Why is there sawdust in my shoes?

 Because I let these two in...

to do a little carpentry repair work on the balcony doors.
And, of course, they felt the most appropriate place to saw the wood was in the middle of the living room.

Shelves arrived

My shelves arrived today.
The carpenter kept his word. And he did a good job on them, too.
Now my house smells of new stain and sawdust.
Next great, big project: unpacking, cleaning, repairing, sorting, filing, organizing, and shelving the hundreds of books in the bunches of boxes stored in the same room.
Ayah.

Another carpenter, another mess

I have invited another carpenter over. (Will it never end?)
He is hard at work making a mess. And making a new window to replace the rotted one the landlord's friend broke on my first day here.
I am chagrined at the sight of so much sawdust again. But also know that monsoon is coming and I have to be able to keep out the rain, and the birds.

New cupboards

The cupboards were another thing in very bad shape when I first arrived. Warped from weather and years of being unused, termite eaten. The formica was peeling off the cupboard doors and they were a mess.
I had the doors removed, thinking maybe new doors with new formica--known here as shamica--would do the trick and be enough. But two carpenters came to give me estimates on the work and both said the whole thing needed to go because it was in such bad shape.
All right then. Give me something new and pretty.
Six days later I had new cupboards with nice, green shamica. They just needed painting, and no problem there because the painter was still hanging around painting things.
Behold the transformation. I have kitchen cupboards. And when the paint dries, I'll put something in them.

The gaping hole

One of the worst things about the apartment when I first moved in was the fiberglass covering the pipe shaft in the kitchen. It was dirty, old, and warped. All the dust and pigeon dirt could float right in. And it's next to the sink where it all gathers on the dishes.
The fiberglass had to go.

Finding someone to fix this was not easy. The carpenter said he would do it, but as noted, the carpenter did not finish all he said he would.
He did remove the old fiberglass pieces, though. Leaving a gaping hole into disgusting-ness right there in the kitchen.
Old pipes going up into the dust.
And down into a mess of pigeon droppings.
Ew gross, I do not want to stare at that all the time.
Or give the pigeons such easy access into my home.

Well the carpenter wasn't going to come back and fix it. So a sheesha wallah, a glass guy, was called in.

The glass guy arrived and said he'd charge $20 to fix the shaft and the two other broken windows in the flat--that included glass, cutting, and labor. Nice.
He was done in forty minutes. After waiting almost three weeks to have this ghastly ugliness removed from my sight.
Hooray it's gone.

That's not my work

I'm so tired of the phrase, "it's not my work".
A/c installers wont do anything that might resemble electric work.
Plumbers won't do anything that might resemble carpenter work.
Carpenters won't do anything that might resemble glass work.
Painters won't do anything that might resemble carpenter work.
Yet I have to dabble in it all as I go behind each different worker to make sure their job is done correctly and thoroughly.
What am I paying them for?

Carpenter trouble

I made a mistake. I paid the carpenter.
Now he won't return to finish his job.
I didn't think I'd paid the whole amount. It was the landlord who did the negotiating and I thought there was still a little more before it was the total price.
Nope.
He finished the kitchen cupboards and asked for money. Then he took all those bills with a hungry look in his eye and slept late the next day (so I assume) knowing he wouldn't come back to finish the other little odd jobs around the place.
Sigh.
Why do I have to be so constantly on guard for everything? Can't I trust that when I hire (and pay) a person to do a job, he will then do it?
And to do it well. That would be another nice idea.
Every time I look at those kitchen cupboards I see another small thing that wasn't done right. As if doing the job right wasn't important because I would never notice anyway. But I do. And it makes me sick because those cupboards weren't cheap and apparently now it's my fault they aren't nice because I paid him.

The curtain man was appalled

The curtains he had made were beautiful, and he'd taken all that time to hang and arrange them just so before he left. Thus I didn't want the curtain man to return.
I'd done things kind of backwards and invited the dust creating, mess-making sort of workers after the curtains were hung instead of before. The best I could do was to tie them up to keep them out of the dust--they were just too difficult to get down.

So there was one last small curtain being made for a different room. I hadn't called him about it because I hadn't wanted him to come and see what had become of his beautiful work in the living room.

But this evening he brought over the last small curtain and there he stood at the door and his face said it all. He was very distressed.
He started scolding the painter and the carpenter for letting this happen, "Oh they'll get bad. They're getting dirty. This is very very bad."
I agree, but what to do?

The painter piped up that it was the a/c installer and what can you do about those messy, troublesome a/c installers?
That was inventive.

So the curtain man straightened things as best he could, but then had to turn his back on the rest, knowing there was nothing more to be done right now while the carpenters were still at work and the dust still flying.
Ah, poor, sad curtain man.

Wire is not a mobile

The a/c installer had finally come to finish his job--after 2 weeks of being MIA--and he was again refusing to finish the work because he didn't have enough wire. Not only that, but he was also insisting that it wasn't his work, but an electrician's.
I knew, though, that I had the wire he needed. Somewhere. It's hard to keep track of things when so many other people move them around.
Anyhow, I asked where the wire was. The carpenter--who can't seem to understand a word I say, no matter what language--believed I was looking for my mobile phone. So he had the other six men in the house at that time scrambling all over in search of "madame ji's" mobile. Until finally one of them understood I was looking for the wire for the a/c.
Then it was funny. "Mobile," they all laughed.
No: wire.
Ayah.

89 million men

Today there were:
2 painters
2 carpenters
5 trash collectors
1 landlord
1 delivery man
1 washing machine service man
4 air-conditioner installers
3 electricians
----------------
For a total of 89 million men in my apartment.

And I don't care if that is bad math.

Maybe that means there was some work getting done. Or maybe that just means there was a whole lot of chaos, mess and stress. It's hard to be certain.

Here is just one small corner of the mess they leave behind everyday.
And a view of their noise and other general chaos.