Flooded Bathrooms....WHAT?

I am late for my weekly Saturday post! These days, we are watching CHINESE DRAMAS. This is actually quite rare because if you know me, I am more of a korean drama person than a chinese drama person. But, I am pleasantly surprised because this drama is actually quite good! (We are now at episode 22, imagine a long drama that can keep me hooked up to this long, not bad drama, not bad...)

Introducing....Nirvana in Fire!

Not sure how this drama will end since we are barely half way there...So, don't spoiler me! haha. I know it was an OLD drama from 2015 but I am just starting to watch it. This drama is so popular that I remembered many people talking about it back then when I was working in Petronas. If you are interested, the drama is available in YouTube, check it out!

Anyway, a more recent happening for this update. So, it just happened like two days ago at 12am when we are bingeing our drama, we heard....

Emergency, evacuate now. Emergency, evacuate now

To be honest, this is nothing new for us staying in this apartment. I might need to issue this warning to my friends who intend to visit me in the future and stay with me because this fire alarm-thingy happens WAY TOO OFTEN (like once every few months sigh). Sometimes, it does get on my nerve too but what can we do? We are staying at 40th floor, so I suppose good work out? 😂

So the fire engine was down there at the lobby and there were 5 of them! I am still thinking it is probably a false alarm since we cannot see smokes outside the building. Regardless, we would not want to bet for it to be false alarm so we walk down 40 flights of stairs anyway.

After 1.5 hour or so, we were allowed to go back to our apartment. Yes, it was usually a long wait in the cold as the firefighters will have to access the situation and the lift will be out of action this time. We managed to grab McFlurry while we wait so it was probably the only good thing? Haha.

Once we are back to our floor, I started to notice a few warning signs. Looking at the service doors that were widely opened nearby our apartment and the wet floor. Don't tell me.....

Once we were inside the apartment, what greeted us was a strong smoke smell and we certainly realise something was amiss. We quickly scanned through our apartment and soon we found out that..

Our bathrooms were flooded 😓

The master bathroom was flooded and the water leaked to our wooden timber floor 😅

It was 130am and the only thing that I wanted to do now was sleeping. Guess that is not happening after all. Moments after, the firefighter knocked on our door and told us briefly that there WAS a fire at the unit above us and they triggered the balcony sprinkler. And he was here to check whether our unit was affected and he said he will send some help after.

Guess what. HE NEVER RETURN 😭

Luckily my husband and I did not really trust him to return to help us so we get our hands working right away. Moving all the items on the toilet floors for both toilets and start to mop the floor. Funny thing is, our master toilet DOES NOT have a drainage hole which I think contribute to the flooding situation. I still cannot wrap my head around a toilet that doesn't have a water drain hole 😅 Because of no drain hole, in order to clear the water, we used the old towel to soak up the water, squeeze the water out and slowly drain the water in the toilet.

That large pail of water is the water in this small toilet itself! Imagine how much water was here before. We did it manually by me putting the towel on the floor, husband squeezed the towel, and we continued this cycle until the floor was dry. The other toilet had the drain hole so it was not as bad to clean and clear the water so we just mopped.

When husband scanned through other places, we did realize our kitchen too was wet. End up when we stepped on the wooden floor, we can see water seeping out. So it might mean that the water actually soak the timber floor too which was bad! We had seen before how water damaged wooden floor can buckle and grow mould, so it worried us a lot. We used our heater to heat up the place and tried to wipe and clean the water as much as we can.

Sleeping at 4AM.....

After finishing cleaning the toilet and the kitchen. The next day, after hearing advice from friends, I decided to tell the building manager because the damage caused by water-lodged floor and ceilings can be long-lasting. Building manager investigated the place and told us that he will send someone over and explained on what happened.

Apparently, the unit directly above us smoked in their enclosed balcony in their apartment, causing papers and cardboard to combust and triggered the sprinkler. The water from sprinkler saturated the floor and out of the whole building, our apartment is the ONLY apartment that was affected since the water then leaked from the unit above.

How 'fortunate'. It is like we are not the ones doing anything wrong, but suffering the consequences because of some irresponsible acts. I am furious after hearing this. Why does someone smoke in an enclosed space and does not even discard their cigarette properly?

Still Thankful..

Even though I was mad, at the same time, I was reminded of how fortunate we are. I mean, truly fortunate with no sarcasm in place haha. Looking at the bright side, to think that the fire did not spread was amazing enough because the sprinkler did work and prevent a further spread that could amount to even personal danger. We truly want to give thanks to God because while this event alone is unfortunate, I am reminded how it could be much worse too! The whole place could have been soaked up in water with us leaving no place to sleep or the kitchen equipment could be all flooded with this whole lot mess to clean.

Sometimes, the things in life, though frustrating, are probably the lesson. At the end of the day, when we are both so exhausted cleaning the whole mess, I remembered him sending a text to me: Still feel quite happy to experience this with you. Throughout my pouting and complaining and him using his mighty strength to squeeze the towel, we laughed it through and appreciate these moments.

Maybe, sometimes all it takes is to change the perspective to appreciate the silver lining in circumstances. And for that, we thank God for out of this unfortunate event, it only costs us one night of precious sleep and few episodes of Chinese drama and we even did some house-cleaning! We are still so affirmed that we are loved by Him and thankful for what we are put through.

Till then! Hopefully not that happening next update please haha. Take care!