Never as simple as it seems

A week ago or so, we were told by our landlord that they would need to repair a leak under our bathtub that was causing the downstairs neighbor some "issues". I can remember living downstairs from an overflowed (or is it overflown?) shitty toilet and I will tell you it was not a pleasant memory. So, I am not without understanding for the plight of the downstairs man as he will forever be known. But downstairs man is also a grump. He complains to us about the leak, he complains to the owners, he complains to the management committee. Now, our owners aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Downstairs man has repeatedly said "it is the toilet", but owners have insisted it is the tub.

Cut to this week, we are now the proud renters of a partly remodeled bathroom still disassembled bathroom. The bathroom is stuck half finished as the tub has been pulled out, the floors ripped up and the waterproof seal placed on top of the brick, but concrete tub enclosure either 1) still leaks or 2) was never the problem in the first place.

Now we wait. They come back today to determine if the problem is actually the toilet, other pipes or what? Singapore is the land of all that is concrete. Said concrete is shipped here in raw sand and granite form at less than fair market rates from Indonesia, resulting in super cheap building materials being used to excess and then resold for ridiculously high costs, but I digress. Because everything here is made with concrete walls, floors, ceilings, windows... you get the point.... everything must be hacked out and rebuilt from scratch. I am no fan of deforestation, but there has got to be some middle ground between all concrete and all timber eh????

Needless to say it has been a loud and dusty week, our planned bathroom outage has just reached it's 4 day estimate. I can live without the second bathroom in our house, inconvenient sure, but we are now unsure how much longer it will take to repair. The workers are a bit creepy, my house is dusty, we have to lock up the cats so they don't run away. OK, not hell on earth, but it is not as simple as it seemed.