One day affair with 'water'

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The worst record could not be broken, it has happened to me before, happened today and will happen in future. Not to my surprise of the timing, just when I was planning to take shower and get ready for office, the tap gave that dreaded noise and went dry! The only surprising thing in the whole affair was that it happened in Finland! Well, I waited for one hour but there was no response from the tap, just then the bulb in my brain lit up. There is a Sauna in our apartment, in the basement, and every Finn worth his/her Sauna experience knows that in Finland everything can stop but Sauna (or else you have emergency declared in Finland). I decided to use the bathroom of Sauna, thought it should be working cause a Sauna must be getting its supplies from special center manned by 24/7 executives. But to my luck (=bad luck) the Sauna shower was dry as well.

I am always the last person to leave my apartment for work and today was the only day I cursed myself for it. If I had followed the Finnish culture of going to work at 8 am I would have got the water which I am sure my neighbours squeezed till the last drop. But I saved quite a few suicides in this depressing weather of November. Imagine them going to check the Sauna. There can’t be a deserving reason for a Finn to commit suicide than to find a Sauna go dry! But still, I did a little swearing at my neighbours.

I decided to go to office without shower, putting extra gel in my hair. There is one shower in office which I always thought to be one extravagant arrangement but today I came to know of its importance. No water meant no coffee and no breakfast. Hour later when I was eating the cookie and drinking coffee from office kitchen, I felt like I was in a café in Bologna eating fresh croissants and with a cup of espresso. The office coffee never tasted this good.

A hot discussion with colleague(s) followed and they said the water outage is always a planned affair (and not like one night stands) and notice is always given, usually a day before. Well there was no paper slid under my door nor there was anything new in the apartment notice board, so I am pretty sure there was no notice. Frantic calls were made to my house manager and she in turn called up the city water works and then we learnt that city water works was behind this. The water outage was for the whole area in which I live. She promised us to update the situation and I was thinking, if it is not done today then it being weekend there is no way to see water before Monday. This will be a literal 'dry' weekend. The statistics of one lake for every 5 Finn was refreshed in my mind.

After all this I decided to break for lunch, an hour early than usual cause I had no breakfast. I thought of eating much so went to this place which serves buffet lunch , I was planning to go there for quiet some time (they have the best chicken wings in town). Lunch over; it was time for good news. Our ‘fresh- turned –polite’ house manager informed us that water will be restored by evening. I came home from work in the evening, opened the door and immediately turned on the tap in kitchen, voila! the tap smiled and water was there. I felt the joy as if I got a raise in pay but this turned out to be equally false. The water coming out was not clean but muddy. “May be they are working on it and it will be clear after some time”, I spoke to myself and left the tap open for 10 minutes.

Dinner time but water was still like muddy, I checked the temperature as there was no other way but to buy dinner. While coming back I bought bottles of water, sincerely thanking the K-Pikkolo shops which are open till 2400 hour.

So that’s the situation now, I am rationing my bottled water. Please keep your fingers crossed for me, so that tomorrow, when I wake up, I get clean water in my tap. On weekend there is no way I can enter office and take shower, I will have to check in a hotel. I am seriously considering sending the bills of food and water to Hameenlinna city manager for reimbursement.