The latest "Final Destination" movie, live from Beijing?

The past couple of days have been pretty eventful. It all started off on day 1: a quiet Sunday night at home, that was suddenly interrupted by a weird undefinable sound. Closer inspection revealed an unexpected stream of water flowing down from my ceiling onto my living room floor. What's worse, the water stream had found its way down exactly in between the electrical wiring system of my ceiling lights… with the water dripping down happily from the lightbulb and socket.. ahhhhh, now that's FREAKY! The Management Company, landlord and various workers concluded that the water seems to be coming from the bathroom (toilet? :-/) upstairs, and they will need to tear down the entire ceiling to fix it, a project that's gonna take several days at least. And in true Chinese style, they plan to hunt down the exact same team that previously worked on this apartment (why??), and as they all left town to celebrate Chinese New Year in the south of China, they will need to take a 36 hours train ride back to BJ to be able to finally start their repair works 2 days later. Ugh… OK. The management company however confirms to me that it shouldn't be too dangerous to use the water / electricity, and when I ask them about a possible risk of electrocution, they wave it away by saying it should probably be fine. Hmmmm…. my father and my physics teacher always told me water & electricity are not the best of friends, (or actually: in a way you could say they ARE the best of friends ;)), and if the leakage problem would turn out to be coming from the water system in my own apartment block, stepping into a shower that's electrically charged with 220V in a Chinese apartment that does not have properly working safety switches could turn me into a serious fry up. I don't think I should want to take that risk. So for the moment, I'm washing my face and brushing my teeth with mineral water, seriously considering flushing the toilet with mineral water too (but that's heights of insanity… isn't it?) and luckily Daan is kindly offering free shower service at his place, so this house camping thing turns out to be not so bad.

OK, enough about Day 1. Day 2 started off pretty uneventful, another day at work, lots of meetings and decks to prepare, and our regular 6 o'clock taxi ride home on Ring 2. About 5 minutes away from home, the traffic congested and cars slowed down. This is quite common in Beijing, so normally not a big deal, even though this actually was the first traffic jam after weeks and weeks of quiet, deserted Beijing roads due to Chinese New Year. I guess the driver behind us also wasn't prepared for it, or maybe he was busy sipping on his chrysanthemum tea or QQ messaging on his phone, but all of a sudden our car got smacked from behind in a pretty serious way. Our necks jerked forward, and the sound of breaking glass and metal was all around. Actually, this was not the first time for me to be in a car crash in BJ, but both previous times the smack was relatively gentle, with little or no damage to the car. This was a huge smack, the backside of the car was pretty much totaled and the police came to settle things and coordinate paperwork. A friendly police officer also asked us if we were 不舒服 (bu shufu, unwell), and if the neck pain wasn't too 厉害 (li hai, powerful). Luckily, this wasn't the case, and everything got sorted pretty quickly, so we reached home safe and sound.

When I was lying in my bed later that night, a weird feeling crept over me. For 2 days in a row, scary situations seemed to have chased me, but I somehow managed to get out of them without getting hurt. Lucky me! Somehow, -in a weird, morbid way- it reminds me a little of this horror movie called "Final Destination", in which a bunch of kids escape from death (by refusing to get on a plane that's about to crash) - only to be hunted down by death afterwards, one by one, as 'death sets out to collect those who evaded their end'. Ahhh.. I guess I watched one too many scary movies! Away with those morbid thoughts, let me instead stick to the idea that I have a cute little Chinese angel sitting on my shoulder, protecting me against all evil. Anyways, I'm curious what adventures the next few days will bring :)