Ok I’ve been back for 2 weeks and I haven’t been saying much in here. So I just thought I’d blog about the house that we stayed in that was falling apart right before our very eyes.
Starting with the toilet:
When we left, 4 of the tiles on the wall in the shower area had fallen off. 1 of them was broken and the other 3 were stacked nicely in one corner for the maintenance guy to fix it. The hot water tap broke *thankfully after winter was over* and so we were left to wash our faces and hands in icy cold water, which was welcome on the several days that it was ridiculously hot and condemned when the weather became freezing cold. (melbourne weather.. always changing. you can always rely on the weather forecast to be unreliable) The drainage pipe got clogged up so badly that for a while after the shower you were walking around in a puddle of water until lynn stuck a hanger down the drain to unclog it.
rooms:
thanks to the fantastic design of the 1980s, the lack of central heating combined with windows that do not effectively keep the cold air out made my room the perfect refridgerator in winter. combined with the fact that it faces the setting sun, it is the perfect furnace in summer. furthermore, maybe the fly problem only became a realy problem in the past 20 years because the lack of a net covering the windows means that opening the window at night means sharing my room with a million insects.
-there’s more-
it seems that the arrival of spring not only heralded (don’t know whether i used that correctly) the arrival of flies (monstrous things i tell you.. as large as proximal phalanx of index finger) AND bees. we seemd to have this bee nest in our roof and one day while xf was in her room she heard some buzzing and some knocking at her window, only to look our and see a swarm of bees hovering outside her window. upon stepping outside for further inspection, there were all the bees hovering outside her window creating a racket. for some bizarre reason, when we looked behind the couch in the living room, there were all these dead bees on the carpet. it’s like.. some kind of graveyard for bees. kind of like the dying hole for giraffes in madagascar 2.
one day when my window was open, because it was 36 degrees and the sun was setting (furnace) i heard a buzzing noise outside my window and i looked up and saw this whole swarm of bees outside. luckily the window wasn’t open very widely. seems like that decided to migrate to my part of the house =.= and so, as if it wasn’t hot enough, i had to close my window. ah yes and to add on to the “stupid design” list: the windows a hinged at the top so they swing out like a doggy door – less air. more suffering in summer. especially when the temperature hit 40 degrees at the beginning of the year.
kitchen:
worst thing ever. had some rat problem we thought that we had rectified at the beginning of the year until we heard it scurrying around under the cupboard again. bloody things never die. so we had to contend with the smell and the terror of contracting rabies in some way. thankfully it was only in the last 2-3 weeks. could have been for the whole year. warcrime.
lots of critters, bad ventilation, poor insulation.. as far as suffering goes, it was fun staying with shu and xf this year. the bitching sessions, watching tv together, having dinners.. and they’ll both be in box hill next year and i’ll be in clayton. :(
marathon this sunday! totally screwed. ran a grand total of twice this entire year. hope i don’t die in the process of running. uni jersey is nice this year though. nice orange compared to the lime green that it was last year :D
