Why thank you, neighbor!

Well the other night when we were supposed to go out and look at mattresses, instead hubby was trying to finish up, with some help, cleaning the floors of the apartment.

It seems that the neighbor upstairs from us had a clog in their kitchen pipe. So they called a plumber, who unclogged the clog, and sent all the junk down into our kitchen pipe, where it overflowed and spread funky dirty nasty water into our kitchen, bathroom, hall and perhaps bedroom (not sure, hubby didn't say).

So, hubby had happened to stop by the apartment on Monday for something and find this mess in the apartment, which had been there for a day or so already. He went upstairs and found out from the neighbor that they had had a problem in their pipes, etc.

Hubby calls a plumber out who then proceeds to unblock the junk in the pipes, but that means that everyone below us also got some junky water overflowing in their pipes, since it appears that in apartment living in Egypt, you are in a direct line, pipewise, with all of your neighbors.

I'm not sure what moron devised this, and maybe it saves a few feet of piping, but it is not helpful at all. It means you can smell other peoples... stuff flowing through the pipes in the bathroom. I mean, I have yet to find an apartment bathroom here that didn't have some kind of smell going on.
I plan to start burning incense or something in ours. I hate bathroom smell.

Anyways, it took hubby and a helper some time to get the floors cleaned. Thank God we don't have carpets down, and thank God we weren't living there at the time.
That would have been an even bigger mess.

Hubby says it shouldn't happen again any time soon since the plumber cleared the pipes out. I hope he's right.

In other apartment news, also regarding cleaning, hubby and his helper have been cleaning the grout in the apartment with some kind of acid stuff. No idea what it is and of course I don't like something like that used in the house but what can I do? I appreciate at least that it's getting cleaned. And that I wasn't there to have to smell it. I just really really really hope that it was washed down VERY GOOD afterwards.

Today is the day that the air conditioners are being delivered and supposedly installed. Also, I believe that the painter will come and start to prepare the walls for painting.
There is a slight issue with a hole in the wall, where we were going to put a wall unit a/c (the kind that stick out of the building), and then hubby decided to put the wall mounted kind instead (that just hang on the wall), so we need to fill up the hole that was left from the last people who were there and had the a/c sticking out of the building.
There are two choices, filling with brick and then board, paint, etc. or just putting a board over and paint, etc.
Of course, in my mind, the brick sounds like a better option, but the guy who told hubby about it made it seem like it was some kind of hassle for painting over.
Well... you're gonna have to paint over the board either way, since there will be a board there.

Quite honestly, I don't have any faith in the workers here after seeing the kinds of things that are done.
I'm not saying there aren't any good workers, but there's so much crap going on too. There is no enforcement of any kind of regulations, and people just pretty much do whatever they want, regardless of if they know what they're doing or not.

There is a distinct lack of knowledge of good ways to do things. And not just with building. I mean with so many things here in Egypt.
Whether it's due just to lack of education or what, I don't know.
And yeah, I'm kind of picking on Egypt a bit.
I'm not saying there aren't any skilled people here, or that there are no knowledgeable people here. Just that I don't see them so often. At all.
lol

I fully appreciate that people make do with what they have, and try their best to live in the best way that they can or know how.

I guess my eyes are just tired of seeing so much stuff that's built or repaired in a half arsed way. No regard for aesthetics at all.
Tired of seeing all the dirt and grime and filth.
Tired of so many people who live in it and don't care.

Well... this has turned into a different post than anticipated.

Anyways, we are supposed to go pick out paint colors tonight.
Not sure when we will be checking out mattresses.
Maybe we will have a night of sleeping in a/c by Saturday or Sunday. If the paint gets done by then. I keep forgetting that we're running on "Egypt time". Everything takes at least twice as long as you would expect, and many times, even longer.