that sinking feeling

Almost a year after I had my kitchenette sink's faucet replaced, my sink developed another leak. At first, when problems happened in my apartment, I would call the apartment staff directly, but I then learned that, according to my company, I was never supposed to do that. Instead, I was supposed to call our HR department, and they would contact the repair people. While this adds an unnecessary layer of communication, I suppose the rationale is that (1) many of my company's expat staff can't speak Korean, so HR is there to act as an intermediary, and (2) the repairs themselves cost money, and that money needs to be billed to my company, not directly to me, probably for record-keeping purposes. I'd still prefer to call the building staff myself, but rules are rules.

Because this is Korea, though, there are always more obstacles to doing anything in a straightforward, linear manner, so what happened was this: I emailed HR about my sink leak; HR emailed back with a date for the building manager (not a repairman) to swing by. He came by yesterday at the appointed hour, did his own non-professional inspection of my sink, then called the repairman himself. The repairman arrived not long after, and together, the manager and the repairman figured out that my leak was coming directly from my faucet (the same faucet I'd had replaced last year), so it would have to be replaced again. The repairman didn't come with any tools or equipment yesterday (that would've been too logical), but he said he'd be by today before 1 p.m. to effect repairs, which basically meant replacing the faucet. He arrived today a bit after noon, and he left only a few minutes ago. I now have a totally new faucet with a completely different hot-cold handle (it juts sideways, now, instead of sitting the standard way, but it's easy enough to figure out). Here's hoping there are no more problems. I'm starting to feel as if my kitchenette sink is cursed.