ArabMusicians

Water Heater Work

When we first arrived here, our water heater wasn't working, so we got a plumber to come fix it. In the picture, the water heater is the white box by the window. It doesn't have a tank, it just heats water as you use it. Keith brought the plumber here and spoke for me since I knew no Arabic at that point. He replaced a part and it has worked fine (pretty much) for six or seven weeks. Well, it quit yesterday, so I went back to the same shop and got another guy to come here and fix it again. He replaced exactly the same parts--which he kept in his tool bag--since they were all rusty and not working. I guess this will work for about 6 weeks, too. In America when a repairman comes, they don't want you looking over their shoulder, but here you have to watch what they do or they'll leave it leaking and not working any better than before. The first plumber smoked while he worked (on the GAS water heater, in our bathroom) but this guy took the parts outside so he could smoke and not smoke up our house. One other difference: when he took the heater apart, water poured onto the floor, but he didn't worry about it much. The bathrooms here have drains built into the floor for just such situations.

In the midst of all that, we got two phone calls and an e-mail saying the water in the river could be contaminated with bird flu so we shouldn't touch our tap water which comes from the river. Within an hour the TV news was saying the water is clean and bird flu can't be carried in water anyway. The price of bottled water went up this afternoon, and all the chicken places are shutting down. I told Beth we should buy lots of chicken now when it's cheap and keep it in the freezer until the bird flu scare is over. :)