Our Second Flood…

It’s nearing the end of the rainy season in Indonesia and while I can’t characterize the days as exactly sunny, there has been a noticeable downturn in the frequency and intensity of downpours. We’ve been giving a sigh of relief that we would make it through the last few months of our tenure minus another natural disaster to muddy our shoes and tear-up our roads. But…

We’ve experienced another flood, our second since living in Jakarta. However, unlike the last flood that displaced thousands of locals and kept us apartment-bound for five solid days, this flood only last a few hours, mostly because it was in our apartment. That’s right, our second apartment flood since July. This time it wasn’t the water hose under the sink coming undone in the middle of the night. Nope, this flood occurred in the bathroom. The offending agent? The toilet shower in the bathroom somehow spontaneously combusted while we were at work. That’s bad. You may be wondering what a “toilet shower” is in a bathroom. I refer to it as a “squirter” a friendly bathroom tool found in countries that don’t always have access to toilet paper. Now, we have plenty of toilet paper but there’s still a squirter in our bathroom. Anyway, when Greg mentioned off-handed today at work “hey yeah, our apartment flooded” I made a quick trip home for a look-see. Thank god it happened on the day that our maid was here. Not because she discovered the flood, no, the neighbors did because it was apparently flowing out the front door. No, I was just overjoyed that I wasn’t the one to have to clean up 3cm of water.

Here’s a few pics of the aftermath. My favorite part is our shoes conveniently laid against the wall to dry. Mind you, the squirter and the main toilet water line are on the same shut-off value…we’ve been instructed to shut the toilet off each time after use. I keep telling Greg I need to rename my blog “At least we have a story”. Hmmmm….