Buying a Dishwasher

"I have some bad news..." was the start of yesterday's email from our property manager back home. I could have guessed bad news before even opening the email because mid-month notes from her at 6:30 a.m. our time - mid day for her - seldom (never?)  mean anything but. Eric was racing out the door for another hectic, crazy day at his job. I was looking a the piles of papers that I'd procrastinated grading last night because, quite frankly, these activity/workbooks are about the most boring things I've graded in my entire teaching career, and wondering if I could slog through them in the next 30 minutes before I raced out the door. Our property manager's email filled with details of water, gunk and pump/repair costs for a 13 year old dryer were the icing on the cake for an already stress-filled morning.

We both looked at each other and agreed that we did not want to repair the dinosaur. We also knew that we didn't have time at that exact moment to research what we wanted. I quickly dashed off an email. "Please do not repair the dishwasher. Can you ask the tenants to give us the day to research new dishwashers and to please be patient? We'll give an answer by the end of today.."

I kissed Eric goodbye after he promised to do a little research on new dishwashers. I don't really care that much about dishwashers except that they work and that  match our appliances. (He swears our appliances are black. I swear they're white. Can you believe we can't even remember what color they are?!)

Then I walked into our Malaysian kitchen, looked at the stack of last night's dirty dishes resting on the stove top -there's no room for anything on the counter top- and counted my blessings that the ants had not found the pork chop bones and crumbs of baked potatoes left from last night. I began to fill the electric tea pot with water to boil for my dish water. In the meantime, I filled the second sink with cold water and a tablespoon of bleach for a sanitary, Girl Scout-approved rinse.

At this moment I started laughing. Here was the perfect example of trying to balance two cultures. In the first, our "native" culture I was imagining a frazzled mom with screaming young children, a dog barking, and an overflowing dishwasher. In an effort to be good landlords we immediately felt the need to take care of house problems promptly hoping for responsible tenants in return. Contrast that with our "adopted" culture. Our kitchen is typical of expat housing in a  "developing nation".  No machine, no hot water. The only dishwasher I can visualize is myself (or Eric if I've got the flu or dengue fever.) Sure, we could purchase a dishwasher ourselves. But, I would have to put it in the bathroom next to the washing machine and I'm not sure that would really buy us anything except more headaches.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for our tenants.  I hope they love the shiny, clean, quiet new dishwasher. I know I would. And, when I get back to the States, I'm going to enjoy having a dishwasher. That way, I'll have a choice: hand wash when there are only a couple of items or open a door, load em dirty like the commercials, add soap and go.