Decaffeinated Coffee With Caffeine

Last night I stayed up until midnight and was not tired. When I finally laid down I couldn't sleep. Elizabeth had the same problem. It turned out the decaffeinated coffee we had at Mushroom probably had caffeine in it. I think something got lost in the translation. I was only glad I didn't have to teach today.

At about 8:30 I went to the little mini mart down the street to get some water and coffee (I am not drinking caffeine, but since I couldn't sleep I needed some to wake up). When I got back, my door wouldn't open.

We have these little key pads on our doors that kind of look like cell phones. We don't have keys. I tried again and again and it just would not unlock. I knocked on Sonja's door and we called Jin Hee, one of the office grunts who has not been around all week. I asked her to tell the security guard that my lock would not open.

The security guard didn't come up so I decided to go to the office to see if anyone was there. When I went downstairs, I saw it was one of the nice guards (and not one of the scary ones), so I decided to ask him for help. I went over and mimed opening the key pad, and "beep beep beep", entering the numbers and then made the sign for "no" (arms crosses like an X) - he understood immediately - I wasn't sure if Jin Hee had called him or not.

He came up and tried my door several times and had the same problem. He was laughing as he went downstairs to return again with a transister batttery which he used to charge the batteries in my door lock. Thankfully it worked and the door opened. As I was leaving to go to the office to make copies for next week, he told me "ba ta ri" - I understood I needed new batteries. When I went to the office later I told Jenny and Chan and they gave me fresh new batteries.

The good thing is when I changed the batteries the little song that used to play each time I opened and closed the door stopped playing. It had played so many times it was playing in my head when I went to bed. Talk about annoying. Now my door opens and closes with no problems and with no song, just a few little beeps.