Picture this...

On Thursday, 11/15, I'm in the shower and just about to turn the water off when the hot water knob comes flying out of the wall and hits me in the stomach. As if that wasn't bad enough, the water coming out of the pipe had the pressure of a fire hose, and it was HOT! I immediately panicked, as all I had was a shower curtain to prevent from the water going all over the bathroom floor.

At that moment I had to make a quick decision. I asked myself "will the guards downstairs be totally freaked out if I run down there in my towel?" I figured YES, so I changed quickly and ran down. Figures... the one time I need the guards, I couldn't find them. I went outside, and once they saw me they came running. I tried to explain situation to them, but I'm sure they thought I was a little crazy. Initially the guard said "maintenance will be here in 1 hour." I then said "I don't think you understand....you need to fix this now!" He still wasn't really moving with a sense of urgency until I opened my front door, and you could hear the water in the back room. He practically knocked me over as he ran into my bedroom, which by the way now had water coming into it. He immediately was rolling up his pants, and said "this is serious." He did some 911 call into his walkie-talkie in Tagalog, and next thing you know the water stopped. I was so thankful that he was able to shut off the water, because since I hadn't fully unpacked, my stuff would have been ruined. Fortunately, we were able to control the amount of water that entered the room.

My favorite part of the morning was after he turned off the water and he said "I think we need to schedule a maintenance call." My internal feeling was "ya think?" :)

Only in the Philippines...

Let's just say that story had people laughing for a while at work. I'm still wondering what the guards would have done if I had come down in a towel. I'm also thinking it's only a matter of time before another knob flies off and hits me.