About two weeks ago, we got a notice from the general manager of our apartment complex shoved under our door.

It was an instruction sheet that told us, with the cooler weather coming on, they were activating the heating system in the apartments and wanted all residences to keep the temperature set at 26 degrees, for the benefit of all apartments surrounding the one you occupy. If one is cold, it affects the heating in the adjacent flats (I assumed because of the cement walls being cold in winter etc). It is an "in-floor" electric heating system .. and because it was 26-28 degrees outside (and we use the air conditioning) we elected to not turn ours on. 

Last night, a nice fellow from upstairs knocked on the door and very politely explained that he lived above us and could we please turn our heat down because his place was over 30 degrees. I showed him our thermostat & that the power switch was off. He was puzzled by this. We talked some more and during the discussion he told us when they built the building 5 years ago the builders had made a mistake and hooked up the temperature controllers in each apartment incorrectly. The controllers actually control the temperature in the apartment immediately above the one you live in. 

If you recall, I mentioned the way they build here in a previous post. The first drawback to this method is that this mistake from 5 years ago is irreversible. It can't be fixed without tearing apart the cement walls in every apartment. The residents have been living with this problem ever since. Our upstairs neighbour then seemed to accept the fact that he would be warm until the real cold came and and shrugged it off by saying it wasn't our fault, this was the best we could do and he'd just have to accept it. His apartment - 903c has air conditioning too and he'd have to use it for a while longer. 

I had to tell him, our apartment is actually 2 below his .. we're 703c. When he realized that he'd made a mistake, I thought he was going to croak. Very embarrassed and very apologetic. No problem I told him - I felt for him .. I didn't laugh until after he'd gone.

As the adage says "There but for the grace of god go I".

I thought you might appreciate hearing the sort of thing that happens here from time to time ... with, what to us, seems like a lot more frequency than at home.