Playing Doctor

Blacker than the blackest black times infinity

Like many fellow students I find it is necessary to have a cup of blackened blood first thing in the morning, otherwise it is difficult to function. How else could you awaken from a thousand deaths? This is nothing new of course.

However, my new flatmate recently back from eastern Europe has a habit of speaking a lot all the time, even in the morning. My new flatmate talks too much in the morning. She talks to (at) me too much in the morning. It's too much. In the morning. Just let me have some of that Duncan Hills blend.

High turnover

A new flatmate moved in last Wednesday. She also brought a brand new fridge! I had to help with moving all her stuff (plus fridge) up three flights of stairs. Her dad came along so he pitched in too. It was alright in the end, but it was a bit of hard work.

She is a jazz singer as I understand it. It is good to have a bit of diversity in the house. Everything seems fine at the moment. I'm curious to see how things progress. The first hurdle may be the property agent when we try to get her name on the lease. The agent hasn't been very forthcoming about the new lease at all though.

The whole flat went out to dinner last night to the Greek place. It's pretty good value there. We ate heaps. I was so stuffed. The conversation was OK. We found out the the new flatmate doesn't like feta or olives! Interesting since she said she was really used to Greek food and liked it.

Everything seems to be going fine. I hope it stays this way.

Welcome to 19th century

The fridge is broken. Yesterday morning it was not cold. A repairman arrived today and after ten minutes of tweaking established that it should now be working, on the basis that cold air was flowing into the fridge. Some twelve hours later the fridge is still not cold. We'll be phoning that technician back. Especially since ten minutes of his time cost $50.

If someone had asked me last week how annoying I would find a non-functional fridge, I would have said that it would be somewhat annoying. Now with this new experience I feel that this is verging on intolerable. I had not considered how used I am to convenient refrigeration.

I found myself looking up the inventors of refrigeration via the intertubes. I have always been under the impression that it was made possible by a couple of New Zealanders. Australians will probably say that it was invented by an Australian. The infallible wikipedia suggests an American name Alexander Twining. None of those are really satisfactory answers. The History Channel doesn't mention commercial refridgeration in any great depth but discusses the introduction of domestic refrigeration in the 1910s. There don't seem to be a lot of straight answers about this somewhat critical invention.

Hard target

A flatmate and I have spent the last week looking for a new tenant. The med student is moving out to the rural program for this year's study. We need a replacement. It's been interesting. At least at this time of year when the university semester is starting the quality of person you find seems to be higher than around November when you get more unusual personalities turning up to your house.

Some how I was in charge of the process. List ad, receive emails, organise interviews, repeat. I found the interviewing to be pretty good for the most part. However my flatmate said she really disliked it. She got noticeably snappy too, but never during an interview. She said she might be missing the flatmate moving out a bit already. I'm not so sure. There is no doubt that the med student was a good flatmate though.

Why do I like the interviewing process? I guess it's meeting new people. Trying to have an interesting discussion with a total stranger. It must be the people that make it interesting. Could it be the thrill of the hunt?

This time around it was different from the previous interviewing processes in that the first two people that we had on our 'yes' list had found another place already and decided that they didn't want to move in, respectively. Usually accommodation in this town is pretty tight and people will just take what they are offered.

In the end we got a student at the ANU who studies singing. It's great to have a distinctly different individual move in. She is Australian, and I was hoping for a nationality that doesn't already live here, but I guess it will be easier to fit in this way. Overall I am happy about it.

Real estate agents vs the Modern Lepers

I have to negotiate a new lease with the real estate agents managing our property Saturday morning. Historically this situation has been a total bastard. I'm hoping that the current property manager will be cool with things. The problem is the lease expires when I am in Russia. The worst would probably be having a month to month lease for a period. It seems unlikely that we would be thrown into the street, but not impossible. It is likely that our needs as tenants will not be high on list of considerations, the lepers of society, the renting class, the bottom of the food chain.

12/08 06 UPDATE: All documents submitted (met new property manager for the first time). No verdict on lease extension until property owner confirms. May occur while I'm overseas. I can sign when I get back.

Nice sometimes

It's nice sometimes when a flatmate cooks dinner for everyone and we all get to sit around and talk like a house for a while. Usually we are all so busy with our own stuff that we don't see each other much. A glass of wine some good winter food and a bit of conversation can be just the thing to lift the spirits.

It was good then when a week ago my Med Student flatmate cooked dinner for everyone. Not so good that I forgot, but I received a reminder text and found it convenient to leave the lab immediately at that point :)

Return of the Dero Woman

A message was left on my phone during kung fu training last night. It was the Dero Woman. The one with my ex-flatmate's stuff.

She had phoned earlier in the day about returning another item on the list, featured on the poster we put up. I said that I would have to get in touch with my flatmate regarding details of payment etc. She said fine. I was given a number to phone her back on. After talking to my ex-flatmate I tried to phone the human refuse back. The number was wrong or non-existent. Great. Time for some training then.

The message that I received during training, on my answering service said pretty much that she was tired of waiting for me to phone back, and if I didn't then she wouldn't bother returning the stuff. I was tired and hungry, and this really enraged me. This trash had my flatmate's stuff, knew where to return it (from the last time) and was perfectly able to return it, but was unwilling to do so unless paid. That made me very angry. I decided to put of dealing with it until the next day.

