[index][raw][main] Tue Aug 28 22:44:02 CEST 2007 Total chaos at old apartment -- Today, at around 1pm, I got a call from Anna. (Translated) Hi, Mattias? um Christer just called, and apparently our apartment is flooded with water. Could you call him? Christer is the guy we employed to fix up our apartment so that it could go out for sale looking nice, hopefully bringing in a good price. Damn. I called Christer, and I could hear the loud curses in the background (his partner) and his voice was muffled by all the background noise from the water gushing into the flat. Damn. Damn. I couldnt hear what he said, but I understood that this was real- ly bad. I was just on my way to a meeting at work where I was supposed to present the current state of the development project Im leading, but I abruptly turned around in the corridor, and I just barked out to one of my poor collegues- 'My apartment is flooded. Im outta here.'. Triple Damn. I was on site around 40 minutes later. They had managed to turn off the water, but the damage was, like they say, done. My apart- ment is on the third floor (counting American style, where the first floor is the basement), and as I walked up to the building I could see that the facade had a wet streak between the second and third storey. I entered the hall containing stairwell, and it was swamped with water. On the floor, on the ceiling, everywhere. And this wasnt even my floor. I leaped up the stairs three at a time, ducking under the spat- tering water, and ran up to the third floor- and was faced with my worst nightmare. Our apartment, where we had lived for the last six years, looked completely familiar, with the exception of about two centimeters of water covering the floor. Damnit, things were floating in there. Two of dear neighbours were al- ready there, helping the people from the bostad- srättsförening (cant be bothered to translate accurate- ly- for now, just assume they are legitimate professionals work- ing for the people owning the apartment block). One of my neigh- bours have the keys to my flat, and had helped turn off the flow of flooding water. The next two hours are a bit of a haze at this point- I think that there were a total of nine people who ran in and out during that time. This includes myself, my two neighbours who helped out, and five professonals. Oh and one (slightly confued) old man who lives three floors up who tried to strike a conversation with me, in the middle of the chaos: So, Mattias, I see you were fix- ing up your kitchen? Which components did you- Ah, IKEA, very nice. And is it this year's FAKTUM? I managed to mumble to him that it was Faktum, subcategory Ärlig, when I realized that this was all very surreal. I went downstairs with Christer and smoked my first sober cigarette in five months. By the time I got up the professionals had torn up the nice wood- en floor in our living room, revealing the wet concrete under it. It was a little grotesque seeing them brutalizing the floor, con- sidering how careful we had been over the years to keep it as nice as possible. This in the case, of course, that we one day will sell the apartment. One hour later everyone had left. Here and there, the floor of the flat still had a few small puddles, but most of it was vaccu- umed up. I was aware that the two apartments below ours were also wet, possibly very wet. But at the time I had no way of finding out how bad it was. My neighbour Gerd, who was so kind as to help me earlier, asked me if I wanted to come down for a cup of coffee. She must have seen the emptiness in my eyes, and very gently she talked me into taking a break. Once down in her apartment, I started to relax, and wondered how I was going to present the whole deal to Anna, when she came. She was scheduled to arrive very soon, and I real- ly didnt want her to show any signs of breaking down- I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown myself. We made small talk while waiting for Anna. When she finally ar- rived, Gerd forced her to sit down in her apartment a little while as well, calming us down. Those ten minutes really made things easier for me. I had time to relax and think things through. Things were bad, but not as bad as it could have been. After all, we had moved most of our belongings already to the new apartment, and as for the rest- well, our insurance should cover it. We thanked Gerd for the coffee and went upstairs and faced the situation. Then, after a long hug and some shared curses, we started to go through all of the belongings which had gotten wet during the chaotic hours. Now Im home in our new apartment in Flempan, tired as hell. Signing off --