Post titled: "A day of patiently learning" OR "The customer is usually wrong"



My mission today was simple:

1.Find a bank that doesn't charge outrageous fees for me to do business with

and

2.fix the faucet in the kitchen.

I failed pretty miserably at both. And how is it that I always bump into American hip-hop groups in the most random places (like in the money exchange office being virtually lead around by the hand by a huge Turkish bouncer-looking guy), really odd but it seems to happen without fail. Oh, but I did get fotos of that Ingeborg Bachman shrine I'd attempted to describe the other day:




Regarding the faucet... (oh, the faucet!..)

Since it's installation two months ago the hot water hasn't worked.

On my third trip to BAUHAUS (German equivalent of Home Depot only much smaller and with an even more useless staff) I brought fotos to show the guy:

(Rough translation):

Me: "Here is for on and off, and here is for hot an cold and here is under and hot, cold, cold and another for the washing machine."

Bauhaus: "AH, yes, it looks like there s"ould be a boiler connected to the third line, where is the third line connected."

"To the underside of the faucet, but to what- I donät know..."

"Then it's wrong, installed incorrectly. Where's the boiler?"

"I don't think we have a boiler because there's already a hot water faucet below"

"Well it looks like it is set up for a boiler."

"Boiler?"

"Yes, a little boiler for the hot water"

"But this faucet here coming out of the wall is already the hot water..."

"Then I don't know why it is set up for a boiler."

(Other Bauhaus worker wanders over and looks over my shoulder as I show them the digital fotos on my camera once again of the faucet, sink, and below, the entire coversation is repeated, this time with the third guy included, who says basically the same thing as the first.)

Me: "Do you have any suggestions?"

Bauhaus 1: "It is wrong, incorrectly done."

Bauhaus: 2: "Yes, this must be, it is wrong."

Me: "So, should I just buy a new faucet?"

Bauhaus 1: "You probably should, yes, because this one is totally wrong."

Me: "Oh,.. ok, thanks... (to myself)...sh*t."

I hadn't brought enough cash for a new faucet (those suckers aren't exactly cheap) which would mean a fourth trip to Bauhaus, even if it is only a few blocks... totally absurd.

So, yea, that was a learning experience.

Nadine came home and taught me how to make sushi. We went to several little stores to collect what we needed (it is very hard to find ripe avocados around here, they're all virtually lime-green) and went home to chop, build, roll, slice our way towards dinner. Such a fun process, and pretty simple, I'm surprised more people don't do it more often...



We randomly found a copy of the "Die Tiefseetaucher mit Steve Zissou" (The Life Aquatic) in a dvd case, watched it while continuing to work on our little project, which we made some progress on.


Nadine spilled a bottle of water on her laptop, which we were able to save by quickly turning it upside down and then padding-down/hairdrying, but it made me wonder: Companies test the lifespan of a single key, how many times it can be pushed, etc. but the can't bother to make a waterproof laptop surface, I mean human beings are GOING to spill things on their computers, this should be a priority, shouldn't it? Or is it an option you can add at extra-cost? I have no idea.
Either way she and I are having a competition to see who is clumsier, my theory is that she is and her theory is that I am... we shall see, heh heh heh.


(above: first two fotos are from the neighborhood, 1: our backyard, sort-of, and 2:Südstern church down the street, then 3: what the heck? They were selling LED-embedded tiles at Bauhaus, did I miss something?)