Dry as a bone.

While cooking dinner last night, I noticed the water pressure in the kitchen was unusually low. Slight panic hit when I remembered that the restaurant downstairs has been under renovation and doing some pretty heavy duty drilling of sorts. Thinking maybe they'd accidentally hit one of our water pipes, I did a quick check on the rest of the taps in the apartment to see if the water pressure problem also applied. It did.

There's really only one person to call when something like this happens, The Watchman. I believe every apartment building in Dubai has one of these guys who basically lives on site and looks after any security or other trivial issues that arise with the building or its tenants. Our Watchman seems nice enough, but I have huge troubles understanding him and probably him me - especially over the phone.

Nevertheless, a quick phone call to the watchman confirmed that there was a problem with the water and that DEWA (the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) had been notified and were on their way to fix the problem.

I didn't realise the extent of the problem until Gypsy Boy arrived home from work and reported that the lifts weren't working and that the lift lobby on our floor is flooded with water pouring out of the ceiling! By this time, there was absolutely no water coming out of the taps but it was just as well that dinner was ready.

Funny how you never realise how important something is until it's gone. Even for the few hours we didn't have running water, it really was inconvenient trying to do the simple things like washing our hands, doing the dishes, having a shower and brushing our teeth! Thank goodness, water supply returned to normal around midnight and as I type, they are still working on fixing the lifts.