-
Life Advice & Visual Arts
Posting Rules Bluelight Rules 🌌 Share Your Dreams! 🌌 📸 15 Years of Photo Contests 📸 -
LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari
Roommates from hell!
- Thread starter KandyJill
- Start date
MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
"Iron Chef China"
THE WOOD, I feel your pain. After working and paying for 7 semesters of continuing ed and my other living expenses at the same time, I have very little patience for immature and unhelpful undergrad KIDS. Especially in chem lab, where my grade partially depends on some silly dipshit from a Manhattan townhouse coming through with his part of the results. Also, when it comes to utilities, read on:
**********
I've had this roommate for a year now. Let's call him 'Shaq'. Let's keep a straight face about this, folks -- Shaq is a very common English moniker chosen by Chinese students learning English these days. One of my junior high classes in Harbin had 5 Shaqs. Anyhow...
Shaq answered an ad I'd put on the internet. He seemed like an OK guy. We ended up having a good chat when he came over to see the place, partially in Chinese, about my travels in China and our common interest of cooking.
And was he ever into cooking. The first weekend he was here, Shaq took over the kitchen in our little one bedroom (I rented him my 'living room'). There were ugly crumpled plastic shopping bags full of various ingredients lying over every horizontal surface. Shaq was flying around the kitchen shirtless and sweaty, chopping and frying and chopping and frying and baking. The kitchen, poorly ventilated to begin with, was stuffy as a sauna with a box of fried rice dumped over the coals. At first I'd comment on the good smells and make polite conversation, and even ask to taste things (bland, for the most part). I told Shaq how shocked I was he was into such a big project.
But it wasn't a project. It was his life -- it was all he did. To this day, I think Shaq spends a good 2/3 of the waking hours he's home cooking and eating. I ended up having to plan some very strange hours to be able to use the kitchen for myself. On weekends and other days he doesn't have school, I usually leave the house and eat quick stuff out all day.
But even when I got to use the kitchen, I didn't want to. You see, Shaq, who never cleaned anything except the five dishes he owns, left the place filthy. The stove was caked in a black tarry ash. The floor was black and sticky as a ghetto convenience store, and not a single surface was not coated with a yellow oily sticky film. One weekend Shaq was away I made myself a giant country breakfast and a big cup of coffee, put on some upbeat house music, and cleaned the kitchen until it fucking twinkled. (I would've asked him to help me, but I didn't trust his cleanliness standard enough.) Shaq walked in a few days later and said in a really namby-pamby voice, "Oh, it's a miracle!" I could've punched him.
It took Shaq two weeks to get the kitchen right back to where it'd been before.
I could at least give Shaq shit in a friendly way if he had anything close to the same values as me. But I cannot abide a guy who is such an enemy of Mother Earth, and cares naught at all about health related ... anything. He leaves the water in the kitchen sink and bathtub trickling, after I've shown him how to turn it off tightly and completely (I guess if we're not footing the utilities bill it doesn't matter, right? 8) Pfft). Shaq leaves the shower curtain open, so that water gets trapped in the folds and it grows mildew. This is helped -- I can smell the fucking mildew spores -- when he takes a steaming hot shower and then pulls the door to the unventilated bathroom shut when he leaves -- with the light still on of course. Shaq cannot for the life of him get our city's recycling system down. He prefers to pile garbage indiscriminantly in the corner. Many times I've found his tuna cans in the regular garbage, with some rancid meat still in them and some flies taboot.
I'm a pretty forgiving guy. And I really shoud be, after all, he's paying $250/month, leaving me with only $145 to make up the difference. Plus, I've been an exchange student abroad too, and I know how it feels to really miss familiar foods from home, so I do my best, when I'm in the best of moods, to still make conversation with Shaq sometimes. But I damn well better be in the mood. You see, Shaq has the balls to chronically try and talk me out of becoming a doctor, when he knows jack all about either me or that profession. (He's convinced I have a future in diplomacy. huh?!) After I'd already told him of my plans to contiune my current line of work in NYC, he got all sore once when I didn't follow up on a 'lead' he gave me for a paper-pushing position in the county government here, looking for a non-native Mandarin speaker. Shaq's one other hobby besides cooking is stock trading. Get it through your thick, one track head, Shaq -- MY MOTIVATION FOR BECOMING A DOCTOR HAS NOTHING TO GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING DO WITH MONEY!!! Capeesh? Dong bu dong?
