Adventures in laundry

It's been time to do laundry for the past few days, but every time I walked by the washing machine (small capacity, cold water only), someone was using it. Not surprising since over 75 people are using two small machines, one of which is rumored not to work very well. Today I saw my chance, and although I was very tired from moving yet again (more on that later) I decided to go for it.

The machine has several settings and buttons, all of the instructions of course written in Chinese. I figured I could just push buttons until the thing started and I would be ok. After punching a few, sure enough, it started up, and I went back down to wait for what I figured would be 30 minutes or so. When I went back up to check, the clothes were soaking, so I gave it another 15 minutes and went back to check. Nothing had moved. This did not seem right. I pushed a few buttons and it started up again, so I decided to come back in a bit...surely the clothes would be done in another 15 minutes.

They were not. Time for plan B, actually learning what the characters meant. This is a rather tedious process, which involves determining the radical for the character (no hard and fast rules about this), looking up the radical in an index, finding the character, and then figuring out which of the dozen or so meanings might be relevant in this particular situation. Ideally this is done in a relaxed manner, in good lighting while seated in a comfortable chair. In this case, however, I was under pressure, the lighting was low, and the font was 10pt. Slowly I worked through the meanings of the settings on the machine, and was gratified to see that what I determined to be the rinse cycle actually did output water. And by output, I mean the water came out of a hose on the back of the machine that was attached to...nothing. The hose is simply on the floor. When the water comes out, it pools around the machines and runs down a hole in the floor, presumably to a pipe, although no assumption is safe here, particularly the assumption that the electrical appliance now standing in two inches of water does not have a short in the wiring. I was careful not to stand in the water as I peered at the characters. I should mention that this is completely ordinary for China. In another month, I will not even bother mentioning such things, but I am still a newbie.

Eventually, the machine beeped it's closing beep, and the clothes were finished. They smell reasonably clean, but don't get too close...