一個人 Alone

I like living alone.  It's pretty cool to be able to watch movies at any time of the day or night and play obnoxious music without headphones.  And don't forget that I can't make kimchi pancakes without anyone complaining about the smell (*cough* brother *cough cough*).  Yes, considerable perks.

While I left the Shoebox Flat and moved in with some roommates, I am currently alone. One roommate is on a summer project so barely at our flat. The other decided that living with a husband would be more fun than living with roommates so went ahead and got married a few weeks ago (I was the flower girl; another post for another time). So now while I await the arrival of our new roommate, I'm once again living alone. As I've said many, many times in my three years in my shoebox, ngo5 jat1 go3 jan1 zyu6, 我一個人住.

I'm enjoying all the perks again (at the moment the couch is strewn with my books and my computer has started living on the dining table), but I'm also reminded of the downsides.

When tragedy strikes, it's not so fun to be the only one there to figure out what to do.

For instance, flooding.  I'd only been living in my studio for a short time when the flooding started.  Around two times a day (at random times), water would come up out of the floor drains in my bathroom and kitchen, turning both rooms into little lakes.  Eventually they'd drain back down again, but I lived in fear of the water spilling over the door ledge and invading the rest of my room.

One day, work was very tiring.  I wanted to just pick something up to eat but I convinced myself that no, I should save money and cook at home.  I gathered the ingredients, fired up my portable cooker, and started stir-frying something.  I had just gotten a new bottle of soy sauce, and tried to open it to add some flavor to my stir fry, when I realized that it had a beer bottle lid.  Say what?  What kind of soy sauce bottle has a beer bottle lid?  I didn't have a bottle opener, so I just set it to the side while I continued cooking.  Then.

I turned to get something else, and my elbow caught the bottle, sending it crashing to the ground where it shattered into a million tiny pieces (is this phrase copyright infringement?).  I only had a second to take in the terrible scene of soy-sauce soaked shards of glass because my food was starting to burn.  I turned my attention to cooking, trying to keep my feet away from the glass, when I felt something wet on my right foot.  At first I thought it was just a splatter of soy, but it began growing.  I glanced down from my food to see that the flooding had started again. 哎呀

I stood there for a minute, not even sure what to do.  The water was inching closer and closer to the glass.  Then I remembered that workmen were coming the next day to work on the pipes.  How could they work in the midst of submerged glass shards?  I had to do something.  Abandoning my food to its fate, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and tried to soak up most of the soy sauce and then pick up the bigger pieces of glass.  I was able to get most of the pieces, but there was still a sprinkling of shiny shards covering the kitchen floor.

Then, a memory popped into my head. Back in my Arkansas days when I was living at the Checkerboard Flat, my roommates and I were hosting a Chinese New Year party. Shortly before the guests were to arrive, one of our clocks decided to take a dive and shatter all over the ground. What to do? We were a pretty strict no-shoes house, but what if we missed a tiny shard? We didn't want our guests taking home embedded glass in their feet as a souvenir.

Then one of my roommates whipped out a bag of bread. Like magic, as she pressed the bread into the floor, even the tiniest glass bits were sucked up. Genius! The party was saved!

Following the Checkerboard Roommate's lead, I booked it down to 7-11 to buy some foot-saving bread. I'm pretty sure that was the only time I ever bought bread in that flat. It worked its wonders again, and my floor was shard-free by time the lake appeared my kitchen again.

This time that I'm alone I haven't had to deal with any flooding, thankfully. On the not so happy side, I'm now dealing with rain. Yes, inside. In my bathroom. The rain has been going for about two weeks now. My landlord has been called, the upstairs landlord cannot be contacted, and the management company is being informed.

I guess if I'm looking on the bright side, the water doesn't smell....suspicious. So that's good. But I'm guessing this problem can't be solved with bread. I'll save that for toast.