Soaking Walls

One late night in October 2007 after a long day of work followed by an evening band practice I came home and opened my front door and saw something I didn’t even know was possible.  It was raining in my house.  I turned around and looked up at the clear sky, holding out my hands just to make sure no rain would strike them on this dry starry night.  I then turned back to the house.  I stood in the doorway, exhausted and confused, as my cats glared disapprovingly from the drier areas of the room at the water dripping from my sagging ceiling and my dogs playfully rolled in puddles and splashed about.  Something was definitely wrong.

Imagine trying to straddle this while you take a dump.

A pipe had broken in the upstairs bathroom, flooding the top floor.  The water eventually leaked through the floor and flooded the ground level, then leaked through and flooded my basement.  To make matters worse, it was hot water, so the entire day I had been paying to heat the water that was flooding my house.  For the next week had no bedroom and if I wanted to use the bathroom I had to do so next to an enormous dehumidifier.  Getting distracted and diverting my stream a few inches to my left could potentially end my life.

For the next few crisp October mornings I woke up early and walked out to my back yard to pee.  Since the flooding only destroyed the part of my house with the bedrooms, I was still able to sleep on the big cozy lazyboy chair in my living room.  My kitchen was a mess, but despite it being a bit chilly outside I could still use the grill in the backyard to heat up my frozen pizzas.  On the weekends I got away from the mess by spending time with friends who had spare bedrooms.  It was a great opportunity for me to connect with nature and spend time with friends, and it even sparked great relationship with a friend that I hadn’t seen in many years.

A few months ago I noticed a small water leak in my house here in Hong Kong.  It was slowly leaking through my bathroom wall and causing the paint by my bed to bubble and fall off. A week ago I finally got tired of cleaning paint chips and asked my landlord to repair it, which she agreed to do. 

Having lived through the experience of having the majority of a large house completely destroyed by a water leak, the one week repair of a small leak seemed like no problem to me.  I figured they would cut out a bit of drywall, patch up the pipe, repaint my wall, and be done.

On their first day or work, 3 polite and friendly (I think.  They didn’t speak English) men knocked on my door while I was getting ready for work.  One sat on my chair and started talking on the phone, another sat on my floor and started reading a newspaper, and the third man picked up a huge saw and started cutting my bathroom in half.

My small apartment was immediately consumed by a swell of dust as the man ripped apart the tiles in my bathroom.  I scrambled to cover as much of my house with plastic as I could.  I put my toothbrush and everything else I could think of in my refrigerator, wrapped the gaps around my closet doors with tape, and pushed as much of my belongings as I could fit my bedroom, which was the only part of the house with a door I could close.  But after a few minute it was more than I could handle.  I was coughing and gagging from the dust, as the two other men sat comfortably reading the newspaper and chatting on the phone.  I left my house and arrived at work earlier than I had ever been.

11 hours later I came back to my house.  The air was thick with dust and everything was covered in a thick layer of white grime.  Half of my bathroom was completely gone, and the rest of it was filled with tools and supplies.  My bathroom mirror was so filthy I couldn’t see my reflection in it.  Unlike my large house in the US, I had no other rooms I could escape into and no friends with spare bedrooms I could mooch off of.  The cleanest of my rooms was my small bedroom, but I had propped my bed up vertically against the wall to make room for my belongings.  My entire life was confined to one 32 square foot room, filled with furniture.

I laid down on the floor, my body twisting around the various items in the room.  I desperately wanted to poop and take a shower.  Both of those seemed impossible.  After a minute or two I got back up and walked to the gym, where I reluctantly confronted the superfluous agglomeration of wrinkly old man butts and needlessly exposed genitals as I walked through the locker room to the showers.

After one night of sleeping in a dusty room in which I clearly did not fit, my lungs felt like they were about to go on strike and I decided I had to find somewhere else to sleep.  Thankfully, I have a girlfriend who was willing to let me stay in her house.  But with no car my weekday round trip commute is about 4 hours, and there just isn’t enough space in her house for both of us to fit.  I have time to wake up, go to work, eat dinner, and go back to sleep.  I miss my big lazy boy chair, only having to climb over a large machine to use the toilet, and having friends with extra bedrooms.  One small leak has caused me more frustration than my house getting almost completely destroyed.  Now when I hear the ubiquitous drilling and hammering of Hong Kong I feel sympathetic and wonder how the person whose house is being repaired is surviving. 

I know I should be thankful for even having a place to live.  But what can I say, I’m spoiled and like having a bathroom and breathable air.  I like having extra rooms for large recliners and a yard big enough that I can pee in it without the neighbors calling the police.  But most of all I like having a private, quiet, and clean place that I can call my own.  Hopefully this construction will be finished soon so I can get back to my normal life!