the new A/C

Out with the old, and in with the cold! My new air conditioner was installed yesterday while I was at the office. I once again had to text over my keypad-lock combination to let the crew in. (I hate constantly having to change my lock's combination, but something is always in need of repair.) They ripped out the ancient, 1997-era LG air conditioner and installed a spanking-new Carrier A/C, which blows very cold, even at 22°C.

Getting to this point took a few weeks. I had to contact our HR department, which I did. We reached a point in our initial text-message exchange in which HR said they would contact the appropriate people (I had sent over photos of the A/C unit showing its brand name, serial number, and date of manufacture; you'll see these pics below). And then... silence for about two weeks. I got an automatic message from LG, the company that had made my A/C, saying that I needed to go through a particular procedure to contact them and arrange for repairs. This frustrated me: I had said I'd wanted my A/C replaced, not repaired, and this text message from LG was obviously a form letter sent to everyone and specifying no one. The message seemed to imply that I hadn't needed to contact my company's HR department at all: I could've just contacted LG directly. As a result, I began sullenly to wonder what the hell good the HR department was, but I elected to sit on the problem in case I had misunderstood something. That strategy paid off: HR finally contacted me yesterday, out of the blue, to say the crew was on its way. As I saw when I got home last night, the crew obviously wasn't from LG because the new A/C is a Carrier. This is the second time I've had to have my A/C replaced, and once again, the replacement is a Carrier.

So far, so good. I had the thing on at 22°C all night, and there's been not a single errant drop of condensation hanging off the machine's edge. Well, good. For the next year or so, at least, things ought to be problem-free.

And now: some pics of both the old and the new machines. The photos of the old machine were texted to my HR department, which had requested information about my A/C. First up: brand and model number:

Next: serial number and date of manufacture (April 1997):

Wide shot:

A shot of the drippage:

And now, we move on to the installation of the new A/C. Here's the mess I came home to last night, with construction crumbs all over the floor and no regard for my furniture:

A wide shot of the new Carrier:

Closer... closer...

Brand name:

Stickers tell me whom to call in case of trouble ("A/S" is the Konglish term "after-service"):

The remote control, which in Konglish is the "reemo-kōn":

So here we are. I thanked HR profusely (I did feel a bit guilty about being resentful earlier), and they told me I didn't need to pay a thing. So I guess that's the reason why it's better to arrange things through HR. I saved myself a few hundred bucks just by being patient.