LG's Excellent PC Adventure

Over the weekend I sat down on a chair in front of my washing machine, an appliance so old that it may very well have been used to clean the last King of Bulgaria's socks, and translated the instructions printed over the door into English. A man in need of clean underwear will undertake such a project even on a sunny Fall day. Using my handy Bulgarian-English dictionary I more or less got the gist of things and decided to barrel ahead. Throw the lever over the sink to divert water to the washing machine, got it. Set the selector dial to 'white', 'normal', 'hot', no problem there. Put laundry soap into the tray on top, we're sailing now. Hit the 'On' switch, and away we go. Water flows through the soap and into the machine and it starts spinning around (it's a front loader and you can watch your stuff wash if there's nothing good on tv), a couple of clockwise revolutions, a pause, a couple of counter-clockwise revolutions and repeat. Nice, huh? Don't tell me that forty year old Eastern European appliances can't take the heat. Several hours later it occurred to me that my undershorts were probably clean and the washing machine was still going back a couple of turns, pausing, and then going forward a couple of turns. I went in and edged the dial forward a notch and the machine began to move through its next cycle. Okay. I'll just have to remember that it's automatic until it hits the 'wash' cycle and then you have to nudge it along manually a bit and then it's automatic again. Unfortunately, it then skips the non-functioning spin cycle altogether. So I have to lift out my dripping socks and drawers and wring them out in the sink before I can hang them on the line. What to do? I did what any sensible renter would do, I complained to my landlord. Last night Hristo showed up with a bag of tools and proceeded to dismantle the washing machine in my kitchen. He pulled wires apart and soldered them back together, he whacked things with a large rusty wrench and he made subtle adjustments with two different screw drivers. Now I have a washing machine that still isn't quite automatic, but at least the spin cycle works. In the States this machine would have been a member in long-standing in a landfill somewhere, in Bulgaria it gets fixed and used for another ten or fifteen years. And as Hristo says, "Nyama problem".

And then came Wednesday. I was extremely productive on Wednesday. Our office secretary had to spend most of her morning dealing with the cable tv people for me which put her seriously behind in her work and then I downloaded a particularly nasty virus into our network which forced her to spend most of her afternoon cleaning up my mess. I looked at an old email account on Yahoo that I thought I'd deleted back in the States and lo and behold there was a letter in it from "Dave". Heck, I know Dave and the attachment was a list of political jokes so I opened it right up. Bear in mind that most of my experience is on Macs so I'm not as constantly aware of the dangers of viruses as those of you who grew up on PCs. So now Toni is especially happy that the Peace Corp decided to send her a volunteer to help her out.

Wait, it gets better. They turned the water off in the city for two days so they could do some work on the pipes. They gave plenty of notice and everyone stocked up on buckets of water. Then there was a rumor that we'd have water sometime after 6:00pm last night for an hour or two. I did what any sensible person would in that situation. I turned the faucet on in my sink, planning to run and take a shower as soon as I heard the water come on. I got caught up watching CNN and went to sleep. The water never did come back on. At least not until 5:30 or 6:00am when I was fast asleep. Remember that faucet I left on in the kitchen sink? A dish somehow floated over the drain and blocked it. My downstairs neighbors are also particularly happy that the Peace Corps decided to send a volunteer to Stara Zagora to help them!!

Finally, a word about the 11:00pm news. The news at 11:00 here is read by two young women who are stark naked except for the shoes one of them was wearing the other night. The sports scores are read off by a third young woman, also naked. Other than that it's just like CNN, only nuder. Last night they were discussing the American electoral process, a subject they became quite animated over. It was heartwarming to see foreign broadcasters take such an interest in our most basic democratic institution.

I'd like to write more now, but it's getting late and I don't want to miss the news.