As easygoing as I strive to be, Shaq has always seemed uncomfortable around me. He'll take a giant dramatic recoil back, with a sheepish but bothered look on his face, should I need to reach for something one foot from him, even if I pleasantly say "excuse me, just gotta grab something", etc. When he needs to ask me a question, you'd swear he's gearing up to propose to a girl, and if I just give him a soft, nonchalant "yep" and a nod, he gets perplexed my response wasn't more emphatic or intense, and proceeds to rephprase his question as if I didn't understand.
I should add that his English is actually decent, and this is not his first year living in the US.
His response to my electronic music was, "Whoa, how can you listen to this creepy music that's like a human heartbeat? You should give classical a try." After telling him in no uncertain terms classical music isn't my cup o' joe, he kept trying to sell me on taking my g/f to see this symphony orchestra playing at our college.
Though I appreciate his help with the rent, I can't wait till he's gone. I doubt we'll speak again once he returns to the land of a thousand thousand Shaqs from whence he came.
THE WOOD, I feel your pain. After working and paying for 7 semesters of continuing ed and my other living expenses at the same time, I have very little patience for immature and unhelpful undergrad KIDS. Especially in chem lab, where my grade partially depends on some silly dipshit from a Manhattan townhouse coming through with his part of the results. Also, when it comes to utilities, read on:
**********
I've had this roommate for a year now. Let's call him 'Shaq'. Let's keep a straight face about this, folks -- Shaq is a very common English moniker chosen by Chinese students learning English these days. One of my junior high classes in Harbin had 5 Shaqs. Anyhow...
Shaq answered an ad I'd put on the internet. He seemed like an OK guy. We ended up having a good chat when he came over to see the place, partially in Chinese, about my travels in China and our common interest of cooking.
And was he ever into cooking. The first weekend he was here, Shaq took over the kitchen in our little one bedroom (I rented him my 'living room'). There were ugly crumpled plastic shopping bags full of various ingredients lying over every horizontal surface. Shaq was flying around the kitchen shirtless and sweaty, chopping and frying and chopping and frying and baking. The kitchen, poorly ventilated to begin with, was stuffy as a sauna with a box of fried rice dumped over the coals. At first I'd comment on the good smells and make polite conversation, and even ask to taste things (bland, for the most part). I told Shaq how shocked I was he was into such a big project.
But it wasn't a project. It was his life -- it was all he did. To this day, I think Shaq spends a good 2/3 of the waking hours he's home cooking and eating. I ended up having to plan some very strange hours to be able to use the kitchen for myself. On weekends and other days he doesn't have school, I usually leave the house and eat quick stuff out all day.
But even when I got to use the kitchen, I didn't want to. You see, Shaq, who never cleaned anything except the five dishes he owns, left the place filthy. The stove was caked in a black tarry ash. The floor was black and sticky as a ghetto convenience store, and not a single surface was not coated with a yellow oily sticky film. One weekend Shaq was away I made myself a giant country breakfast and a big cup of coffee, put on some upbeat house music, and cleaned the kitchen until it fucking twinkled. (I would've asked him to help me, but I didn't trust his cleanliness standard enough.) Shaq walked in a few days later and said in a really namby-pamby voice, "Oh, it's a miracle!" I could've punched him.
It took Shaq two weeks to get the kitchen right back to where it'd been before.
I could at least give Shaq shit in a friendly way if he had anything close to the same values as me. But I cannot abide a guy who is such an enemy of Mother Earth, and cares naught at all about health related ... anything. He leaves the water in the kitchen sink and bathtub trickling, after I've shown him how to turn it off tightly and completely (I guess if we're not footing the utilities bill it doesn't matter, right? 8) Pfft). Shaq leaves the shower curtain open, so that water gets trapped in the folds and it grows mildew. This is helped -- I can smell the fucking mildew spores -- when he takes a steaming hot shower and then pulls the door to the unventilated bathroom shut when he leaves -- with the light still on of course. Shaq cannot for the life of him get our city's recycling system down. He prefers to pile garbage indiscriminantly in the corner. Many times I've found his tuna cans in the regular garbage, with some rancid meat still in them and some flies taboot.
