Loud doorbells on a quiet Friday night

After putting Kanyon to sleep for the third and hopefully last time, I settled onto the couch for a relaxing Friday night at home. I talked with M’Lynn about her plan for a very Chinese weekend with a national friend living in Beijing. She and Corbin were at a LEGO class. I guess kids now pay to play with LEGOS while carefully following the instructions from a trained LEGO professional instead of purchasing the LEGOS for themselves and building their own creations at home. I suppose it would be nice to have someone else step on all those loose LEGO pieces for a change.

Back at home, my quiet Friday night was loudly interrupted at 9:00 PM when someone pressed our ridiculously loud doorbell. I opened the door to find a sweet little grandma who spoke way too fast for me to understand. I probably wouldn’t have understood slow Chinese either. Anyway, she was frantically motioning with her hand in what appeared to be a scrapping motion and repeating over and over that she lived on the third floor and that my wife knew her.

Well OK. I’m glad my wife knows you and you live on the third floor, but what are you doing at my door at 9:00 PM on Friday night?

She continued with her too fast Chinese while I returned inside to call for help. Since M’Lynn knew her, I started with her. Plus, M’Lynn’s Chinese is rockin’.

The grandma continued her too fast Chinese and M’Lynn passed the phone over to her Chinese friend she was visiting in Beijing. Together they figured out the problem. Her apartment radiators needed to be repaired and the valve to shut off the water was located in our apartment. Pretty convenient, huh? The valve that controls the hot water to the radiators for the six apartments below is located in our bedroom.

That’s strange, but sure come on in to turn off the valve and get your radiators fixed at 9:10 PM on Friday night. Isn’t the service amazing here? I mean, it’s Friday night and the repairman is on call to fix radiators. Had this been America, the grandma would have slept cold until Monday morning when the apartment manager finally read the maintenance request!

She promised the problem would be fixed in 20 minutes and then the repairman would return to turn on the valve.

Finally, after four loud doorbell rings and giving the repairman a cup of water so he could take his cold medicine (don’t get me started on this) at 10:22 PM, the worker finished. I started my quiet Friday evening at home and the Chinese grandma slept comfortably with working radiator heat.