Utilities and the like

A few more things that I wanted to get out there:

- It's my Dad's birthday... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! And Amy's birthday was yesterday... HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY! And I think there are a lot of other birthdays coming up, so if it's your birthday then... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

- A few weeks ago the electric company shut off our power because the money that had been fronted by our school [for electricity] had been used up and apparently we had consumed a bit too much power [without payment] for the comfort of the electric company. So off it went. Upon inspection, Steve immediately noticed that the big box on the 3rd floor that houses everyones power meters had a smaller box above it with the breaker switches. This box was not locked. Steve knew that we could just flip our switch back on, then we'd have power, and voila! problem solved. We did the right thing, however, and went and paid the bill with some extra deposit. (In case you're curious but you're too politely Western to ask, I'll tell you how much it costs: It was about $20 for a month and a half of electricity, but this was when we had a 3rd person living with us and we often plugged in our space heaters overnight. I'm expecting power costs to go down in the next few months.) Of course, Steve needed to plug in the hot water heater so he could take a shower before class... so we saved the power company the trouble of coming over to flip our switch back on and went ahead and did it ourselves.

- A woman came to our door sometime last week with a stapled packet of receipts. I could understand very little of what she was saying, but I knew that she wanted us to pay her some money. When we told her we weren't interested, she told us that that wasn't an option and that the whole building was paying her. Steve was still very hesitant to hand over the money, but I told him that I knew she wanted us to pay her money and that she wasn't going to leave until we did... I could understand that much of her Chinese! (Of course, our neighbors were watching much of this from their door.) Steve did the smart thing and called the school and had her talk to one of the Chinese staff. Turns out, she's our local garbage lady! Actually, I think she was the business end (hence the money collecting) and her husband is probably the working end. A true Mom and Pop operation, if you will. Anyway, we owed 14 kuai for 3 months of garbage service. (You just stick your bags of garbage, which are all tiny sized [think bathroom garbage can], in the stairwell and they eventually get picked up by some mysterious entity. I often see a man with a biycle retrofitted with a large trailer completely heaped full of tiny garbage bags, so no garbage trucks here.) Well, they are mysterious no more! Can you believe we had to pay $2.05 for this service! Outrageous prices, I'm thinking of switching to another company....