I'm a pretty forgiving guy. And I really shoud be, after all, he's paying $250/month, leaving me with only $145 to make up the difference. Plus, I've been an exchange student abroad too, and I know how it feels to really miss familiar foods from home, so I do my best, when I'm in the best of moods, to still make conversation with Shaq sometimes. But I damn well better be in the mood. You see, Shaq has the balls to chronically try and talk me out of becoming a doctor, when he knows jack all about either me or that profession. (He's convinced I have a future in diplomacy. huh?!) After I'd already told him of my plans to contiune my current line of work in NYC, he got all sore once when I didn't follow up on a 'lead' he gave me for a paper-pushing position in the county government here, looking for a non-native Mandarin speaker. Shaq's one other hobby besides cooking is stock trading. Get it through your thick, one track head, Shaq -- MY MOTIVATION FOR BECOMING A DOCTOR HAS NOTHING TO GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING DO WITH MONEY!!! Capeesh? Dong bu dong?
As easygoing as I strive to be, Shaq has always seemed uncomfortable around me. He'll take a giant dramatic recoil back, with a sheepish but bothered look on his face, should I need to reach for something one foot from him, even if I pleasantly say "excuse me, just gotta grab something", etc. When he needs to ask me a question, you'd swear he's gearing up to propose to a girl, and if I just give him a soft, nonchalant "yep" and a nod, he gets perplexed my response wasn't more emphatic or intense, and proceeds to rephprase his question as if I didn't understand.
I should add that his English is actually decent, and this is not his first year living in the US.His response to my electronic music was, "Whoa, how can you listen to this creepy music that's like a human heartbeat? You should give classical a try." After telling him in no uncertain terms classical music isn't my cup o' joe, he kept trying to sell me on taking my g/f to see this symphony orchestra playing at our college.
Though I appreciate his help with the rent, I can't wait till he's gone. I doubt we'll speak again once he returns to the land of a thousand thousand Shaqs from whence he came.
Last edited:
Benefit
Bluelighter
tokey said:
Hahaha. Nah, I don't know you. I just have a remarkably good memory. I don't even watch these shows. I think I had my TV timed to go on at a certain time and it turned on when this show was airing. I just remember the guy was pretty much a doofus and he accused you of staying up all night using drugs and you kinda started smiling. So I just put two and two together. Shoulda known you were a bluelighter. Pretty fucking crazy.
Hahaha. I find this highly amusing.
Last edited:
yellodolphin
Bluelighter
this thread is quite funny and entertaining. i feel bad for all the people with shitty roommates, luckily i dont have to live on campus on share housing.
damn, that sucks. you know, there are two different types of ppl with OCD...fucking annoying ppl with annoying habits that piss me the fuck off, and HELPFUL OCD...i have a friend who is the latter...shes uptight about things being clean, so much so that she'll go over to other ppl's houses and start cleaning it for them! i gave up trying to be like "DUDE! sit down! dont clean my house!" but shes like "no, i WANT to" lolkittyinthedark said:I had an OCD roommate my first semester in the dorms. It was hell. Now, I'm not a dirty person, but I'm kinda messy, so I had to friggin restructure my life around her so she wouldn't harrass me all the time. She always had the television on, and was always watching the Disney channel (which gets fucking old after about two days). I could never watch anything I wanted to because she was always fucking watching some dumb bullshit. Then, EVERY night at 9:30, Everybody Loves Raymond would come on. I hate that show with the fire of a thousand suns. She would watch it, and then start getting ready for bed as the NEXT episode of it came on. (ARGH!!!). Then, at 10:15 during the commercial break, she would lock the door, turn off the lights, and get in bed, no matter what I was doing. Because of my class schedule and heavy homework load, sometimes I wouldn't have even had dinner at that point, which meant I had to eat my dinner and finish my homework in the dark, while the TV was on. She also never set the sleep timer, so I had to wait til she was all the way asleep to turn the TV off. She was so fuckin weird and obnoxious that the girls on my floor wouldn't come near even me just cuz I shared a room with her, so I made no fuckin friends. They would all go out all the time and a couple times I asked if I could go along - they said yes, but then they would sneak out without me. That's how bad this fuckin roommate was. I got the hell out of there at the end of the semester. Thank fuckin god.
i stay away from roomates tho, some of these stories....man, i woulda flipped out. i also keep very weird hours and most ppl wouldnt be able to deal with it.
