a year ago

Still remember what you were up to a year ago? surely i did. yet, i am not the one who tells the story today. my friend, yuni does!


"a year ago i stayed at cemetery street no. 1. no kidding.

if the name itself scares you away, wait till you listen to the rest of the story...the house was located at a secluced village where the population is no more than 1500 heads - mainly made up of old grumpy hardbreads and middleschooler-bullies.

before i moved in, i tried to search for its exact location, only to be directed to the local cemetery. -_- it's such a small place that the only access to it is by car on weekends and holidays, or an hourly public bus till 7pm on weekdays. if you want to get to the nearest post office, supermarket or clinic on a weekend, that means 20mins of cycling on a cold winter day, or 40 mins walk. on a good weekday, you can get to town in an hour or to the city in another 30mins. but please be reminded that service runs on an hourly basis and after 7 you're basically on your own feet.with such connections, you would have thought that it's better to keep myself grounded. maybe. maybe not.

my ex-landlord, landlady and their son were not too willing to part themselves from their house. hence, they'd pop up on my doorstep or in my frontyard any time, be it 8am on a sunday morning or when no one's at home. even if any of us did not open the blinds or if the curtain was not correctly positioned, it was their business. and a very good reason for them to appear on my front door. it didn't help that they stayed a few steps away from us.perhaps if i was a little more tolerant, i could have closed an eye on this matter. maybe. maybe not.

the house was creaky and the attic and basement looked like exact replicas of haunted houses in the horror movies i watch. right in front of it was a church, and during my short stay i've encountered more funeral marches passing by that i had for the past 20 years of my life. the walls were so thin that you could actually hear what's going on downstairs and in the house next door.if horror movies didn't scare me, there's no reason that a simple house could give me goose bumps. maybe. maybe not.

even though we've complained multiple times, it didn't seem that the water heater problem was ever solved. during an average bath we got 5 minutes of ice cold water, 3 minutes lukewarm, 2 minutes scalding hot and another 5 minutes of ice cold water. within the first month of our stay, the first sign of abnormality appeared. one night as i flushed the toilet, instead of bringing waste to the sewage, it did the opposite. O_o not only through the toilet bowl but through the bath tub as well. it was 8pm and we ran frantically to our dear ex-landlord, who didn't answer the door. (apparently they hit the sack at 6pm!) that night neither of us bathed nor used the toilet. the second one came a month later without warning when i was cooking in the kitchen when i realised water was dripping from the bathroom above. during the coldest month of winter, the heater decided to protest against us, leaving us in winter jackets in our rooms.if you thought that i'd stay any longer there, you've gotta be kidding or else i was crazy.

to top it off, the rent wasn't exactly cheap. about a third more than what i'm paying now. so within 2 months we took up our courages to dismiss our contracts. of course, it wasn't easy and neither were they gonna make it smooth-sailing for us. after a couple of scoldings and threatening we finally were granted our wish, but only in effect three months later.

in the mean time, life didn't get any easier for us. we were running high and low searching for apartments and moving our stuff with the ever-reliable public transport. we settled for an empty apartment in town. when i say empty i mean EMPTY. only equiped with a bath tub, a toilet bowl, a sink and a couple of wires and pipes, we were to move in. cupboard? bed? ceiling lights? stove? buy yourself-lah! for a month we were scouting for cheap furniture and kitchenware to fit our tiny budget, travelling before sunrise and catching the last bus back to the village.

1st of december - the day when we finally left cemetery street no.1. not only did we not turn our heads back, neither did we regret moving out and paying double rents for 2 months. it was certainly an expensive lesson for us to learn - one which costed us so much money, effort and time.

you would have thought that i would never have to hear from them ever ever again after i stepped my foot out of the village. how wrong you were. and so were we..........

3 months later, we received a letter from the embassy of malaysia stating that our previous landlord had a bill for us, but as he did not have our current address, the post was directed to the embassy. of the 350 euros of deposit each of us paid when we signed our contracts, we were only to be given back 0.75 cents. no joke. reason to it:

- during the month of january the electricity and gas bill was twice as high as the months before even though the house was unoccupied.
- the charges for repairing the toilet, bathtub as well as repainting the kitchen ceiling were to bepaid by us.- apparently, we stole 5 forks, 5 knives, a painting, a plate with dutch motifs that we've never ever seen in our lives, a candle holder with gold plating (wth?), 2 glasses and a can opener. seriously.
- after we spent a day scrubbing the floor and cleaned the house, they complained that the house was in a mess. so they hired professional cleaners to do the dirty work, and charged 300euros on our bill.
- and i'm sure you'd like to know that his wife charged us another 150euros for cleaning the curtains and the filthy windows. i was seriouly thinking of going to court for being framed up that way. but heck no, i didn't. in the end, after arguing with him for almost an hour, i reluctantly settled for a return of 75euros. each time i think about it, my heart aches.

DON'T TELL ME THAT I'M JUST UNLUCKY AND THAT I CAN'T GENERALISE BASED ON AN ISOLATE CASE. SUCH AN EXPERIENCE IS ENOUGH FOR ME TO HATE THE ENTIRE RACE OF HARDBREADS....yet, i'm still here.

anyway, that's not my point. today's december 1st, so i thought i'd blog about it. i'm just glad that i'm no longer there, god knows how much more i would suffer if i would have stayed any longer. oh well, what has occured is already spilt milk.

nevertheless, ----- HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY:)

* the above story has NOT been modified and is NOT a fiction. all facts and characters were NOT made up and is based on TRUE experiences."


interesting huh? refer to her blog for more interesting stories.
http://stranger-in-the-mirror.blogspot.com