So, we got the lease on the apartment signed Thursday, and the keys were turned over, and everything was ready for us to move in Friday night. We ended up leaving work kind of late (for a great reason--terrific job candidate we are in LOVE with), and we were in the middle of the worst monsoon electrical storm/torrential downpour EVER, and the streets were starting to flood and it was already dark, so we decided screw it, we would make do without towels and blankets for one night, because no way were we going to wade through ankle deep god-knows-how-dirty water to get in to the store...then we get to the apartment and there are several pairs of shoes outside the door, and I open the door to find three guys working on the wooden valence thing for the living room curtains, tools and sawdust all over, guys on a stepstool hanging curtains in my room, the promised bed linens were nowhere to be seen, no one speaks English and lord knows our Hindi isn't good enough for the sort of conversation we were needing to have, etc. It was CLASSIC. I will admit to you right now that when I opened the door to this scene I let out a rather loud "What the F*CK?" Quite the picture of ladylike Indian modesty, that's me.
Oh, and of course the duplicate keys we had made don't work (awesome Indian craftsmanship), so we still have only one key among the three of us. Speaking of craftsmen, you should have seen these guys sawing away in the middle of our living room, serrated blades a couple inches from their own bare feet, which they were using to hold the wood steady, and millimeters from the marble floor, and so on. It was quite a sight.
Anyhowwwwww, after quite the comedy of errors and various promises made via phone and in person in broken English about how soon they'd be finished, they finally did get all their stuff together and got the hell out, and the linens arrived from the laundry, and we ordered pizza (!), and discovered that someone nearby has a pretty damn good open wireless connection, so all is right with the world. Well, except that we have no towels or blankets yet. But if there is ever a time to not need a blanket, it is in July in Bombay. Conversely, that does make it a fairly lousy time to be without towels, since they are necessary after a shower and all.
But we HAVE AN APARTMENT! And the rain seems to have stopped, so we should be able to venture out tomorrow; the driver is supposed to come at noon and take us to a large department store called HyperCity or some such. I am getting hyper just thinking about it.
EDITED TO ADD: It's Sunday morning now. Turns out that open wireless connection is only available when the owner is using it--we just lucked out that it was running when we first looked for a connection. We did go to HyperCity and we want to live there now. Yes, we want to move in to the store and LIVE there. We got really cool stuff to outfit the kitchen and bedrooms.
Later we were washing some of the new linens and the drainage hose from the washer came out and we ended up with water all over the kitchen floor. We called the front desk and they sent a local guy up within a few minutes. He fixed the pipe (it wasn't a difficult thing to fix, but still--it's not like WE had the tools to do it) and cleaned up the standing water, and charged us Rs 250 (about $6). Sometimes I love this country.
On the other hand, the hot water in my shower doesn't seem to work.
OK, I had better post this before our wireless neighbor decides to go out and have a life.
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