In fact, Mr. Shanmuganathan says, he has counted a total of 10 days of running water since February. Mr. Shan, as his friends call him, is not alone. Some have water on alternate days, some have gone for weeks at a time without it and others have resorted to collecting rain in buckets.
Officials say the situation is starting to improve, but the crisis has left scars.
For Kuala Lumpur residents the past 12 months have been filled with economic turmoil, smoky skies from nearby forest fires and riots by foreign workers trying to avoid deportation. Ecologists say poor planning of the region's water supply infrastructure has deepened a crisis originally brought on by the relatively dry weather. One of the most striking images of the crisis has been of people waiting in the pouring rain to fill buckets from a truck provided by the public works department. Mr. Shan reckons this has happened to him eight times. Environmentalists complain that no one knows who is really in charge of long-term water management, in particular planning the network of dams and reservoirs needed to supply many major cities.