'It's been switched off, obviously'

The last 24 hours have been quite unfortunate. Yesterday morning I tried to switch the hot top on to wash my face, and nothing came out. I kind of just passed it off as one of those things at the time, but as the day went on, nothing was coming out of any of the hot tops on my floor. This morning the same thing happened again.

On my way out of the building to get to class this morning, I asked the bab downstairs why we don't have any hot water. Her response 'It's been switched off, obviously', as though it was a really normal occurrence. She even kind of smiled when I asked her, as though I was stupid for asking such a question. I asked her to find out more about it and tell me more when I got back.

So, I got back and there she was with some bloody brilliant news, 'the water in the whole building has been switched off''. Ok, fair enough. 'Until when?' I asked. 'Oh, you know, maybe until October, the whole town has started turning the hot water off'. I thought she was having some sort of really unfunny joke with me, and stormed upstairs and bust into my room screaming 'WTF?! She said until October, what kind of a sick joke is this?' to my roommate. I'd be perfectly happy with it being switched off for a week, or maybe every other day, but the prospect of having no hot water for the rest of my stay here is actually haunting.

So, what does a girl do when the only thing that comes out of the shower is freezing cold water? Yes, that's right, she buys a purple tub with a picture of some fruit on the bottom.

So, after a terrible run in the pouring rain I got on with the tedious process of boiling water with the two kettles we own. I reckon it took around 6 or 7 goes to fill the tub up before I could finally attempt to get clean. I hope my repeated boiling of kettles makes the electricity bill for this place pathetically high, that would teach them!

In addition to this, two little visitors paid a visit to my room last night. Some cockroach-y things. Cue panic attack. I'm still not sure how the little buggers get to the 7th floor of a building, as I'm out of breath when I make it up here.

I know I pay bugger all to live here, but I think I'm entitled to have a hot shower. I'm actually really pissed off, even more so because the people who run this place don't actually seem to care when something like this happens, which is pretty crappy of them. The prospect of living here for the next two months is actually pretty grim now.