Tell me about your bad flatmates. Here's mine, let's call him "Ron":
Before I begin, I should mention that I was warned by Ron's former flatmates that he'd be a handful this year. Though, Ron himself said he was more afraid of me than his former flatmates so he'd pull his weight.
The Good:
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The Bad:
-Leaves drawers / cupboards open after retrieving foodstuffs. For fuck's sake, it takes so little effort to close them.
-Leaves food wrappers on the worktop after removing food. The bin is less than a metre away.
-Hoards tons of shit, so has turned the living room into a second bedroom because his room is so messy/small.
-Uses my crockery despite me telling him not to, he doesn't know where he keeps his own shit so uses other people's.
-Has meetings with his musical society in the flat. After a long day I seriously don't want to hear this shit.
The Ugly:
-You cannot confront him as he'll get upset. Last year he woke me up in the middle of the night and it was pretty awkward after I complained. I did chuck his shit about. -Massive hypocrite. Claims to be a "good christian boy" and no sex before marriage, yet has no problem giving and receiving oral sex. You can't exclaim "Jesus Christ!" in his presence because it is taking the lord's name in vain. Pick and choose your beliefs! Also thinks all atheists are fucktards. -Promises to clean up the massive stack of his own dishes but gets "too tired" from watching TV shows or playing musical instruments to do it that night. Does it a few nights later.
-Wants to be congratulated on doing his dishes and sorting out the closet which was mostly his stuff. Shouted at me for saying I wanted to keep 3 bags in the closet because he had a hard day.
-Used to join in on the mockery of my former flatmate for not cleaning up his dishes and now has become the same as him.
-Let his subtenant move in the day we were moving out. Made a stressful day worse/more awkward.
Honestly, it feels like I'm turning into his mother telling him to pick up after himself and I don't like it. A friend says he is the way he is because he had a nanny when he was young to do everything for him. Also he had someone clean his flat for him last year for £10 a week.
>>18778 >>18769 It is tragic that you are unwilling to reject the values of patriarchal whiteness. Until you do so you are as bad as any privileged white man. In fact, you are worse since you are lending credibility to the privileged white men who are, in this very thread, doing their best to erase the polystratal oppression endured daily by Women of Colour.
I realise that you weren't being entirely serious, but still the British misconception that methamphetamine is primarily used by gay men does baffle the bejesus out of me.
This has been an entertaining recreation of the exact conversations I avoided in a shared kitchen, just without Venus Project and/or Illuminati shite.
How do people come to believe in such shit anyway? Being young and a woman seems to tip the balance.
Okay so my housemate literally deserves no respect.
-Believes that washing up before things get mouldy isn't really necessary and always says 'washing up? I'll do it later, I really need to catch up on tv'
-When he runs out of plates, pans, cutlery, etc to use because he won't wash up, he starts to use other people's
-One time we found 20 (twenty) plates of mould under his bed
-Won't eat vegetables or fruit regularly so is always ill in some way with an annoying cough
-Doesn't listen to music that much, but for some reason has to have it really loud in the shower despite repeated requests to keep it down
-Generally smells and so does his room
-Gets bored frequently so follows people round like a lost dog
-Can't understand the concept of turning lights off. This one really pisses me off. Leaves a trail of lights gonig up to bed. I get out of bed to turn them off, he will go for a piss then leave them on again
-Is just annoying as fuck
-When he does cook (and not order shit food), he will make sure we know about it by getting it just about everywhere all over the kitchen
-Pisses on teh seat
Fuck, I could go on, it's not even therapeutic, it just winds me up. They warned me about befriending and living with hard science students, but I thought that was a bad stereotype. After all, how different could they be from the rest of us?
>>18789 I don't think it's fair to equate the Venus Project and conspiracy worldviews in the way you have. The Venus Project is a vision of a future economy and civilisation, not a paranoid reinterpretation of existing reality. It may also be somewhat fantastical, but so are a lot of things that you'd not think to mention.
