This weekend we moved to a new apartment. The lease on our old apartment ran out, so that was a good reason to look for something new. In the former apartment we lived for 2 years, which is quite long for me. I just calculated that I moved 28 times in my life already (I am 33 years old), and this is my 7th apartment in China (in 6.5 years).

The new place is a high-end apartment in Xujiahui, and you would expect that everything therefore would work flawlessly. Well, that was not the case. Some of the things that we found during the past 3 days:
– Out of six airconditioners two did not work, one did not even have the liquid in it that produces the cold air (I am not an expert, but this is what I was told). Note that these were brand new appliances!
– No hot water. It was repaired the first day, and it worked fine after that. But this morning I wanted to take a shower, and again there was only cold water.
– The water in the shower would not flow away, because the drain seemed to be blocked.
– Satellite TV only available in black and white. According to the satellite guys this was a proble of our TV. But all the normal channels are in color, I replied. Well, they said, that is true, but it is still a problem of the TV. Let’s wait what the TV repair man says…
– Internet: I won’t write the whole story here (Shanghai Telecom might block my IP address), but the fact is that I still don’t have internet at home. I can tell you that that’s not easy if you almost live and work on the internet.
– The lock in our front door almost fell out of the door when we opened it.
– About 10 light bulbs did not work. They were supposedly all brand new!

Most things are repaired or solved by now (thanks to my wife who spend 2 days on the phone and discussing with workers – she even missed one day of work because of this), but I still cannot believe that so many things were not working in a new apartment. Is this normal or was this just bad luck?