The Walls Have Ears - and Eyes; and a Mouth

Sometimes, when we are sitting around the house, the wall starts talking to us. I don't mean the next door neighbors and the loud bells on their door. I don't mean the kid downstairs who practices the piano. I don't mean the occasional vendor with a loudspeaker driving by. I mean some man makes announcements to the whole neighborhood through their wall speakers. We have no idea what he is trying to communicate, but at least he only does it in the early evening.



In the picture below you can see the high-tech control center for our apartment. The panel at the bottom left is for our hot water. It has many buttons and speaks to us in Korean if we press one. The bottom left button turns on the ondol. The next one controls the hot water for the sinks and shower. It is important not to confuse them and turn the under-floor heating system up past 80 degrees.



The phone connects to the guard house, so we can talk to the guard if we want to. I found that out when I randomly pressed one of the other buttons and the guards voice came out asking me why I called and what I want. If we are going out and want to communicate this fact to the guard, we press the blue button under the red light. This turns on a light in the guard shack out front and lets him know we are not home. I think the red button calls the fire department, but I have not tried that one yet.

When someone comes to the front of our building and types in our apartment number, the little tv comes on and we can see their face. Then, one of the buttons starts blinking and we can open the door to the building. When they get upstairs and ring our bell, the tv comes on again and we can see them again. I like to turn on the view screen. The camera in our door bell points at the elevator. I can see what floor the elevator is on through the little tv.