Monday, September 14, 2009

The day the air-con broke down

Last night, our bedroom's air-conditioner broke down.

Well, it didn't exactly stop working. What happened was that lots of water came gushing out of where cold air usually would come out.

Okay, so I exaggerate. The water didn't really came gushing out. It was more like dripping out. But quite a lot of water came dripping out.

Fearing that our room would be flooded and the air-conditioner would short circuit, we had to turn the air-conditioner off. (Well okay okay, more like the latter.)

I understand now why Lee Kwan Yew said that the air-conditioner is the best invention of the twentieth century. He's absolutely right. From a Singaporean's perspective at least. It is quite a torture to even try to sleep without the air-conditioner on some nights. Last night was such a night. We had to move to the study room to sleep.

I am never a person who can really fix things around the house. You would think that I am, since my parents open a DIY hardware store. But no.. I used to just rely on them to get things around the house fixed. And when I was in Beijing, the apartment's property manager would help fix almost anything at minimal cost.

But I fixed the problem of the air-conditioner this time myself. With a little help from my parents, of course.

What I did was to locate the outlet where water from the air-conditioner would usually come out of and using a heavy-duty all purpose type vacuum cleaner, suck out all the stuff inside the pipes that were clogging up my poor air-conditioner. (I know, usually, this would sound too complicated to me as well.)

And it works! For now, at least. The air-conditioning is cool and so far, no drippings.

I'm a full-fledged "auntie" now.

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