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2006年02月01日

Off the Ropes

So the showroom turned out to be a net positive experience. After the third day, I got my pair of Converse All Stars (TM) to glide around the showroom in comfort and style. I can now add one more item to the list of glamourous clothing I have received over the course of this illustrious modelling career. Since I hear the question frequently, I know you are also curious and I will share with you the list:

• 2 pairs white underpants (1 pair too small, 1 pair too large)
• 1 pair black socks
• 1 pair black Converse All Stars (TM)

Technically, it is enough to make an entire outfit.

Sarcasm aside, I am quite thrilled with the new shoes and wear them all the time. Especially now the lesions on my achilles tendons have calloused over and I can walk in them without limping.

Besides the shoes, I learned a lot about the fashion industry. I now understand the sales process, how pieces end up in department stores and boutiques around the world, and a thing or two about mens tailoring. I also made a few friends from the designer's team, the showroom staff, and various people associated with the environment. Many of, if not most of the clients are Japanese buyers so I had the opportunity to rekindle my East Asian language skills.

On Sunday I had the chance to rekindle my East Asian eating skills. A friend invited me to her classmate's Chinese New Year party where I enjoyed some tasty comestibles while ringing in the New Year with some of the few people aware of the event in this city. So Happy New Year.

The friend who invited me is one I have known for a couple of years now. I met Paige in Seoul, Korea while we were both working in Japan. We both happened to be in London in Trafalgar Square in the Fall last year when London's successful Olympic bid was announced. Now we both happen to be in Milan where she is studying. I can draw one of two possible conclusions: The world is small or, Paige is following me around.

We now also have the sweet elixer of life, 54 Mbps wireless Internet access, saturating the air and coursing through the apartment.

In other apartment news, Nicklas has moved out and Nicklas has moved in. Only the person has changed, but the name conveniently remains the same. Nicklas was "Noobie" by the way. "Questions" is still here.

Our water heater broke down one day. This happened to me last summer and it took three days of cold showers to decipher the cryptic controls. Though our heater here is of different design, both heaters employ the same communication techniques. Arbitrary heiroglyphs ensure that no person of any given language can restart the pilot light without exhaustive experimentation and fear of conflagration, fear of flooding, irreperable damage or some combination of all three.

Being all digital, newfangled, and electronic, our Immergas unit employs a further communication tactic. The control panel flashes the number "10" accompanied by a meanacing orange backlight. Is that the temperature? An error code? Some kind of suggestion? It is a message I must interpret as "panic" "panic" "panic" "panic"...

The heater defiantly ignores the Reset button. The other button depicts a snowman, an umbrella or upside down bowl, and a third figure that I think looks like an "On" symbol and that Questions interprets as a timer. Does the snowman, for instance, mean "make the water cold", or does it mean "there are snowmen around, please make the water more hot"? How are the symbols related? What is the average air speed of an unladen swallow? While pondering such questions, cycling through all three settings achieves nothing.

Eventually the landlord becomes involved who determines that the pressure has gone. After using his phone-a-friend lifeline, we learn that turning an unmarked black knob underneath the unit in the correct but unidentifiable direction (and not flipping the unmarked black switch) will restore pressure to the heater.

The situation was escalated to the service professional level and a couple of Italian guys with wrenches were soon stomping around the apartment, draining radiators, and tightening couplings. Incidentally they had the "special tool" required to change the light bulb in our bathroom. So a side-effect of the whole experience is that we now have sufficient illumination to know exactly how dirty the place is instead of just sensing it. [Insert your own models changing a light bulb joke here]

You need not bother checking the Immergas website to chastise my negligence in failing to procure an instruction manual. Available is every single specification and plumbing schematic. Unavailable is TFM (the fine manual).

Posted by William at 2006年02月01日 00:38

Comments

Posted by: Meli at 2006年02月02日 13:32

Posted by: Danielle at 2006年02月02日 17:09