Life Without Water

I keep trying to be positive - in China the electricity and water would frequently go off for a day at a time - and we still have electricity here, so it can't be that bad.

I didn't have a class this morning, so I didn't hurry into the shower. When I turned the tap on about 9.30 there was only a trickle. At that time, had I known, I could have trickled some into a bucket.

Now, at the end of the day, and beginning to feel slightly tacky - it's been a fairly warm day - I decided to check the internet for news ... and I found this:

Water to be cut for 30 hours in Istanbul

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

ISTANBUL – TDN with wire dispatches

Certain sections of Istanbul will not receive water for 30 hours between Wednesday 8 a.m. until Thursday 2 p.m. due to the repair and renewal operation on the Ömerli-Çamlıca pipeline and the Dudullu Drinking Water Facility.According to a statement released by the Istanbul Water Works (İSKİ), water will be cut in Bakırköy (except Yeşilyurt and Yeşilköy), Zeytinburnu, Eminönü, Beyoğlu and Beşiktaş municipalities, coastal areas of Fatih and Sarıyer municipalities on the European side and Kadıköy, Üsküdar, Kavacık, Sarıgazi, military barracks around Çekmeköy, parts of Samandıra, Kozyatağı, Küçükbakkalköy, Ataşehir, Çekmeköy, İmes Industrial Zone, Yukarı Dudullu, parts of Ümraniye, Yukarı Çamlıca, Ferhatpaşa, Kayışdağı and its environs and the İçerenköy region of the Anatolian side of the city.

That's us, Bakırköy.

Now, today is/was Tuesday and we have been without water since this morning. And yet this news report is dated Wednesday (tomorrow).

So ... when will we have water again??? Have they started the work early so they can finish early? Or is the report just wrong/

Or is there really going to be no water until Thursday afternoon?

Can you imagine local governments in other countries doing this?
And how annoying is it that everyone must have known this was going to happen (eg our Turkish bosses, Dilko) but it didn't occur to them to tell us about it.

There are several hairdressers right next to our building. A couple of weeks ago one of them installed a huge tank of water in an outside courtyard, and today there was a very noisy pump periodically taking water from it - so they knew.

The Flood of 07

I did notice that the little piece of wire holding the washing machine hose in the bath had come loose, and I had the thought that I should do something about it - soon. But I got distracted, and forgot all about it.

We were watching one of my favourite CSI programmes, and it had just got to the good part, but Peter suddenly had to go to the bathroom.

When I heard him yell, I suddenly remembered about the hose.

There is about a 1cm lip at the bathroom door, so naturally the whole bathroom was under water to that level. There is no floor drain in the bathroom.

Escaping from the bathroom, the water had first headed into the second toilet, the old-fashioned 'squat' toilet in the next room. Because of the smell that emanates from this fixture, we had taken the trouble of blocking it up with the top of a large plastic water bottle fitted into it like a plug ... and we had been using the little room as a store.

Having filled that room too, the water headed gleefully towards the lower end of the apartment. We had suspected that we were living in a leaning tower, and now we could see it for sure. I could almost hear it giggling as it slid down the hallway - a small tributary took off into the kitchen and straight under the fridge. As it chuckled it's way past the spare bedroom, another streamlet rushed in there to the far wall and under the spare mattress and chipboard bookshelf.

And then it caught sight of the main bedroom and - with me rushing up behind with all our spare towels - made it's way as fast as it bubbly stream would allow it towards the far wall, the lowest end of the apartment.

It won't happen again. The washing machine hose is securely strapped.