El Andalous - Malfunctions

El Andalous on My Way Back from Beach

As I said, it’s one of those “everything going wrong” phases.

After I’d got my washing machine repaired, I suddenly started to have no cold water in my shower. I thought the two were connected.

I asked for someone to come and have a look at it (at least I just have to ask the people in-house and don’t have to negotiate with external workmen). As is often the case, it got “forgotten” on first request, but then seen to fairly promptly on the reminder.

Everything in Egypt seems to be about negotiation. He tried to tell me that it was just that the water in the pipes was hot because it was summer. I explained this wasn’t possible, because the water got hotter the longer I ran it. Also, it had just happened in the last few days and it had been summer for a while now. It’s almost winter. In the end, he replaced the showerhead, claiming this was what was making it be only hot water.

I’m not entirely convinced, but the water is at least now not impossibly hot and is cold, but just dribbles, if I want it to be colder. I miss my old shower head because it gave a good hefty jet of water; the new one is a bit timid for my liking, but it’s functional. Like many things, you get a fix, but it’s not really quite the fix you want. You need to be patient over here. It’s also a typical interaction – the first tactic is always to avoid doing anything (hence having to ask twice, having to push back on the argument as to the cause, etc).

It was similar with the air conditioning, where I was less successful (if you can call my interaction over the hot water a success, that is). I thought that my air conditioning was rather slow in cooling down my flat, so Safi kindly requested for mine to be checked at the same time as hers was being seen to. The check just consisted of leaving the air conditioning on for an hour while they saw how fast the temperature fell. It’s predictable that they won’t see a drop from 32 degrees to 27 degrees within an hour as a problem. The temperature is dropping and we should be happy with that.

I’ve never had air conditioning, so I don’t really have any comparison, but I felt it should dip much quicker than this. I mentioned that and the guy just claimed that because it was summer, it felt like a long time for the temperature to drop because the temperature had further to fall before it was a manageable heat. I didn’t really have any other argument, so had to accept that this was just how it is. It’s actually not so bad in any case, as they say; I would kick up more of a fuss if it was totally unmanageable, but it isn’t.

Nevertheless, despite the ease of having all services available in-house, it still feels like a struggle each time!