Man about the house

A similar contraception for feeding the plants

My Thai partner Maiyuu has assembled a device to keep us going while we get the air conditioning machine repaired.

He cut off the tops of two plastic water bottles, and taped them over leaks on the bottom end of the air con machine, which is suspended from the ceiling in one room.

The bottles hang upside down, like the air con machine itself. From the screwtops, he has attached long plastic tubes, which resemble intravenous drip tubes used in hospitals but are actualy sold to supply air to fish tanks.

They carry the water which leaks from the machine into the bathroom.

The tubes drop to the ground beneath the machine, then lead into the bathroom on the left of the picture, where they end close a drain.

The water runs from the leaks in the machine, into the up-ended empty bottle tops, down the tubes, and into the drain.

Painless. How long did it take him to conceive it? A minute.

We called in the plumbers to check our air conditioning, as the coolant in the machine is running out.

The air con people replaced the coolant, but since they left, water has been dripping out the machine when it is turned on.

The bottom plate of the machine is rusty. While they were working, the plumbers opened two holes in the rusted plate, from which leaks sprung.

The first night after they left, water dripped noisily from the machine when it was turned on.

When I put a large plastic tub under the air con, it filled with water in less than two hours. It wasn't a trickle, but a small flood.

Now that Maiyuu has erected his water bottle contraption, it is silent.

We have to pay B3000 for a new metal plate.

The plumbers have ordered the plate from a supplier, and will install it when it has arrived. However, making it, they said, would take days.

The plumbers charged another B1000 for replacing the coolant. They came while I was at work.

After finding the leaks, the plumbers returned two days later to measure the machine for the plate. They also picked up their B3000.

When I gave Maiyuu the money, he brightened.

'I will go out and buy a container to catch the water drops,' he said excitedly. He found the plastic tubing in a fish tank shop.

Money stimulates his creative imagination.

I don't spend much these days. My job is to provide. As the man about the house, Maiyuu gets the ideas, then asks for money to make them work.

However, I do get to share in the benefits.

I enjoy watching the leaking water make its way slowly from the machine, down the tubes and into the bathroom. It moves along like a long train on a track, seen from high in the air. It is entrancing.

I have never laid in a hospital bed with a drip attached to my arm, but I imagine it looks like this.

Saline solution, or blood, flows from a plastic bag along narrow plastic tubes, into the patient's body.

In our case, water trails from a leaky, rusty air con machine, along a long fish-tank tube into a drainage hole.

It sounds less important, but keeps us going just the same.