O fuck it.

Yesterday, when I was in my daughter’s extremely brightly lit bathroom, I threw a glance in the mirror, thinking how long my highlights had lasted; no dark roots at all! I leaned in closer, inspecting my tired, pasty white face with dark, gloomy circles underneath my eyes and saw to my horror that the hairs that I thought were salon bought coloring were in fact strands of grey. I’ve never had a grey hair before in my life. These grey hair sums up what has been a week of bad mood and disappointments.

Bad mood caused by the disappointing news that our container is being held captive and has not yet even arrived in China. The weather has not helped improve my bad mood; it’s absolutely freezing outside and chilly to say the least, inside. A quick email to Serena to complain and voila! today an air con/heater repair person shows up out of the blue.

“Tai leng le” (Too cold) I complain.

“Mei wenti!” (No problem!” he explains.

Everything works fine I think he says while he is touching the pipes coming out of the units inside the garage.

“But wei shenme (why) only 17 degrees (Celcius – you figure it out if you have to but it’s cold, trust me) in the living/dining room?” I ask.

“Zhe ge fangjia hen da le” (this room is very big), he continues.

“But wei shenme only 17 degrees zai zhe ge fanjia?”  (in this room) I ask him and shows him the control pad in the TV-room/sun room (no sun though) “zhe ge fangjia hen xiao.” (this room is very small)

“Ahh”, he exclaims and starts fiddling with the control pad pushing the buttons and tries to explain that (I think) max is 23 degrees and when it reaches 23 it will ting (stop).

“23 tai re le.” (too hot) I tell him.

“Mei wenti, it’s never going to reach 23 anyway” he says and leaves.

I think, this is the jist of our conversation and considering that the insulation is non-existent, the plumbing sucks, the paint flakes and the laminate on the cupboards are falling off it makes absolutely perfect sense.