So last night I tried to flush my toilet but the water just swelled back up into the bowl. This only happened to me once before when I lived here in 2011, but I remember well enough that you can go down to the little maintenance guys' shack and request a plunger, so when pouring copious amounts of drain unblocker down the john didn't solve the problem, that's exactly what I did. For some reason all the maintenance guys that hang down there are pretty old. For the most part they're nice, but, as I guess is often the case with old men, they have no qualms whatsoever about teasing you when you show up.
So I reach the maintenance shack and use the key words that I know to express that there's a problem in my bathroom (said key words really being "bathroom" and "water") and do the best I can to mime using a plunger with accompanying sounds.
Naturally they all laughed at me, but one of them got up and fetched the plunger from the shed for me. As I thanked him and started off with it, he said something to me in Korean. At first I thought he was telling me to eat well, like the plunger was delicious, so I looked incredulously at him and politely declined. I was halfway back to my apartment when I realized he'd really said I must have eaten well, to have need of a plunger for my toilet.
Silly old men...I gotta say, though, for all their teasing, they're really very prompt when my boiler light goes out. I have no complaints.