Turns out she phoned me before I could phone her. I'd been up all of ten minutes when my phone rang and she was at me about exchanging the goods for more reward. She wanted $100, I said $50. Done. In half an hour? ok. Good I'll still get to work to get on with a busy day. I forgot this rubbish was unable to stick to a schedule, half an hour became nearly two hours.

Eventually she turned up and I met her face to face for the first time. I had expected an unkempt smelly white woman, but she was neatly presented (if in somewhat cheap clothing that loudly declared itself to be so) and of some ethnicity that I couldn't place. Her partner was also in their blue 80's V6 Holden. He was a slightly pudgy white bogan type guy with long hair and a beard. There was a dog in the back. They presented the stereo. It looked like the right thing. I gave them $50, they said something about having to go to a lot of trouble to get the thing, and then they were on their way.

Glad that is over. I never want to hear from them again. Curiously, I found it much harder to be angry at this woman after meeting her in real life. Is it because she now seems more like a real person and not just some fabrication from the way she sounded on the phone and my own prejudices?

No more boxes please

I headed home for the appointed time. I arrived early. I thought I would take down the poster that we had left on the complex security door window. I could then ensure a bit more leverage when discussing the reward. I didn't know how much my flatmate's money would get, so bargaining of some sort seemed like the best thing. It did irritate me that I would be bargaining for what should already belong to my flatmate without payment.

I organised $150 on my person so I could pull out $50 without showing that I had another $100 around. My flatmate and office mate had suggested taking a weapon of some sort to the meeting, for personal protection. I couldn't tell if they were joking or not. I didn't take one.

I waited. Then I waited some more. I got in touch with my flatmate to say that things were looking a bit grim, but that I would stay on. Some more time passed. Then I waited again. There was no contact on my mobile. My mobile hadn't caller IDed this woman either. In the end I waited for 50 minutes. No luck. I contacted my flatmate letting her know that things were looking grim. We discussed the weirdness of it, that money was promised and all she had to do was turn up. It was left like that.

I headed off to a social occassion at Uni House wondering what could have happened to that woman. Then around eight thirty, the originally preferred time, I get a phone call from my newest flatmate saying this woman had turned up at the complex and was asking about things. I said to take $50 for whatever she had, and a list of the books that my flatmate was missing.

It turns out that she did have the right stuff. It was in the same box it was suppossed to be shipped to Melbourne in, but had been unpacked. The 'dero woman' as she became known among the house also enquired about what other stuff was missing (sadly no photos, fan or stereo were returned). When a stereo was mentioned, the woman asked what brand was missing. It couldn't have sounded more dodgy. Perhaps she ran a 2nd hand store or a pawn shop or something, you know, instead of stealing stuff to buy drugs.

Nothing more has come of it. My ex-flatmate is glad to have her books back. We'll be sending them down soon. I guess we should look into making a police report about it, perhaps the Po Po could pay this woman a visit. Mind you there are probably many that fit her description around the area. Glad to not have to think about it anymore really.

Missing boxes

Just recieved a phone call from a very sketchy sounding woman on my cell phone regarding the reward we posted for some boxes that went missing when we were helping an American now ex-flatmate move down to Melbourne.

She said meeting up any time would be good. I suggested eight o'clock, and she said that would be a bit late, then I asked about five o'clock and she said it would still be a bit late, that she had a lot of things to do. So then I said what about in half an hour, at four o'clock. Yes, that would be good. Then she phoned back in ten minutes saying that later, five thirty would be better.

It took several phone calls to arrange all of that. It wasn't helped by the fact that her phone would hang up every 15-30 seconds. She would dial back in about 5 minutes after each interruption. She sounded really nasty on the phone: A strong accent and poorly constructed sentences. She had an Australian accent.

I'm going to meet her outside my apartment complex in an hour to inspect the 'found' objects. I guess I am a bit suspicious about the whole thing. Why so long after the incident? Where could the boxes have been? Is $100 AUD reward enough for another hit of heroin? It is hard not to feel some amount of prejudice.

I will have to be sensible when I meet her so things don't get weird. I hope she doesn't come with a friend that might result in intimidation. My personal safety is a bit of an issue but at 5:30 some people will probably be coming home to the apartments so I should be relatively safe.

Zai Jian

My Chinese ex-flatmate moved back the PRC on a permanent basis last Sunday. She was on the bus for Sydney the day before though. I gathered for lunch with her and two of her friends at 1pm, an hour before her departure that day. We ate at this Italian place, that is run by Italians, and it seems that they make everything themselves there. It's simple but good. Gnocchi, spaghetti, pizza and foccacia were ordered. Everyone was satisfied.

It was sort of weird saying bye. She went to Sydney fairly regularly to visit friends, relatives, get haircuts and eat 'real' Chinese food. Always declaring how bad Canberra was on returning. She wasn't coming back this time. I got one of her friends to take a photo with my camera before she got on the bus.

In practical terms it means that we don't have someone sleeping on our lounge room floor at the apartment anymore, and less stuff taking up space there too.

It's feels like something is missing there now.