Camping in Shanghai

Things age faster in Shanghai. You know the old saying, "A 10 year old airplane is younger than a 1 year old computer"? Well a 10 year old building in Shanghai is older than a 20 year old building in Boston, or is that 30 year old building in Boston? It's hard to tell, but things here weren't built to last - and it shows.

I loose power in my apartment every 2 hours, and it doesn't even matter if anything is plugged in or turned on, it just goes off. Turning it back on isn't hard; I just need to walk to the circuit breaker and flick the switch back to on, but that's not the point. Everynight I go to bed knowing that shortly after I fall asleep my heater will switch off and I'll wake up shivering sometime early in the morning. I've drawn on my camping experience to prepare for the night, but this isn't Yellowstone, it's Shanghai! I'd point to this being a faulty switch, which I'm sure it is, but the curious part is that this is the 2nd (out of 3) apartments in which this has happened to me here. How hard is it to build circuit fuses that don't fall to the off position merely from the suggestion of gravity? Apparently hard enough.

In my office we've had the opposite problem: sweltering heat. The weather outside isn't that nice, still light jacket weather, but the office is t-shirt and shorts weather. The building administrator refuses to turn on the air conditioning until the outside temperature reaches a designated number, which it hasn't. Our classrooms, stuffed with 25 students turn into small ovens and we all bake, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be a huge concern to my bosses (and the teachers' office, which is hotter is even further from their minds). It seems unfair: I either freeze at home or melt at the office with no means of regulating the surrounding temperature - just like camping!