The Safety Checkers

Two ladies appeared at our gate (with ID) saying they were the fire hazard checkers.  I had a guy come last year so I knew what to expect.  They came into the house and checked we had our safety nozzle thing attached to our gas bottle (for the cooker).  They told me (well actually most of the talking was done through Lea as they felt their English was not good enough even though Lea kept telling them to just try and speak English!) it was an imitation nozzle, which I explained I had bought off the guy who came last year. They told me never to trust a man claiming to be from their dept. as they were all women usually. I said, "Well it still works doesn't it?".  But they showed me that it didn't really as it didn't automatically shut off when the bottle is shaken.  I cannot imagine any scenario this would actually happen in, but fair enough.  They could tell I wasn't going to buy a new one, however, so they offered to fix it, which I accepted.  Lea told them to get a move on as we foreigners eat early and I would want to start cooking soon (that made me laugh, perfectly true - we eat at 5 and most Filipinos eat about 7 or later.).

When they had gone, a different team turned up so I told them we had already been checked but they said they were the supervisors and wanted to check their work and they asked for the receipt and were most disgruntled that they had done a fix job rather than selling me a new one. They disappeared off and 5 minutes later we had another team who were the managers! They, too, came in, checked the bottle, asked for the receipt and in typical Filipino fashion managed to extract my nationality, why I was here, how many kids I had and how old I was inside 1 minute!  They went off tutting about the receipt too and I think those poor first two girls - who I think were pretty astute - probably lost their job.