I explore the parking garage once a day as I go to our mailbox to check it for the lack of mail. It gives me a reason to go up and down my 10 flights of stairs, and the anticipation of mail always makes it worth my effort. Sometimes Raelee and Steph send us a care package, and yesterday we received a card Ruth sent; it is SOoooo worth my daily vigil of climbing stairs to get the smiles :-)
As I was walking across the parking garage this morning, I realized I had not explained a strange phenomenon in our parking garage. It is one of mysterious genies that lift windshield wipers. If you walk through the garage in the mornings, you will see one windshield wiper of several random vehicles standing on end. On weekends, there seems to be one wiper on many vehicles standing at attention. At first I thought it was a kid running through with nothing better to do than to lift wipers and laugh. Finally, I realized there was a pattern to the wiper phenomena – cars underneath them looked… different. I could not quite pinpoint the difference, but something was definitely different about them.
I guess I spent a couple of months wondering what the genies were trying to tell us, but I never could quite put it into words. Finally, I braved it up and asked the ones I knew I could trust – our guards. They never laugh at my list of never ending questions. I am inquisitive. I want to know everything I can about the country I am living in. Ok, I admit it; I have always asked a lot of questions. They have gotten used to me walking up and asking what I am sure they think are silly questions – but thankfully, they take a great interest in explaining the answer to me. Sometimes, this can be quite interesting; an American, an Indian, a Singaporean and a Malaysian all chattering and trying to find a common word or phrase that we can all understand – but we are persistent – we do eventually cross the communication barrier. We all banter until finally they understand my question and I understand their answer. I think it must be quite amusing to those around us, and sadly also think others do not take the time to try to get to that point. What a huge loss to them.
The wiper genies are actually telling the car owner that their car is washed and ready. A tenant pays monthly to have the cars washed as often as they request. A genie magically appears during the night with two 5 gallon buckets – one with sudsy water and one with clear water. They wash the car and meticulously shine it to perfection, raise the wiper to note it is done and move on to the next one. After asking the guards, I went to through the garage one night on the way out and I saw one of the genies. He is one of our quiet workers who “No-la. Cannot.” (speak English), but he does an amazing job with his task. Genies understand the thumbs up signal passed from me to them - offered with a huge smile. They nod and smile back in great satisfaction. Their shoulders lift and the grin is engrained into their face as they dutifully continue shining the cars.
Wiper genies – I love the idea. Wonder if I can find one in the states to do the same? Have car, must find genie. Must live in states. ha!
As I was walking across the parking garage this morning, I realized I had not explained a strange phenomenon in our parking garage. It is one of mysterious genies that lift windshield wipers. If you walk through the garage in the mornings, you will see one windshield wiper of several random vehicles standing on end. On weekends, there seems to be one wiper on many vehicles standing at attention. At first I thought it was a kid running through with nothing better to do than to lift wipers and laugh. Finally, I realized there was a pattern to the wiper phenomena – cars underneath them looked… different. I could not quite pinpoint the difference, but something was definitely different about them.
I guess I spent a couple of months wondering what the genies were trying to tell us, but I never could quite put it into words. Finally, I braved it up and asked the ones I knew I could trust – our guards. They never laugh at my list of never ending questions. I am inquisitive. I want to know everything I can about the country I am living in. Ok, I admit it; I have always asked a lot of questions. They have gotten used to me walking up and asking what I am sure they think are silly questions – but thankfully, they take a great interest in explaining the answer to me. Sometimes, this can be quite interesting; an American, an Indian, a Singaporean and a Malaysian all chattering and trying to find a common word or phrase that we can all understand – but we are persistent – we do eventually cross the communication barrier. We all banter until finally they understand my question and I understand their answer. I think it must be quite amusing to those around us, and sadly also think others do not take the time to try to get to that point. What a huge loss to them.
The wiper genies are actually telling the car owner that their car is washed and ready. A tenant pays monthly to have the cars washed as often as they request. A genie magically appears during the night with two 5 gallon buckets – one with sudsy water and one with clear water. They wash the car and meticulously shine it to perfection, raise the wiper to note it is done and move on to the next one. After asking the guards, I went to through the garage one night on the way out and I saw one of the genies. He is one of our quiet workers who “No-la. Cannot.” (speak English), but he does an amazing job with his task. Genies understand the thumbs up signal passed from me to them - offered with a huge smile. They nod and smile back in great satisfaction. Their shoulders lift and the grin is engrained into their face as they dutifully continue shining the cars.
Wiper genies – I love the idea. Wonder if I can find one in the states to do the same? Have car, must find genie. Must live in states. ha!
4 comments:
We have a dish fairy...and a laundry fairy too...unfortunately, it's me.
ROFLMAO Jenny. I can relate to that!
That is pretty neat mom!
Great pictures! Ma was wondering what movie we could watch tonight. You reminded me that we haven't watched Flash of Genius yet. Thank you!
What a great idea! I am going to tell my daughter who is going off to college. She could do this as a business, and it would be great for college students, since they could do it around their class schedules! And, since she isn't very good at washing cars, she could practice on mine!
EB, I check my blog everyday for updates from you! I just LOVE reading your posts! Please don't ever stop!
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