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| Crosswalk on the way home from work. Green means go home, people! |
After a long day at work, I was ready to get home and have some dinner shortly before crawling into bed. I bought my beef noodles from the shop around the corner that I like so much... but hadn't been to lately. Made it up to the apartment, settled onto the love seat with my noodles and a remote and started watching Australia's Next Top Model - not as good as Britain's Next Top Model, just for the record.
Just as I was preparing to dive into my steaming hot bowl of noodles (chopsticks in one hand, spoon in the other), a Chinese woman's voice began broadcasting very loudly from inside my apartment. Something about the 5th floor? Oh brother. Did someone pull the fire alarm? Was the building actually on fire? I figured I had better move and find out, so I grabbed my purse [I guess if the building was on fire the rest could go with it... there is not too much in my apartment to begin with :) ] and headed down the stairs, instead of the elevator. Once I entered the lobby there were 4 or 5 others standing there with me, apparently most of the tenants had already decided this was a false alarm. I waited patiently as the building manager explained what was going on to the other tenants in Chinese... then asked what was up. False alarm. He said maybe someone burned something on the stove, or tried to smoke inside the building.
Ok, no big deal. Now I know that my fire alarm works. I know not to expect a siren - it is a woman speaking calmly, but firmly in Chinese [I still feel like she was saying the fifth floor when she should have said first floor... but clearly... my Chinese has a long way to go... ;) ] And she is SO loud that there is no ignoring her!
In addition to the stairs, there is also an escape ladder off one of the balconies in the hallway. Now, I know the drill.
I'm actually pretty impressed with my list of natural disasters so far in 91 days - typhoon, earthquake, fire alarm - but I'm very glad there was no actual fire :)
I was once evacuated from a hotel, were you there, I think perhaps you were and were carried down. It was at the Ft. Worth airport, do you remember?
ReplyDeleteNothing serious, went down the fireescape and they determined it was ok to go back to the room. Glad it was a false alarm for you also!