There's no place like home

One of the (many) perks of my job is that my work provides teachers a house to live in. It's a big house with 7 rooms, shared with other teachers. It's a nice house in a great location and overall living here has been a great experience. In the three years I've lived here, I've had 16 different housemates. Despite the many changes to the house, mostly it has worked really well.

The (incomplete) "people who have lived here" wall

In our house we also have a housekeeper/maid. Her name is Parmi and she's a really nice lady with an interesting background. Parmi only went to school for a year. She dropped out of school when she was 9 and was forced to marry a 14 year old boy. Her first husband divorced her because she couldn't carry children (which seems obvious to me seeming she was still a child). She went on to marry (and divorce) two more times. Later, she moved from Cepu, a village in Central Java to Surabaya.

She has a few interesting habits. Firstly, she seems to speak her own language. I guess it's a mix of her village's local dialect, Surabaya language and a sprinkling of Indonesian. Basically no one can understand her but that doesn't stop her. I've never seen anybody with such an amazing ability to speak to someone who has no idea what she's saying but she has long conversations with us everyday. Parmi's favorite pastime is cooking and the food she cooks STINKS! The smell of her cooking is one smell I can never wipe from my memories. I guess it's the smell of home. Her other hobby is watching super dodgy gossip shows (the ones that get their exclusive inside scoop from the celebrity's girlfriend's neighbor) and she enjoys reporting back on what the celebs are up to. It's always interesting to know what celebrities you've never heard of are doing! As well as celebrity gossip, she certainly does keep track of the comings and goings in the house. Everyday when I arrive home from work she tells me if I'm first, second or third to arrive. In the past, she had another favorite pastime which was terrorising our cat Raka whose name she never got right and instead she called "Rangka". There's a couple of meanings of the word rangka in Indonesian. It can mean skeleton or bones but that doesn't seem to fit such a fat cat. I always thought of the other meaning of rangka (frame or framework) so when I heard her talking, I heard this: "Hey Framework! Eat your food, Framework! Go to sleep, Framework". Our new cat isn't afraid of her yet.

Parmi and "Rangka"

But when Parmi's not up to her usual shenanigans, she finds time to do some unusual things. For example, not long after Joy moved in to the house, Parmi found a small bat that Raka had killed and put it on our kitchen bench. Yes, the same kitchen bench that we use to prepare food became a dead bat's home! Another time Ashley came out of one of the downstairs bathrooms holding a dress. "Whose is this?" he asked Joy and I. It was neither of ours. That dress migrated around the house a lot until we realised Parmi was using it as a mat for some reason. We had so many legitimate mats in the house already so I'm not sure why we needed it. That dress lasted a long time.

Overall though, she is a nice person who means well. I am grateful to have someone helping with the housework as I would really hate to wash the floors myself.

our living room- 2013

Overall, I have been blessed with high-quality housemates but unfortunately not everyone is going to fit in. There's been a few that haven't really adjusted to our house (to be fair this life isn't for everyone and that's okay). 

One of the difficult ones to deal with was Stinky Steve. He actually seemed really nice at the start so I was happy when he moved into my house. Actually, he wasn't so bad overall but he was a bit of a hobo and he hadn't seemed to have discovered deodorant. Some nights he would stand in front of a fan in the living room and it'd blow his odor straight into us. One day I ran into Stinky Steve at a cafe near my house and he asked me for a ride back on my motorbike, at the time I wasn't confident enough to ride with someone else on the back of my bike, so I asked him to drive. On the way home, the air blew his stench straight back into me and he was trying to make conversation with me but I couldn't even breathe. 

He was a bit of a dick when he was drunk unfortunately. One night he decided after a few beers that he'd listen to music blaring from his room while he was downstairs despite the fact that we were trying to watch TV downstairs. When asked to turn down the music or close his door, he refused causing drama (our house doesn't get a lot of drama so that really felt like drama). Two years ago at Christmas we did secret Santa in the house. He got me and bought the laziest present (a few bottles of Bintang beer which he gave to me in January) and them complained about the actual nice present he was given (a funny T-shirt). 

