My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chap 27: When the Heater Water Pipe burst in Winter
I was recently faced with some bathing facilities problems which made it hard for me to go about my day
without doing some planning of the timing to bathe and such. In addition we are currently in the ‘winter’
season in Singapore when rain is more and days are cooler in temperature. Which brought me back to
days when I was still residing in my hostel during my studies in China, Beijing.
I can still remember winter days in Beijing were somewhat romantic when you could wake up and find
yourself in white sonata. But what some people did not see was the problems that could occur during the
deep winters in Beijing. One of which was the heater water pipes.
Well, as a student I was staying in the hostel
provided by the school which were decades and
maybe centuries old. So one of the annual drama
we faced was the heater water pipes might
sometimes burst in the extreme change of
weather and temperature. The result? We would
have no hot water in winter for 3 days or
sometimes even a week.
Initially I was really in a culture shock but as the
years went by, I got used to this problem that
seemed to be an annual occurrence. So as
students, we tried all ways to get ourselves
cleaned without hot water available.
Going to the gyms bathrooms which might be 30 minutes bus
ride away, boiling hot water using the small kettles we had in
the hostels, or sometimes skipping a day of bathing were some
ideas we adopted to get through such episodes.
Which is the reason why when I currently had to face the problem of bathing facilities again in Singapore,
such problem is simply peanuts as compared to the past experiences. Because the resilience had already
been trained and ingrained.
Interesting?
Absolutely.