>>18794 >It may also be somewhat fantastical, but so are a lot of things that you'd not think to mention.
This. Much of our current reality would seem fantastical even in the latter half of the last century. If you told someone in 1975 about having a fridge magnet that could order groceries for you they'd think you were having a laugh.
>>18789 >How do people come to believe in such shit anyway?
It's not that hard to understand. I'm sure there are lots of contributing factors and reasons but off the top of my head, they're being sold on a worldview that paints them as martyrs, justified rebels against a monolithic enemy in very black and white terms. The convoluted logic is quite strong, but given the former reason, why would they question it? It's in their interest not to.
>>18796 People have gone 'haha SJW shite' several times in this thread, without giving a decent reason why it is actually shite. The argument I was making about oppressed minorities needing spaces to themselves (before some hilARious card started trolling using the SJW lexicon) is morally sound and simple to understand. Stop whinging for Christ's sake.
>>18797 I'm a bit confused. No-one has suggested preventing oppressed minorities from having safe places to talk except you. What we're talking about is people (whose statuses as minorities and oppressed is highly dubious) refusing to acknowledge any argument, no matter how fair or logical, if they don't like it, then decrying them as bigots, or worse.
>>18802 There are a lot of you, who knows. A lot of you might honestly believe that your actions are contributing to the establishment of a utopian love-in; they are not.
>>18797 >he argument I was making about oppressed minorities needing spaces to themselves (before some hilARious card started trolling using the SJW lexicon) is morally sound and simple to understand.
However the means by which you think that should happen is so heavily flawed it merely perpetuates that which you claim to be fighting in the first place. Nobody has said minorities or what have you shouldn't have a right to have a say, the only person who disputes anyone's right to have a say is you, who persistently insist that only people who adhere to your particular beliefs should be allowed to speak. You'd rightly have issues with a white pride march where blacks were treated poorly, but apparently were it the reverse you'd perfectly happy with it, because of your perception of who's oppressed and who isn't. Neither is right, it seems you only support divisive and suppressive means of achieving any given goal, which is fundamentally at odds with what you claim to be trying to achieve.
>>18803 Precisely my line any my reading of this thread, but as I mentioned, it doesn't help when a flatmate keeps banging on about the Illuminati conspiracy almost out of the blue. It's just that coming out with things like that can genuinely damage the credibility of what someone (like my flatmate) actually says on other occasions re: politics and society.
- Makes a curry every night, but only cleans up every other night.
- Has low standards regarding how clean dishes should be.
- Chucks food all over the kitchen when making said curries, making the kitchen permanently smell like curry.
- Gets drunk every night. Always tries to get me to be drunk with him so he doesn't feel so alone.
- Walks up the stairs like an elephant at three in the morning, every night.
- Constantly tries to extract attention and validation from those around him.
- Doesn't respect other peoples property - breaks it and then lies about it when asked about what happened.
- Always has to be right about everything.
- Thinks that you have to leave food for a couple of minutes after it comes out the microwave "to let the radiation escape".
- Is giving me a bad impression about Indians, and making me seriously consider voting UKIP so that we have fewer of his kind in this country.
I think generally smell touches a 'deeper' part of your mind. Smell is, I think, directly connected to memory and smells have the ability to directly affect our emotions. The same events but with bland foods would probably give a different result.
For me, the smell of curry is the final barrier of racism.
>>19006 >Thinks that you have to leave food for a couple of minutes after it comes out the microwave "to let the radiation escape".
Well, you are supposed to leave food for a minute or two to let it cook through. Hot things also emit a lot more EM radiation* than cold, so he's not wrong on that either.
*radiation, not to be confused with ionising radiation - the stuff that kills you and has nothing whatsoever to do with the microwave band.
>>19011 I know what you mean about the smell of curry. I recently had to do some work that involved visiting some of the local Neps, absolutely lovely people but the smell of curry just hits you round the face as soon as you walk in.
