I have done and spent very little of today awake. I woke up around 12pm (surprise, considering I went to sleep only with the aid of melatonin around 4am), and then dozed off around 2pm to 4pm when I was reading in bed. I have just finally managed to force myself into doing something productive, which was cleaning the kitchen. This time, rather than clearing the ledge with the plant, knife blocks and wine bottles, I opted to clean the oven door instead.
It was very strange cleaning the oven door. As I cleaned it, I wondered how long it was since the last person cleaned it. As I recalled further, I remembered that when we moved in, out of cleaning the entire kitchen, Ching and I didn't clean the oven. But since then, various people have cleaned the kitchen other than me (probably about a combined 5 times from both Ching and Zoe since we decided to specialize in our duties). Then there was the time I apparently put a styrofoam base into the oven under a frozen pizza when I thought it was cardboard. The story then goes that Christoph saw it and cleaned it up before I saw it because he didn't want to make me upset. Did he, or any of my flatmates clean the poor oven then? I don't know.
What was interesting however was that I realise the oven door actually isn't tinted slightly brown/sepia-ey. The moment my sponge and yellow rubber gloves touched the door, the brown gunk promptly stucked EVERYWHERE. The yellow sponge turned brown in a split second. I do not exaggerate. It's like it was just sitting there, waiting to be touched to be removed. I didn't even have to scrub very hard. As I gingerly scrubbed away with my sponge, I noted the dominant smell of the oven was of chocolate cake. I made chocolate cake last term around Week 5, which would've been early November 2010. It smelt the same as my chocolate cake, which was too chocolatey for its own good and collapsed under its own sheer density. It came out more like the richest brownie I could've ever imagined.
Anyway I digress. As I was cleaning the kitchen, I was thinking about the whole idea of flatmate-ing, and roommate-ing. One of my flatmates from this year was Zoe, my roommate from last year. You'd think living in such confined quarters together, that things would not differ from this year. They have. Now don't get me wrong, I actually really really care and like Zoe. But inevitably, as with all humans with their unique idiosyncrasies, people can and will grate on each other. An example is the issue of slamming doors. For some goddamned reason Zoe cannot close the front door silently. I suspect she even gets a kick out of slamming the door. On a scale of irritating behaviours, this is actually something like a 2/10. But depending on the time of the day, the mood I am in, that could rise on the scale very significantly. Then there are little stuff, like who throws out the trash (which I admit to being an extremely lousy flatmate for), suspicions that people are not doing their duties in turn. Another thing about girls is the hair accumulation in the shower, which I feel I remove very often. All these little irritants add up, and colour perceptions whether valid or not with each other.
Which brings me to my original point, regarding staying in the same flat with your close friends. It is not a good idea. On Weds when Jia and I met up for a lovely sushi dinner at Atariya, we spoke briefly about this. Little things that one finds endearing in a friend, might not necessarily translate to being a good flatmate. An example is about a house I know where a group of close friends stay. One of them is known for being self-interested. As friends, its something one can laugh about, since he does take the piss out of himself too. As a flatmate, it turns out he actually is self-interested. He takes and uses things without paying, never takes the initiative to purchase combined household items, and leaves messes in the kitchen without cleaning up. That translates into being a horrid flatmate. As for the group of them, their relationship is rather strained now. When looking for flatmates, its best to not look for how close you are them them sometimes, but rather how they are in their lifestyles, habits and behaviour. If you're a messy person, room only with messy people, etc. Little things like that can very much affect how much you enjoy being at home.
And the most important point: never move in with your boyfriend with other mutual friends. By this I mean for example, in a 3 person flat where you and your boyfriend have a room each. Don't be either party, the couple, or the third wheel. The couple will gang up on the other person if they work out, and it they don't work out the other person will invariably need to take sides. If you're in the couple that does break up, then you will be stuck with seeing the ex all the time. Either way at a given time, someone is miserable. Of course this does not affect all living arrangements, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want to move in with your chosen partner, do it when its just the two of you, and not with a random other person. I've heard enough horror stories regarding this to look upon all such arrangements with a sense of dread.
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