The Rule of The Three Things Being Broken

When we lived in Brazil, we found that despite all our best efforts to keep our house going, there always seemed to be at least three separate items which needed repairs, new bits, or some kind of sorting out. In the end, we decided it must be one of those rules of life (Sod's and Murphy's being the other two that spring to mind): the Rule of The Three Things Being Broken. It seems to apply to certain places only. In Thailand where the national catch phrase is Mai Pen Rai (which roughly translated means, Oh, never mind (or don't bother even trying to sort that out mate, because it ain't never going to happen)) and where you might expect the Rule of Three to apply, it seems to relate more to the time it takes to sort things out. Problems that you would normally expect to be fixed within a week take three weeks. More complicated issues (like our plumbing) are obviously destined to be sorted out in decades, and not days!

In Almaty, we are back to the straightforward Rule of Three. So we had the water heater and the dishwasher and the internet one week. Then we fixed the dishwasher, so the TV stopped working for a couple of days. As I write, and of course by even writing this down, I am dooming myself to interminable fixing issues for months to come, but there are actually no mechanical issues to deal with  so perhaps we are in for a good spell.