I lived with this girl whose folks bought her a very very tiny house (2br/1ba). It was not a bad little place, and everything I had fit into one room. It wasn't a bad fit, but she obviously was a spoiled little rich girl who would leave dishes all over the place and not really think about anything other than herself. The breaking point was when her drunkass thug-life boyfriend (this is back in '95) broke into the apartment and puked on her bed before going to sleep in his own mess.
I've pretty much been roommate-free since then, other than the time I had to stay with a friend for a few months. Filthy. When you'd turn on the light to the kitchen at night, the black floor would scuttle away to show the dirty white linoleum underneath. I kept pretty much to myself in my own (clean) room. *shudder*
I've pretty much been roommate-free since then, other than the time I had to stay with a friend for a few months. Filthy. When you'd turn on the light to the kitchen at night, the black floor would scuttle away to show the dirty white linoleum underneath. I kept pretty much to myself in my own (clean) room. *shudder*
rashandreflex
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,966
i had a bizarre roommate my first year at boarding school. she was constantly having an identity crisis about what race she was (i swear she changedher mind every day...even now, six years later, her about me on facebook says she is 'east indian, italian, and greek and no one should call [her] a mexican.') she also claimed that no one could pronounce her name properly in the US, but she wouldn't even tell anyone how it was supposed to be pronounced. (by the way, she was from the bronx.) her mother called her every day at 7:30 pm even on saturdays, and if the girl wasn't there, her mother continued to call and call. she told so many lies, but i think she actually believed them in a weird way...she said she was going to be on WWF and told me she was practicing flips off my bed when i wasn't there. she got terrible grades but stubbornly insisted she was going to get straight As the next term (this was at a school where no one gets straight As.) she was always on a diet and was resolute that she was going to lose tons of weight, but she always ate nothing all day and the binged on my food at night. overall, though, she wasn't terrible to live with....we sort of became friends. now when i think about things she did i understand that most of them were probably her reaction to being suddenly surrounded by hundreds of wealthy, thin girls, and i regret that she didn't 'buck up' to the challenge bc i know she was smart and probably could've gotten a lot out of the school if she wasn't so wrapped up in proving herself to everyone in her own weird way.
MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
As an interesting follow up to my story, I just got a PM from a BLer of Chinese extraction (who will remain nameles) who found my story offensive. (S)he called me culturally insensitive, said that anyone who's spent any time in China or with the Chinese should have been able to anticipate (and been ready to accept) all the things about my roommate I complain about. "Yeah we're messy cooks and yeah we're money-minded. We like softer music. Got a problem with that don't live with one of us."
Sheesh, what vitriol! My instincts tell me NOT all Chinese are like I described.
Sheesh, what vitriol! My instincts tell me NOT all Chinese are like I described.
Psychedelic Gleam
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2004
- Messages
- 979
Roommate from hell:
Arrested on Kidnapping Charges
Threw up on self and floor and took days to clean it up.
Gets drunk and destroys shit.
Fights with police.
i could keep going....
Arrested on Kidnapping Charges
Threw up on self and floor and took days to clean it up.
Gets drunk and destroys shit.
Fights with police.
i could keep going....
snaggle
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2006
- Messages
- 82
I think a roomate from hell would have been in some ways better than the utterly boring cat I had to live with last year. This guy was just absolutely plain on every level. He had almost nothing in the way of social skills, and not only did he have no clue how to make friends, he was also successful at getting our entire floor (even the nerds next door who hung out with him) not to like him. I thought the funniest thing was how he believed his upper middle class ("I'm not rich!"), prep school, beach house background made him better than people. He actually looked down on kids who went to public school, and I'm pretty sure he secretly disdained my weed habit, though I usually kept it away from him.
We spoke very little to each other over the course of the year (and I'm a pretty sociable guy as anyone who knows me would attest) and I'm pretty sure that we will never speak to eachother again, ever. He wouldn't even say hi to me when I saw him on campus, so I'm certain he'll pretend not to see me next year. No big loss.
We spoke very little to each other over the course of the year (and I'm a pretty sociable guy as anyone who knows me would attest) and I'm pretty sure that we will never speak to eachother again, ever. He wouldn't even say hi to me when I saw him on campus, so I'm certain he'll pretend not to see me next year. No big loss.
DoubleTrouble
Bluelighter
THE WOOD said:
Hahaha I literally laughed out loud at this!
