauren had to go to work at 10:00 A.M so I had the whole day to solve problems.  Wii was the first priority and our bathroom lighting was the second.  Seeing as the previous day was out of order I decided to deal with the second priority first.  Only one of the three lights in our bathroom has been working since we moved in.  I can’t adequately explain how difficult it is to wake up with a morning shower by candlelight; yet I’ve shouldered this burden for four months without complaint.  Ergo after four months I went downstairs and complained to the front-desk that the lights in my bathroom have been burnt out since I moved in.  The kind woman on duty told me she would send an “engineer” (her word) to replace the bulbs.  Whilst waiting for said engineer I placed the dinner leftovers into a Tupperware container and told Lauren I made her lunch for the next day.  She thanked me via WhatsApp.  The “engineers” rang my doorbell as I was watching the new Conan the Barbarian movie (which I must say lives up to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger version that none of its sequels quite met).  The two “engineers” (yes I will keep using quotation marks and parenthesis) brought a superfluous ladder to replace the bulbs.  The two men were very nice and explained that they could only replace one bulb.  I responded that I could not possibly have burned out the bathroom lights because I only use them for a cumulative 30 minutes a day at most, thus that they never worked.  They kindly replied, “We understand, Sir, but we can only replace one [of the broken bulbs we installed].”  I let it slide since they called me “Sir” as I had bigger bulbs to ignite.

            I packed my Wii and accompanying power cord and MTR’d back to the Golden Computer Arcade where I told the shop owner that they sold me a faulty power cord and I wasn’t leaving until they provided me with a working power cord or refunded my expenses.  The storeowner looked at me in disbelief, and then plugged the cord he sold me into a socket and into my Wii and pressed its power button.  It ignited with a warm, green, heavenly glow.  Then he and his employees collectively laughed at me. 

            “I guess you have to try a different socket,” he said.
            “I guess so,” I replied.
            “Where did you come from?” he asked.
            “Kowloon.”
            “That’s not so bad,” he said. 

I guess it could have been worse.

Thinking I had been previously color blind to little red lights on a Wii entertainment system I went all the way back to home-sweet-home Wan Tai Sin station.  On my way back to the apartment I bought two light bulbs (they come in packs of two) to replace the one bulb that has been burnt out since we moved in and the management couldn’t afford to replace despite my monthly king’s ransom management fee.  Thinking that the same plug that didn’t work would somehow work in the same outlets and power the Wii to leave me on the couch of the lotus-eaters and unable to attend to any other problems of the day (hopefully anyone who has read The Odyssey will get this reference) I decided to fix the light prior to fixing the Wii.

The light bulbs in our bathroom are within recessed-lighting fixtures.  Any new bulb must be plugged into a little cord that hangs from within the ceiling and placed within the fixtures.  I unplugged the faulty bulb from the cord then plugged a new bulb into it and set it into the ceiling fixture.  I flicked the light switch and Whallah, the new bulb didn’t work.  Thinking the new bulb was faulty (like so many other things today) I plugged the other new bulb into the power cable hanging from the ceiling and it worked.  “Fantastic,” I thought.  Then pushed this new bulb into the ceiling fixture and flicked the switch again to see what a fully illuminated bathroom looks like and dammit it didn’t work.  I pulled the bulb from the ceiling and out of curiosity flicked the switch again and wouldn’t you know it, it worked!  Thinking previous events had been a fluke I pushed the bulb back into the ceiling and flicked the switch and nope, absolutely no light!  I pulled the light from the ceiling and sure enough, it worked.  Then I put it back into the ceiling and sure enough, it didn’t.  I debated taping the bulb to the cord (as I conjectured that somehow the two were disconnected when delicately pushing it into the ceiling) then decided to leave it hanging.  Two recessed lights and one tool-shed chandelier ain’t bad.

Then I moved back to the Wii.  Needless to say the same cord that didn’t work before but worded in the store didn’t work again.  I debated punching through the wall but convinced myself that since the apartment walls are comprised of re-enforced concrete such endeavors are useless.  Now it’s dark out and all I’ve completed today on top of a bright bathroom is this blog entry.  Hopefully I’ll get more done tomorrow J

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