It was fun while it lasted – having the entire 2-bedroom apartment to ourselves after the Budak Busuk left. Two weeks ago, a new “Budak” moved in, a 23-year old Swede. I won’t mention his name except that it sounds like “swollen” when pronounced. Ben was having one of his sleepless nights when Budak moved in at 3-something one morning. So Ben sat him down to tell him the house rules, then showed him around the kitchen, pointing out what was ours and what belonged to the apartment that he could use. The next day I met Budak and showed him where the bus pick-up/drop off point was so he could take the shuttle to the “White House” (Jumeirah’s HR office). Ben’s colleague Paulina was at the bus stop waiting for the same bus so I introduced Budak to her and asked her to show him where to drop off when they took the bus later.
That night, Ben said Paulina was all dreamy-eyed when he met her and she gushed about how “handsome” our new housemate was. Budak isn’t the blonde and ‘pucat’ type of person you would picture when you think “Swede”, but a tall, dark-haired, well-built guy, with chiselled features and hazel eyes.
Within one day of Budak moving in, he managed to find time to send an email to his HR to complain that he wanted to move to Gardens cos he has to take two shuttle buses and it takes him an hour to get to work at Emirates Towers, and also that he didn’t want to live with us cos he was promised a place of his own. Like ya, get in line, buddy! Most people have to wait at least 3 months before HR finds them a “better” accommodation.
A few weeks back Ben n I viewed a one-bedroom apartment at Acacia Court, which is along Sheikh Zayed Road, next to Novotel and Emirates Towers. It has a really great location cos it’s about 15 minutes away from Burj Al Arab, the city, Deira, etc. Unfortunately, it was a really old apartment, with its kitchen cabinets falling apart, the sofa yellowish-brown with dirt or sweat or something really gross, and the bathtub had yucky brown glue all over, covering big cracks. It looked like someone had painted the cracks with gula melaka. What was worse was the smell in this fully carpeted apartment. The guy who showed us the place said the carpet could not be removed cos it was glued down. It’s a pity HR couldn’t bother to refurbish the place cos it seemed like a nice and cosy room.
Then two weeks ago, Ben was shown another place at Jumeirah Village, which is within walking distance from Burj Al Arab. This time, it was a studio, as tiny as our current living room, with one single bed. Ben was so fed up that these idiots wasted his time, what with the Accomodation Director herself saying that they usually don’t “pull strings” to offer places like these to staff, blah blah blah.
So I asked Ben if he’d rather moved to a cramp and crappy place for the sake of convenient location and privacy, or just finally settle in happily in our spacious, clean and quiet apartment here at Ewan, and hopefully get along with this new guy. I mean, Ben’s been here at Ewan for almost 5 months, and me 3 months, and we’ve gotten used to it. And even if we do finally get a one-bedroom apartment at Gardens (Ben’s like number 20-something on the waiting list), apartment blocks are much bigger at Gardens, meaning there are a lot more people living on each floor, so it’s not peaceful like it is here. So we decided to stay put and have been really nice to Budak too.
The plants and shrubs around Ewan Residence are thriving now that summer is over, so the place looks much greener, less barren and concrete-like.
And after taking these pictures at Ewan and Gardens, I just realised that Gardens doesn’t have any greenery… no trees, no shrubs and flowering plants, just a patch of grass… no gardens.
So Ben n I are happy, and Budak seems happy too and we’ve been getting along fine. But he still wants to move to somewhere closer to work cos he says the long bus ride gives him a headache. The idiot keeps reading the bus timetable wrongly and ends up waiting for the bus when there isn’t a scheduled bus, then has to wait an hour or two for the next one. So on Sunday, Budak waits for the bus to Gardens at 11.45am. But the schedule clearly shows: 7.45am, 9.45am, 12.45pm, 1.45pm... This is the third time he’s read the schedule wrongly. It’s not like they change it everyday, it’s a set schedule, I know it by heart, and even know which one my favourite driver works so that he can drop me off at the Mall.
Now I know why we’re taught to read time the way we’re taught… not the stylo-milo angmoh way. 12.45 is twelve forty five, not quarter to one. 4.15 is four fifteen, not quarter past four. So when you see 12.45, you know it’s within the hour “twelve”, no dumbass way of getting it wrong, right? But when you use quarter to, quarter past, ten to, five past… what happens? You screw up. Cos if you read 12.45, your eyes tell your brain 12. Then when you’re not looking at the schedule, the number 12 comes to mind, and you think quarter to twelve.
