Is it habitable?
Work on the apartment progresses, though at a snail's pace. The damaged parquet is gone. All of the linoleum is gone, though it took repeated remainders to the clean-up people to get the last little bits in the entry-way and under the standard movable wardrobe (called a Schrank). De-humidifiers are running in two rooms. On Thursday I was told that the place was dry and that the de-humidifiers could come out on Friday, but when I came home on Friday, they were still there, possibly because the drying was incomplete, more likely because they forgot.
It is hard to believe that a German firm is responsible for this shoddy work. A number of people have said that this is very untypical. I'm not convinced. A lot of work at the university seems to run on the same pattern: slow work, partial work, poor work. Two months after I reported a problem with a light switch in my office, workers came to fix it. Unfortunately that day it was working again, so they left. It stopped working immediately afterwards.
The amount of dirt in the rooms with the water damage is appalling, even to me. I swept and swept to remove at least the worst of it between the bathroom and the kitchen, the only unaffected rooms. I collected several inches of pure dirt in a bucket just by sweeping the path.
If all goes well, it is possible that work on the new tiles could begin this coming week, which should go far to eliminating the dirt problem. I also confirmed that these "fine stone" tiles do not need any additional sealing. And they come with a high wear-factor and a high anti-slipping factor. It will be a huge relief to have decent floor in place.
Just to add to the complications of the week, we had a meeting with evaluation people from the accreditation agency. Their written questions indicated considerable skepticism about our BA and MA programs, which are like no others in Germany. It was some advantage that their viewpoints bristled with inconsistency: one wanted more old books, another wanted more computing, a third wanted a curriculum more like the one at his institution, which more resembles a community college than a research university. In the end, however, we persuaded them that our program made sense and received a remarkably positive recommendation.
It is hard to believe that a German firm is responsible for this shoddy work. A number of people have said that this is very untypical. I'm not convinced. A lot of work at the university seems to run on the same pattern: slow work, partial work, poor work. Two months after I reported a problem with a light switch in my office, workers came to fix it. Unfortunately that day it was working again, so they left. It stopped working immediately afterwards.
The amount of dirt in the rooms with the water damage is appalling, even to me. I swept and swept to remove at least the worst of it between the bathroom and the kitchen, the only unaffected rooms. I collected several inches of pure dirt in a bucket just by sweeping the path.
If all goes well, it is possible that work on the new tiles could begin this coming week, which should go far to eliminating the dirt problem. I also confirmed that these "fine stone" tiles do not need any additional sealing. And they come with a high wear-factor and a high anti-slipping factor. It will be a huge relief to have decent floor in place.
Just to add to the complications of the week, we had a meeting with evaluation people from the accreditation agency. Their written questions indicated considerable skepticism about our BA and MA programs, which are like no others in Germany. It was some advantage that their viewpoints bristled with inconsistency: one wanted more old books, another wanted more computing, a third wanted a curriculum more like the one at his institution, which more resembles a community college than a research university. In the end, however, we persuaded them that our program made sense and received a remarkably positive recommendation.
posted by Michael Seadle at 9:25 PM
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