A good day, indeed.

I'm not easily defeated (well, not too easily), so the next morning I troop down to the Accounts Office. I say, what happened to my plumber, I waited all day. A rather tall man in one of the Security uniforms hands me a pink booklet, which lists all the internal phone numbers in the complex. He points to the Complaint Room and says, "You phone here. But they will no understand your language, so you phone here", and points to the Accounts Office, the room I am currently standing in. So I tell them I want my drains fixed and they say someone will be up in half an hour. Rod has explained to me that I should not get excited by this statement, it's a little like "the cheque's in the post".

So I go up to my apartment and within five minutes the doorbell rings. It's two of the maintenance crew, one obviously more senior than the other because he wasn't carrying any tools. They want to see my drains. Tool guy investigates the problem (the water doesn't drain away from the shower for ages), and the other watches him. They agree there is a problem, and say they will be back in ten minutes.

Then the internal phone rings. It's the front gate, speaking in Hindi. Rod has told me the trick here, listen and when you understand one word, like "pizza", say, "Send him up to A151". Well, the only word I understood was Airtel, and as that's the company who supplies our not working telephone landline, I say authoritatively, "Send him up to A151".

So a new Airtel guy arrives at the apartment, understands what is wrong with my phone - I can receive calls but I can't make them - without me needing to be Marcel Marceau, and fixes it. Then, only an hour after the ten minutes is up, the plumber returns and fixes my drains. This is an unexpectedly good day!