And so, Budak comes back to the apartment all pissed of that there’s no bus, and instead of kicking himself for being so stupid, he calls HR to complain again about how inconvenient it is for him to get to work from Ewan. Now instead of telling them, “I’m angry cos I’m a dumbass and I dunno how to read time so please provide me lodging in the bus so that I won’t miss it”, he complains to HR about us, thinking it will expedite his move. He tells them that he’s not “comfortable” living with a married couple cos we need our privacy and he needs his privacy and whatever. So today some imbecile from HR tells Ben that we have to move out once they find us another place, whether it’s crappy or not, whether we like it OR NOT. Cos HR now thinks Ben n I are the problem since both Budak Baru and Budak Busuk complained about living with us. Budak Busuk said the same shit about how he’s not comfortable living with a married couple, AND, that our KIDS were noisy! And of course the people at HR are so lazy and stupid that they don’t care about whatever crap you say, they just wanna wash any problems off their hands.
The super bodoh thing about how they work is that they just “postpone” the problem until some sort of “deadline”. Like they knew by end-May that Ben would be arriving in mid-June, and that he is entitled to a one-bedroom apartment. But they just put him up in a two-bedroom one that he has to share with someone else. Then when he requests for a one-bedroom apartment in Gardens, they put him on the waiting list, and a month ago they say he’s still 27 on the list which is plain bullshit. And when there was the big hooha about Budak Busuk, they shoved the ratty Acacia Court and Jumeirah Village studio our way, thinking Ben would be desperate enough to take the place and settle our accommodation problem that they started in the first place.
So since Ben has rejected two places, and Budak has complained about not wanting to stay with us, they’re saying WE have to move out. Instead of moving Budak out when he’s the one who wants to go, these bloody bodoh memang takde otak people must be thinking, “This Benjamin Lim’s problem is reaching our 6 month deadline, must quickly settle. The Swedish fella’s problem is only two weeks old, can postpone for another 5 months. Insya-Allah they’ll give up complaining then we have more time to sip coffee and compare tudung styles.”
At first I convinced Ben not to get angry with Budak cos if we were in his shoes, we’d feel lousy too, about being promised a place of his own then arriving here to find out he has to share an apartment with someone else. I told Ben that if he wanted to be pissed off, he should be pissed off with the idiots at HR. He had a huge argument with the HR imbecile and when he realised the “discussion” was getting nowhere and that all they wanted was to get us out of Ewan, he told her, “You’re penalising me for being married?! I don’t know how the #@%* you do things in this country or this company, but from where I come from, we have proper values and we believe in strong family values. Now I know I’ve joined the wrong company.”
And NOW, now I dunno what to say about Budak. What’s up with these budaks complaining about “sharing an apartment with a married couple”? It’s not like Ben and I are all mushy lovey dovey and grossing them out. I hardly even see Ben. I probably see Budak more often than I see Ben. And when Budak’s already asleep when Ben comes home at 1 or 2 plus in the morning, we eat quietly in front of the TV, with the TV volume so low we can hardly hear what’s going on, while we whisper about how our day went. And we don’t even impose Ben’s OCD clean n neat rules on him. He’s not messy, but I know Ben likes the place clean and in order so I sweep the floor every day and mop it every 3 or 4 days, arrange the cushions, and shoes, and anything else in the neat-freakish way Ben likes them. So it’s not just Ben who comes home to a clean and neat home, Budak gets to enjoy it too, without having to lift a finger or touch the mop.
In fact, since Budak moved in, I hardly even fry stuff cos I figured these Europeans might not be used to the smell of Chinese/Malay food, so even if I cook rendang or something, I try to cook it earlier so that the air is cleared by the time Budak comes home, and when Ben’s on his way home then I re-heat the food or leave it in the oven for a while. The reason why I’ve been trying so hard to get Budak to like us is so that he stays put, and we all can live here happily without moving out. Cos if he moves out, we’d have to worry again about who’s gonna be the next craphead moving in. So now if we’re forced to move out first, I hope Budak gets a taste of what it’s like to live with people other than this “married couple”. Try living with Budak Busuk or one of his other smelly friends. Try living with the lifeguards who party all day and night, or just someone really lazy and dirty. (BTW, Budak showers before work but doesn’t when he comes home after a full day at work. Perhaps in angmoh-land it’s too cold to take a bath at night, but this is Dubai man, all 40-plus degrees of sun, sand and more sand)
I remember back when I was renting an apartment at Pasir Ris Block 210 with Shan, Cherie and some other girls. I got along well with the landlord but when we moved out, he turned against me and said I betrayed his trust. Because of money. He wanted us to pay for polishing of the parquet floors, for re-painting the bandung pink walls, for a new gate lock that was already rosak… He was like “Why Bernie? Why?!! I treated you like family tau…” Of course it didn’t help that Shan’s ex threatened to call the police when the landlord said he wasn’t going to return the deposit, and there was a lot of shouting between those two outside the flat while the kaypoh neighbours suddenly decided to take time to smell the roses. Very drama. Sungguh tra-ge-di... Maybe I should try my Sandiwara skills with Budak huh. Why Budak, why?
No comments:
Post a Comment