Last I left off  I had moved into the new condo and had a few minor leaking problems and no hot water, but I was satisfied with the efficiency in which  it was handled and was just waiting for Tuesday to get the hot water back up and running. Well Tuesday came and the maintenance man didn’t come in to work that day, no biggie the cool water actually felt pretty good. Today I go to the office to report that I still have no hot water and the manger tells me I need to go down one floor to the Juristic office. Juristic office?

juristic [jer-is-stick], juristical

Now, maybe I’m a little off my game today but for the life of me I cannot figure out how juristic relates to building maintenance. Anyway, I head down to the juristic office and one of the Thai ladies who works in the office and a maintenance man followed me back to the condo. 5 minutes later I had hot water “kop koon kup” I say and they are on their way. 5 minutes after that a flood of water comes out from under the sink.

So, I turn off the water and head back down to the juristic office and let them know the hot water is great but there is a large leak again under the sink. They assure me a maintenance man will be up in a few minutes. 5 minutes later a new maintenance man shows up with only a caulk gun…FacePalm. I explain to him he needs tools, he smiles and nods in agreement and then we stand there looking at each other for another minute or two until Pookie tells him he needs tools in Thai.

The juristic maintenance man leaves and comes back in 5 minutes with the first maintenance man and the caulk gun. They asses the problem and come to the conclusion they will need tools. Off to the juristic office they go for tools and 5 minutes later they are back and working on the problem. After a half hour they realize the valve is bad and get a new one installed and just to make sure this one doesn’t leak they made sure to caulk it real good after tightening it down…Facepalm.

Pookie heads off to take a shower and just as I was about to go out and look for a bigger table for my balcony office Pookie walks into the kitchen wearing only a towel and laughing…” Teelac, we no have hot water again”.  FACEPALM!

I know the deal, it’s not like I haven’t been to Thailand before but at this point I was getting pretty irritated, I just want to go find a nice table. Instead I head back down to the juristic office. The head lady is in and I tell her my problem, she shakes her head and utters something under her breath in Thai which made the cleaning lady in the office bust out laughing, I can only imagine she had some not so nice words to say about hiring the handicapped.

5 minutes latter the head lady is at my door with tools in hand, she shakes her head and says ” I head lady not engineer” as if to say,  why the hell am I fixing things when I pay people to fix things. 5 minutes later I have hot water again but head lady tells me valve still leak nit noi. She told me she would have a real plumber out in the morning.

I decided I needed to go for a long walk down to the open air furniture shop behind Big C…I picked up 2 stray dogs, a stray sunglasses salesman who gave me his pitch for 8 blocks and a very manly ladyboy who escorted me,  her arm in mine,  from soi 6/1 all the way down to Big C, she assured me that she would boom boom me too good.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day for table hunting…

Epilogue: While wrapping up this post and getting ready to hit the publish button a welder appeared above my balcony showering sparks and molten metal everywhere, I think when things go well from now on I’ll keep it to myself because things have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass if you know what I mean.