Locked in my apartment

I tend to take for granted that I live in a country where common sense and courtesy aren't far out concepts. I would never have imagined such silliness as I am about to describe coming from a landlord here.

You see, our apartment building had a very nice breezeway with carpet. Before renovations. Yet the entire complex is now being renovated and guess what? The nice carpet? Gone. In favor of what? Some kind of concrete, apparently. Why? Well my first objection is because I really liked the carpet, especially on the stairs... which are now just painted metal (ew!). Looks very tacky anyway.

But concrete, as you may know, takes time to dry... and I live on the second floor so escaping out through the porch (which for me is a balcony) is not really an option! The problem is if I don't leave my apartment in time, i.e., before they put down the concrete, I'm locked in basically or else it will be ruined.

Yes, they did give us warning. First a week-long window when we had to be prepared that we couldn't enter our second floor apartments for the day (between 8am and 5pm!). And then a specific day--last week we got a note saying today was the today. Well I forgot and slept in this morning and when I got up... hmm... couldn't go out. So I was pretty much stuck in the apartment until late afternoon when I had to go to class.

Unfortunately... someone (one of my neighbors) forgot about it too, and had to venture onto the wet concrete before it dried. (You see how inconvenient this is, that we can't get into our homes for a day--maybe we're spoiled?) So the company has to come back again tomorrow to fix it. So irritating. All for this ugly green concrete.

I would've thought that our landlord would have a little more courtesy than have this stuff put in that is going to be so inconvenient for the tenants... not to mention really ugly.

But apparently not! I hope I get out in time, tomorrow!