Why is everything so bloody difficult here? It’s driving me crazy that even the tiny things can ridiculously difficult.
[it turns out that this is a bit of a rant – if you don’t want to read a rant – then the general gist is that it’s really difficult to get anything done here. ]
For example, how difficult do you think it is to get a remote control fixed? Extremely difficult as it turns out. So it isn’t actually ridiculous asking for a working remote- we’re in a serviced apartment where they own and manage all of our TV/ audio equipment . On the whole fairly responsive to requests.
Anyway, in September the video remote control mostly stopped working, that is, some of the buttons stopped working no matter how hard we pressed them. This isn’t just a case of needing the remote to save walking those annoying 3 metres to the DVD player to press play. No. As the TV here is indescribably awful (and those are the bits that aren’t Chinese) we watch quite a few films and TV series on DVD (I’ll admit to having developed a bit of a “House” addiction since moving here.) In any case, most of these DVDs have options for scene/ episode selection which you can’t select from the machine – you need the remote.
So I dropped the remote control back with the building management and explained that some of the buttons didn’t work. A day later the remote was returned with the batteries replaced but no working buttons.
OK so maybe I didn’t explain this properly. I went back, explained at length exactly what the problem was and the next day had my remote returned. Not working but with new batteries.
So it went back again. Some days later it was explained to me that actually the problem was that my DVD was bad. “What all of them?” Apparently yes. Huh?
It went back. This time it came back with an apology. Apparently there were no replacements available. I find this quite difficult to believe in China, where all manner of electronics is available for next to nothing.
I took a break from trying to get it repaired over Christmas but renewed my efforts in January (clearly I have too much time on my hands…). This time they said that they had a “special spray” that would help. Hallelujah it this actually worked. For about four days.
So I took it back.
Finally, last week I received a new remote. New to me in any case – it’s battered and scratched but it WORKS!
It took FIVE MONTHS to fix. I’ll leave you to imagine how hard it is to make the bigger things happen. It seems that the easiest answer to almost anything is No.