Sunday, July 23, 2006

Housemate(s) from hell

Many of us studying (or sometimes working) abroad will stay with housemates/flatmates/roommates. It is usually expensive to stay alone in a one bedroom house/apartment/studio and a typical student's budget will not be enough to pay for this luxury.

Then there will be the issue of getting along with those who share with you the living quarters. For many (at least the majority of folks I know), there is always the concern of whether you are unlucky enough to get one from hell. It is one thing to know a person as a friend, it is another to see him/her day in/day out.

So last Friday things came to a head in my house when utility and gas bills for the month of June came in. To cut the long story short, it is significantly higher than the previous months. I have a pretty good guess as to the reason why. These being the summer months, we have to rely on A/C to keep ourselves cool (pun unintended). But this moron simply kept the A/C on when he was the last one to leave (and he is almost always the last one out). The same goes for the stove oven; he likes to host parties at my place and there were at least two occasions where he simply left the oven heated overnight after he had removed the chicken.

This was the fuse that lit the tinderbox. I started to confront him on the other issues; those that I had kept bottled up for a long time.

1. You regularly bringing different girls home for sex. I don't really care what you do behind the closed doors of your bedroom. But you sure make a lot of noise that the wooden walls cannot keep out. Eh hello? The whole world does not need to hear those.

2. PDA in the common areas. It is one thing to give each other pecks on the cheek or hugs; it is another to engage openly in sex on the couch in the living room. Oh, and can you tell your girl not to walk from your bedroom to the bathroom wearing nothing at all below?

3. Taking one hour baths on weekday mornings. There is only one bathroom in the house, and your two housemates need to use it too before going to school or work.

4. Leaving your dirty dishes in the sink. I am not washing your shit, and I need the space for my own cooking.

5. Playing your fucking electric organ while I am watching the TV.

I am seriously reconsidering extending my lease, but the location is too good to pass. Let's hope you get the internship, then I do not need to see you again.

Not surprising then to read news reports of people killing their housemates.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That just shows his total lack of consideration and his don't-care-attitudes(no respect for the rest housemates). You need to confront with that kinda people. No other way out. Tolerance won't do anything good in this case for you, better for him tho.
Too bad for you. Like you said you are just unlucky enough to get one housemate from hell like that. LOL.

Kevin said...

Hohoho, housemates... been through a few Singaporean as well as international ones. You'd be amazed that even with our kind, it can be just the same :P

-ben said...

Had one who would leave the frying pan filled with oil on the stove for an entire week (to fry his spam. Yes, he reuses the oil. Ugh!), never wash his own dishes, refused to pay for shared items (garbage bags, paper towels, etc.) but use them anyway, turned on the TV in his bedroom loudly until 5 AM in the morning, told us it was only him, but moved his girlfriend in as well. We were served 3 noise complaints from the management in the 2.5 months he was around.

The last straw was when he physically threatened me. The next day he found me cleaning a shotgun on the kitchen table, along with a couple boxes of shells.

He moved out shortly thereafter.