Cyclone Laila and Our New A/C Unit

Get yourself a cup of coffee or a cold drink or whatever you need, this one might take a while. Even before I came to India, Tom was telling me about this window a/c unit in the bedroom and how even though it cools the room down, it is so loud that he couldn't have it on when he was on the phone or watching tv. Even over an international phone line, I could hear the darn thing when he had it on and we were talking. So, when I get here I have to admit, yep, it's LOUD. It sounds like a jet engine running in the bedroom. We have to put the tv volume on 78 (no exaggeration) in order to hear the tv when the a/c is on. It's too hot to sit in there with it off, so we just crank up the volume and deal with it.



Tom has told Thomas (the landlord) about this problem on several occasions and finally Thomas decided to buy a new unit. Thomas called Tom this past Saturday and told him that the new unit would be delivered and installed on Sunday morning. On Sunday morning Tom gets a call from the delivery people who tell him they are not installing it that day, they are only delivering it. Tom calls Thomas, big round of phone calls back and forth, nothing is really resolved except that the delivery guy says he'll show up sometime on Sunday. We wait around on Sunday for several hours (because we are on IST (India Slow Time) or INT (India No Time), take your pick) and finally the guy calls and says he's in the area.



He shows up with this HUGE box, and I mean HUGE. He puts it in the living room and then there is this big issue because apparently Tom needs the original receipt but Thomas has it and Tom ends up having to write a letter to the delivery guy's boss stating that he has received the unit so the guy can leave.



On Monday the guy who is supposed to install the new unit shows up, takes one look, and says that it will cost Rs 2500 (about $57 USD) to redo the frame and install the new one because the new one is bigger than the exisiting one. This results in another round of phone calls between Tom and Thomas because Thomas was told that the new one would fit "no problem". Yeah, right! Even I could tell by the size of the box that this monster came in that it wasn't going to fit.



Thomas calls Tom back Monday evening and tells him that he has another guy coming over on Tuesday morning to take a look and see what he can do. So Tuesday morning we have to get up early to be waiting for this guy, which means that I have to be fully dressed so that I am not showing too much skin - CRAZY. The guy shows up with his little bag of tools and starts measuring the a/c in the box, the a/c in the wall, and the frame around the a/c in wall. He tells Tom that the only way it's going to fit is if they remove the existing frame, knock out some brick on the outside, build a new frame, and put the new a/c in but this is going to take TIME AND MONEY, of course. The guy leaves and Tom goes to work.



Tuesday evening Thomas calls Tom and tells him that the guy from Tuesday morning will be here Wednesday morning at 8:30 and he's going to get this a/c installed. Fine with me, I just want to get it over and done with. Tom and I have a nice dinner Tuesday night, we go to bed around midnight or so, noisy a/c blaring non-stop. I wake up at 3:00 am Wednesday morning to the power going off and this massive thunderstorm. It had been really cloudy all day Tuesday and I kept hoping it would rain so it would cool things down. I wake up enough to remember that I've left the sliding doors on the dining balcony and the kitchen door open. So I stagger out of the bedroom and am met by this blustering wind blowing all through the dining and kitchen. I finally get the doors closed and go back to bed, hoping that the power will come back on soon.



Tom and I are both in and out of sleep all night because the storm is so loud and it's SO F'N HOT that we can't sleep. Tom had set the alarm for 8 am so we could get up and be ready for the "a/c technician" but I was so sure that he wouldn't show up because of the rain. WRONG!! Thomas called Tom around 9 am and Tom told him that the guy hadn't shown up yet and that we had no power in the apartment. That's when Thomas told Tom about Cyclone Laila.....I guess if we bothered to watch the news we would have known about Cyclone Laila gearing up in the Bay of Bengal and heading straight for us. Kind of brings back memories of a certain "tropical depression" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in May 2005.



Anyway, Thomas was calling to let him know that the guy was coming, the work had to be done today because the "a/c technician" was leaving on Thursday to go to his village to get married and he would be gone for two weeks. I cannot accurately describe the rain and wind except that it certainly was equal to any severe thunderstorm that we would have in the States, I just think that the wind might have been stronger on this one than we would get in a normal thunderstorm.



So, we get up...OH, THE POWER IS STILL OUT, get ourselves dressed, brush our teeth in the dark and right before the guy rings the bell the power comes back on. So the "a/c technician" and his "helper" come in and immediately set to work removing the existing a/c. Tom and I had stripped down the bed and moved it away from the wall, leaving just the mattresses on the frame and we covered it with an old sheet. The two guys get the old unit out fairly quickly, leaving a large gaping hole in the wall (just look at the pics and you'll get the gist), then they tell Tom they have to go get wood to make the frame or have the frame made or whatever. I had mentioned to Tom, regarding the a/c technician, "at least he speaks English" to which Tom replied "his broken English is worse than my broken Tamil" which basically meant Tom couldn't understand half of what the guy was saying.



They leave, Tom and I are sitting here enjoying our coffee, and then the storm really picks up and it is just blowing rain sideways. We run into the bedroom and the wind is blowing the rain straight the hole in the wall. So between the two us we managed to get both mattresses off the bedframe and into the other bedroom, and move the tv and other miscellaneous electronic equipment into the living room. By this time the bedroom is soaking wet, with mud and dirt and rain pouring in the hole. Finally, the two guys come back and I have to give them credit, they got that thing to fit and it works!




They leave, taking the old a/c unit with them, and Babu comes up to remove the HUGE box that the new unit was delivered in. Tom and I are left with the resulting mess. We get busy, and take advantage of the opportunity to totally clean the bedroom floor while everything is out of the room, poor Tom cleaned that floor on his hands and knees with a bucket and two rags. We got the bedroom put back together, I swept the entire living and dining floors and just when we finished....the power went out.....again. It had been out from 3 am - 10 am and had come back on for a couple of hours. This time we got no back-up power. So we sat around for a bit, hoping it would come back on, but no such luck. One thing about the storm is that it dropped the temp down to about 86F inside and that is soooo much more comfortable than 96-98F inside.



Tom finally had to go to work so he ended up taking the coldest shower that he's had since he's been here. The temp outside wasn't hot enough to get the water in the tank outside warm so that shower was ice-cold! Tom went to work around 2 pm and then I subjected myself to the ice-cold shower, all the while hoping that the power would come on....just for a bit....but hell, no.



The power finally came on at 4:30 pm, so I was able to post about the fabulous day Tom and I have had. So even though I spent basically the entire day without power, the floors are all clean, everything has been dusted, and it's only 86F inside the apartment! All in all, it could have been way worse!