Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tomorrow... or 'avrio'?

It's over a week now since our dishwasher was taken away for repairs. I thought it would be, perhaps, a couple of days. On Friday, Richard phoned and spoke to George, the shop owner.

George said there was a thermostat problem. We'd rather guessed that, since the dishwasher was overheating so badly. He said the engineers were replacing that, and the main controller, and that it would cost €130. Ouch!

But, Richard pointed out, we had the main controller replaced at the end of June. It didn't seem unreasonable then, after four years of unstinting service. But surely it should last more than five months...?

Unfortunately, we had no paperwork. Some things are still very informal in Cyprus. We paid cash, and were not even given a receipt, let alone any kind of guarantee.

However, it IS Cyprus. Yesterday, having heard no more, Richard popped into the shop on his way back to work after lunch. George told him that yes, he had checked and we did indeed have a new controller in June, so we won't be charged for another new one. In fact, he said we won't have to pay much at all... though he didn't quote a figure.

So that's good.

Richard asked when we might get the dishwasher back again.

Well, George said, the engineers fixed the problem, they thought. So they ran it through a couple of cycles to make sure. And on the second one, it overheated dramatically again. So evidently they hadn't fixed the problem, and were doing some more tests.

'Tomorrow', he said.

However... the English word 'tomorrow' is translated into Greek as 'αυριο' (if that just looks like random symbols or squares because you don't have the correct Greek font on your computer, the transliteration is, roughly, 'avrio'). Unfortunately, it doesn't mean quite the same as 'tomorrow', which is a fairly specific word. It can.. but as far as we can determine, what it really means is, 'some time after today'.

Richard forgot to ask whether it would really be 'tomorrow' or 'αυριο'.. so I assumed the latter. Which is good, because it didn't arrive back today.

I'm almost getting used to washing dishes after meals, although I don't suppose I will ever like it.

1 comment:

Phil said...

In Cornwall we have a similar word - 'dreckly - like avrio but less of a sense of urgency