Many Filipinos work abroad hoping to provide for families and prepare for their future.
To further squeeze meager income they receive from their monthly wages, they give up personal luxury and comfort so that bulk of what they receive are sent home. This includes adapting to cramped, crowded and often noisy environment of shared apartments. These are dwellings that are often extended beyond their capacity so in the process, saves tenants the burden of
While flat sharing is good economically, there are a number of possible issues that could come up between you and your roommates — who may or may not need a written contract on the ethics as part of house rules.
1. Your roommate steals your food.
While you did everything — bought the ingredients, prepared the utensils, cooked and patiently waited — someone else ate it as you blinked (went to the bathroom, changed clothes, etc). As the domestic home is traditionally populated by members of the family who naturally share food, the mentality gets carried over even on dwellings people who co-habitate because of work or other arrangements.
2. Your roommate has very bad hygiene habits.
He or she doesn’t do a regular laundry, showers daily or brushes teeth. As a result, you tolerate this person no matter how disgusted you are just for the sake of civility in the apartment. Becoming a roommate is a perfect way to discover one’s habits and uncover dirty secrets. They may look dignified and well-dressed outside, but roommates often tell their true characters.
3. Your roommate takes your belongings.
Shampoo, cooking oil, spare coins or toothpaste, nothing gets spared. This flatmate saves more money at your expense. You just bought a dozen of eggs, six-pack beer and rolls of tissue, but they exhaust faster than you can consume. Sharing the expenses — buying eggs and equally dividing them — could be a solution, but your roommate consumes more than he or she is entitled to. You can only wish this person does not use your toothbrush or wears your clothes.
4. Your roommate beats you to the toilet and spends an hour there.
Just as you were preparing yourself to go to work and had to do your assigned household chores such as wash the dishes, arrange the mess in the table or do a vacuum cleanup, he or she spends most of the time in the bathroom at the shower or other personal necessities. You could spend another half-hour while he or she does his or her routine. This could easily turn worse if you are sharing the toilet with several others, with a few of them requiring longer alone moment.
5. Your roommate leaves you with restless nights.
You wish the day would end in a comfortable sleep, with you or roommate snoring or not. But your roommate schedules his or her chat with the family at bed time, or can’t modulate voice during a phone conversation or prefers to sleep with lights on. You could only wish a serene surrounding by 11pm, but your housemate just arrived with tales to share, so you can expect a delayed slumber and a grumpy day at work the next day.
6. Your roommate is fond of collecting someone else’s ‘trash’
Apparently, trash is relative, depending on who you ask. Some roommates gather whatever they can salvage from the neighborhood dump: discarded books, computer keyboards, used pairs of shoes or anything that can be part of the next batch of balikbayan box. Such habit made to more difficult to move around your already cramped room.
There are more other nasty experiences overseas Filipino workers who are forced to settled in such shared apartments or shared rooms to save costs and squeeze their monthly incomes. But while such occurence are unpleasant, they also teach us valuable lessons about humility and contentment, the virtue of patience, and the motivation to strive further all in the name of success.
Tag: Blog , Philippines