Eventually, Stinky Steve left the country (without even saying goodbye!) and then we were faced with the task of getting the stench out of his room before our friend Jules was supposed to move in. We left the door open, the air conditioner on, we sprayed stuff in there and even tried leaving plates of instant coffee in the room to absorb the scent but I'm pretty sure when Jules moved in it still stank like Steve's stinky ghost was haunting our house. Sorry Jules!

Several months ago an American guy moved in and that was the worse. Let's call him James. He arrived on a Saturday night. I let him into the front gate and he seemed to be all over the place. Immediately, he was yelling at the guy who picked him up from the airport. I tried to introduce myself but he was too busy going through his things, wandering around and making a cup of tea to even say hello. Finally he took a seat on our sofa and chatted to people for a bit. Right before he sat down the living room fan had blown an empty french fries packet onto the floor (I'd just had dinner). "Oh this is like a frat house!" he said looking at the one piece of rubbish on the floor. All I could do was exchange awkward glances with my other housemates. James had arrived a week before my birthday party and I invited him to the party, telling him it would be a good chance to meet a lot of people. He responded by asking when I thought the party would be over so that he could make sure he was out of the house for the full time. I guess he didn't even want to try.

He didn't seem to really fit in naturally as every morning seemed to be a struggle to get a taxi, with a lot of yelling at taxi drivers (in one case from outside my bedroom at 7AM). Despite this he complained about my housemates being loud on a Saturday night (seriously it's only ever loud here on Saturday nights despite the amount of people living in the house). Once he came with us to the swimming pool. As we were getting a taxi home he loudly said to the taxi driver at the start: "Do you have the right change? Because we aren't giving you even 1,000 rupiah more than what the meter says, okay?" which was really embarrassing for us (especially considering 1,000 rupiah is 10 cents and no one cares). As well as that he left food around the house, left the gas on, used up other people's coffee, cooking oil and strawberries without ever asking. He walked in on people in the bathroom (when the door was closed) on more than one instance and never apologised, accused Parmi of taking his food when he'd just forgotten where he left it and asked the same questions over and over again. 

And even worse than that I had to work with the guy as well. There, he did some interesting things such as tucking his socks into his work pants, leaving stinky fish on his desk all day which made the teacher's room uninhabitable and using the one computer in the teachers room (provided for the 10 or so teachers there) for at least 3 hours a day. Having to live with him and work with him was pretty much the most annoying thing ever. I was aware fairly quickly that eventually I'd lose my patience with him (understandable considering the fact he was around ALL the time). For two months I remained patient and then finally one day I'd had enough and explained that the computer in the teacher's room was supposed to be shared between all the teachers. I feel like I said it nicely enough despite my frustration but he didn't take it well. He told me I had a bad attitude and then went on to not speak to me or make eye contact with me for 2 weeks which was extremely awkward seeming we worked and lived in the same place.

But he left our "frat house" 3 weeks ago and I'm very relieved. I'm back to sharing my house with chilled out people. Things are nice once again. I'm grateful for the fact that the majority of memories in the place I call home have been pleasant ones. So, I'd like to end this post with a few pictures of some good/ interesting memories in this house:

Dancing in the rain, Christmas 2014 

Random street cat comes in and eats Raka's food. Poor Raka has no idea what to do.

The time when Gunung Kelud near Kediri erupted and we woke up to "Indonesian snow" (volcanic ash) all over our front yard.

Parking motorbikes in your house should be considered ridiculous enough but the best part of this picture is the mirror selfie happening right there (if you look closely enough).

(By the way guys, just want to talk a moment to apologise for the lack of action on this blog. The end of last year was rough and I just couldn't do it. But, I'm in a much better state of mind now and hope I can continue to write. Thanks for the support!)