Recently we had a little electrical problem in our Soviet apartment. The kitchen light, which had been flickering for months, finally quit working altogether. I tried changing the bulb, but that didn't help the situation. I could see that one of the contacts in the socket was loose, but my roommate and I couldn't remember whether the light switch was in the on position when it was up or down (all the switches in the apartment are different), and I wasn't willing to stick a screwdriver into the socket until I knew for sure whether I would survive the experience. We decided it was time to call the landlady. In the meantime, I took a sconce off the wall in the hallway and used a piece of wire to fix it to the gas pipe in the kitchen, giving us some very classy bare-bulb illumination.
Our landlady, who is a friend of one of the security guards at my work, and her husband came and tried to fix the light fixture, but they also couldn't get it to work. They left us a nice little table lamp and called an electrician. Our landlady called me and said she had prepaid the electrician and that he would arrive sometime between nine and eleven on Wednesday morning.
At 8:30 on Wednesday morning the doorbell rang--the electrician had showed up early. I tried to let him in, but the button to open the main stairwell door often doesn't work, and so the electrician couldn't get in. Within a few minutes, our landlady called, saying the electrician was waiting outside. I managed to get the door open on the third attempt, and, after chiding me for not letting him in, the electrician, an older guy in camouflage gear, shuffled in. I showed him our non-working light fixture. I was still half asleep, and so when he asked me if we had changed the bulb, I responded that I didn't know, to which he gave me a look of disapproval. Oops. After deducing that we had, in fact, tried to change the bulb, he asked whether the switch worked, and then, without waiting for me to rely, decided to test it himself. Good decision--I hadn't had any coffee yet, and so I wasn't really up to the task of dealing with an electrician in Russian.
In about five minutes he fixed the light (the contact was loose) and left after demonstrating that I owed him no money (he probably thought I spoke no Russian). The cost for this whole affair? 50 rubles, which converts to the whopping total of $1.38. Not bad.
Our landlady, who is a friend of one of the security guards at my work, and her husband came and tried to fix the light fixture, but they also couldn't get it to work. They left us a nice little table lamp and called an electrician. Our landlady called me and said she had prepaid the electrician and that he would arrive sometime between nine and eleven on Wednesday morning.
At 8:30 on Wednesday morning the doorbell rang--the electrician had showed up early. I tried to let him in, but the button to open the main stairwell door often doesn't work, and so the electrician couldn't get in. Within a few minutes, our landlady called, saying the electrician was waiting outside. I managed to get the door open on the third attempt, and, after chiding me for not letting him in, the electrician, an older guy in camouflage gear, shuffled in. I showed him our non-working light fixture. I was still half asleep, and so when he asked me if we had changed the bulb, I responded that I didn't know, to which he gave me a look of disapproval. Oops. After deducing that we had, in fact, tried to change the bulb, he asked whether the switch worked, and then, without waiting for me to rely, decided to test it himself. Good decision--I hadn't had any coffee yet, and so I wasn't really up to the task of dealing with an electrician in Russian.
In about five minutes he fixed the light (the contact was loose) and left after demonstrating that I owed him no money (he probably thought I spoke no Russian). The cost for this whole affair? 50 rubles, which converts to the whopping total of $1.38. Not bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment