a flooded apartment

so i wake up to knocking on my door.  its my landlady, she screams…”robert there is water on your floor!”  not fully understanding in my half awakened stupor, i crawl out of bed, put one of my feet on the floor and instinctively pull back.  holy shit, theres water on my floor!

apparently there had been people running around my apartment for 2 hours, cleaning and getting the water out of of their rooms.  i am such a heavy sleeper that i didnt hear the industrial strength water sucker upper running for 2 hours.

i usually keep my computer on the ground because ill do some important computing on my bed at night, but thankfully i had the energy to toss it on the desk before i went to sleep last night.  in other wetness news, my timbuktu bag got soaked, along with everything in it (chinese notebook with notes from the last 4 months, good thing i put everything into my computer…otherwise i would have to stay here for another 4 months), my luggage piece which was full of winter clothes, which means half my winter clothes got soaked with what is supposedly toilet water (doesnt smell though and is clear, keeping fingers crossed that its clean toilet water, if that exists), and my hamper which was pretty much full…so half my dirty clothes got, well, dirtier i guess.

i noticed that a few of my dress shirts got wet, so i asked if it was possible to be reimbursed for the dry cleaning.  my landlady asked me what reimbursed means.  i explained it to her, she said no.  fml.

surprisingly all my roommates and i acted pretty calm, even the guy that just moved in on monday (obligatory parenthetical “sucks”). Maybe because we feel like everything is out of our control in china, especially law-wise, where we have no idea what our rights are.  i love that feeling