The next decade....what's in store?

My Indian housemates in Port of Spain

I told you I was sharing a house in Port of Spain with many men from India and promised you more....

When I booked, the lady said she had nothing booked at the time. So here I was on my way to the house two Sundays ago, thinking I was going to meet Peace & Quiet (my two best friends). Lo and behold on the drive up, she tells me that there are these men there. The first thing I thought of was Noise - definitely my enemy.

But really, the first thing I should have thought was Mess. But, as I had experienced quite a bit of both while being an 'old' student at university in England, I knew I could handle it. I also knew I would have to set boundaries.

The men were there exhibiting at an Indo fair. One set cooked food and sold, the other set sold clothes. "Any roti tonight?" was how I greeted them when I 'checked in'. Nope. In fact, they cooked omelette for dinner quite a few nights.

The house had 6 bedrooms. Five are upstairs, one is downstairs and that was mine, which was good....far from the maddening crowd. It wasn't good when they were in the room above me, because the wooden floors squeaked, plus they moved the TV from the upstairs landing into their room and were clearly deaf, so I had to go up twice during the week and ask them to turn it down. This was after 11:00pm.

One night I was going to bed and they had not come 'home' yet, so I wrote a note which read...

Michelle is sleeping. Please whisper. ZZzzzzzz.

I put a smiley face at the bottom, and left the note on a chair right by the entrance. It worked. Not a peep was heard. That could also have been because I was using Lexotam to help my slumber.

The next day one of them said "we saw your note". I thanked them for being quiet, and explained that I was studying for an exam.

They were very nice and polite and all that, and I never felt at any moment that any of them would get 'fresh' with me. It just would have been nice if they had cleaned up after themselves.

Here are two pictures, so you can see what I mean and that I wasn't being uptight and anal-retentive...

The dining table, as it greeted me when I woke up one morning...

And next, the kitchen. Not an attempt made to clean up...

Anyway, that's life. I passed the exam. No we have not got results yet, but I know what they will be.

Posted by yamfoot at June 19, 2005 04:45 PM