Let's face it, no matter where we live in the world most of us have likely been accustomed to certain standards in our day-to-day lives. We have comfort knowing that we have a good idea of how things work in our society and how to get things done, especially in times when we need it the most. So many things that we do might seem normal and we won't even give them a second thought because they are second nature to us. It's just a fact of life, we get accustomed to certain routines, ways of doing things, efficiencies and standards....and as ignorant as many of us are we expect these to be the norm around the globe...News Flash - things are different everywhere.
I remember growing up in the 80s (#80srock by the way) whenever my parents needed to hire an electrician my dad would (well he would do the work himself) but most people would reach onto their kitchen counter grab the yellow pages and start flipping through to find whatever they were looking for - and this seemed pretty crazy simple at the time. Who's the unlucky person updating the information in this book every year? Then fast-forward to the 2000s and all we need to do when we need an electrician is to "Google" it. It takes seconds to do and voila we've got an overabundance of options to choose from. As simple as this was back in the 80s and even more so now, it's all part of being in a certain comfort zone. We know that if we need an electrician, there's a damn good chance we kind find one in seconds and schedule an appointment all in a matter of a few mouse clicks, day or night it's super easy. Well, until you're living out of your comfort zone. Can I find an electrician in Costa Rica by checking online? yes of course. But do I really know what I'm going to get? And even more troubling, will our communication be a limiting factor. How do I properly explain the issue that I am having and what needs to happen to fix it? Thankfully right now, we still have our builder to "rely" on for issues around the house but if it wasn't for that I'm not entirely sure how I would go about getting some things done...but am sure I'd figure it out by Googling it...
Take for instance a recent experience we had with our house. One evening we were doing some organizing in the house and noticed some drywall peeling away from the ceiling...Hmmm, looks like a leaky ceiling issue. So we contacted our builder to report the issue and what did they do.... they sent the drywall/paint guy to come "fix" it. My gut told me that that likely wasn't the best person to send to deal with this problem, but I rolled with it. Sure enough the very same day that the leak was "fixed" by the drywall/paint guy we had a rain storm and the ceiling leaked again. Now the repair that he did made sense, a certain part of our patio roof needed flashing, so he bought some flashing (not enough based on having to make a trip to the hardware store to buy more) and instead of running the flashing the entire length of the patio roof they left spaces of a couple inches between the different pieces of flashing instead of connecting them all together...low and behold the spacing they left happens to be right where the leaky ceiling is - go figure. Now I don't know about you, but if my ceiling leaked in my house in Canada, my first inclination would not be to send the drywall/paint guy to come and check it out and attempt to "fix" it...Sure, send the drywall guy to take down some drywall, but.... perhaps send the roofing guy to check out the source of the leak - obviously the water is coming from outside somehow. The next day when I reported that the ceiling was still leaking the builder came back and said they would "talk to the guys"...I'm like, no, please don't talk to the guys, please send the right person to check on it and come as well so you can see....so they are now sending the roofing guy.... I’ll be damned if the roofing guy is also the drywall/painter guy...I guess we'll find out soon enough...
Long story short, the standards and expectations here are definitely different than what I've come to expect in North America, and as I'm saying this, I need to remember I'm now in Central America so things are obviously going to be just a wee bit different...and that's not a bad thing, it's just something to get used to...as long as our leaky ceiling gets fixed. It's all good, everyone has nothing but the best intentions, it's just a little weird to see how they go about doing things.
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