Sunday am the alarm clock was set for 4:30 am. The plan was for me to get up and meet a couple of friends for a long run. Here in Jakarta when you plan to run 30km you need to start early or the sun of the mid-morning will nearly kill you. Anyway, my alarm goes off and in my semi asleep state I am dimly aware that it is really raining hard. I feel like "raining hard" doesn't even begin to describe the just how monsoon-like the rain was that morning. As I was getting ready (feeling fairly optimistic that the rain would eventually stop) I hear what sounds like a shower running. Surely Ben is not having a shower at 4:30 am ? And then I realized that the shower was coming from my ceiling. Water was pouring out of the lamp socket in our ceiling at such a pace that it nearly resembled the pressure of our shower. Yikes!
I quickly grabbed a bucket to catch the water, woke Ben to alert him of the problem, then dashed out the door to meet my friends at Mcds (who despite the rain storm had not yet cancelled). Yes, I deserted my husband at 5 am with what I thought was a manageable leak . . .
30km later - nearly three hours of running in the rain - I return home only to discover that our room has become an evacuated flood zone. Furniture has moved into the hallway, the kids are busily squeegeeing the river of water out onto the balcony, barriers have been created to protect electronics . . . and the rain was still coming down.
After at least 6 hours of steady, hard rain finally the sky cleared. Ben bravely climbed up on our roof to see where the water was coming in. This is what he found:
One nescafe can. This one can was stuck in the drain hole designed to channel rain water off the roof and down to the sewer below. He removed the can and we could hear water rushing through the pipes. It took several hours for the water to drain from the roof and stop dripping into our room but miraculously after much work our room was dry by night time. Of course Blaise and Flora had a blast. I think it was Blaise who said "hey, when can we have a flood again"!
Oh my goodness! I can so see this - and love Blaise's comment. You guys - what a great story. And well played, Kari to go running anyway. Sometimes a woman has to do what a woman has to do. LOVE you - can't wait to have you at our home. Marilyn
Posted by: Marilyn | February 21, 2012 at 07:48 AM
Oh Kari, this was amusing to read! I felt bad for you all, but then had some good chuckles too. I somehow loved the part where you left Ben with the flood to go out and run in the monsoon conditions. I thought "monsoon conditions!? that is so Kari!". Would you not need some goggles or a face mask to manage that kind of a run in that kind of rain!? :)
Posted by: Julie | February 22, 2012 at 12:37 PM