Humans are fairly unusual amongst mammals in having a relatively weak sense of smell, but it is still a crucial evolutionary trait. The sense of smell evolved relatively early, and our olfactory processing system is wired directly to the most primeval, instinctive parts of our brain. Smells bypass conscious thought, in the same way that a startling noise does.
Newborn babies are practically blind, but they can immediately recognise their mother based on smell. It is not enough to remember that a particular food made you sick - your sense of revulsion at that food must be strong enough to overwhelm terrible hunger pangs. Most people have a particular alcoholic drink that makes them feel sick, because they had a dreadful experience with it; There's nothing special about that drink, it's just that you have subconsciously associated the aroma of that drink with feeling sick as a dog.
I think you're right to argue that smell is the final barrier of racism. You can consciously alter or suppress your attitudes to other cultures, but you can't suppress your revulsion to smell other than through long-term exposure. I've worked in China a fair bit, and I've learned not to eat dairy products in the weeks before flying out; The Chinese eat little or no dairy, so to them, westerners stink of sour milk. I'm careful to keep my hair dry, because European hair smells like wet dog. Conversely, when I fly back after eating nothing but Chinese food for months, I smell noticeably foreign.
>>19017 I don't think I could cut it in China. I drink organic full fat milk by the pint morning and night, couldn't live without it.
My dad's worked in some horrid countries, in good personal conditions but with exposure to the wider ghastliness, I wouldn't be able to function very well.
China is a bit of an olfactory assault, so I couldn't pick out anything in particular that the Chinese smell of. My memories are dominated by the smell of diesel fumes and the rank local fags that cost 50p a packet. Hongkongers smell a bit like my nan's house for some reason, and Koreans tend to smell of pickled garlic.
I recently switched back to full fat milk and have since been drinking six pints every couple of days with no signs of slowing down.
I also recently applied for a job in China which I have a fairly strong chance of getting.
It probably isn't hugely relevant. I'm a consultant rather than an employee, so I face different challenges. I meet with a lot of people who aren't used to dealing with Laowai, and I need to build rapport quickly. I've worked hard to integrate - I speak good Mandarin and I'm very careful about etiquette, so I can get on without a translator or fixer. As an employee of a multinational (or a local company that is used to hiring foreigners) you should expect some amount of tolerance for your funny foreign ways.
If you're going out there, worry less about smelling weird and more about picking up the language and culture. Read a book or two about doing business in China; The concept called "Guanxi" is absolutely integral to success in China, but is very difficult for foreigners to understand. The cultural gap is incredibly broad and deep, and your enjoyment and success will depend almost entirely on your willingness to bridge that chasm.
If you don't mind people thinking that you smell a bit odd, then be my guest. Milk in Chinese supermarkets is exclusively UHT, and there's a lot of anxiety about the safety of domestically-produced milk after the melamine scandal. Bear in mind that a lot of western food items can be expensive and often difficult to find outside of Shanghai and Beijing. Cheese is still largely regarded as an exotic delicacy, and most of what you'll find is fairly bland stuff like Emmental and Gouda.
>>19035 Germany generally suffers from a similar drought of decent cheeses. I could do a whole /101/ thread on how Gouda tastes like you've just done did a little sick in the back of your throat.
>>19203 Speaking of, I'm fairly certain I almost died on Saturday night. I woke up around 3am coughing up half a mouthful of sick that was lodged in the back of my throat. That can get to room /101/, thank you very much.
Last year at halls I was living with a megatwat whom I quickly fell out with. I never had any interest in being friends with him but it meant tensions within the flat and that flat nights out and other social events were an impossibility. Other flat m8s have gone spare over the smallest of things like moving their plates out of the sink.
The coming year, I'm living with people I actually like. We're all good friends but I know how easy it is for things to change when living together so I'd like to make an effort to maintain good relations.
I've read through this thread to make sure I'm not guilty of any of these crimes.
Is there any more advice you can give me?
