The rented life

Frou the Builder....can she fix it? Frou the builder.... YES SHE CAN!

I am proud to announce that last night, I drove myself to Ikea, browse through the entire two floors, filled a trolley with furnitures, ate some swedish meatballs, paid for the furnitures, load them into the car, drove home, unload them into my house and then sat on the floor and proceeded to erect a bookshelf, a bedside table and a table lamp. Everything in one night and all by myself!

[Echo: YES SHE CAN!]

BTW, for anyone interested to know, Ikea no longer provide free plastic bags. You either pay for them ($0.05) or lug everything yourself by hand.

Yes I know constructing Ikea furniture is not rocket science. In fact, it is seriously idiot-proof so long as you know the difference between a nail and your own hand. And lugging furnitures around is not the hard part either (Echo: "YES SHE'S STRONG!"). I am just particularly proud of the fact that I even bothered to buy furnitures at all. Especially unnecessary items like a frigging bookshelf.

The background to this is, I never own furnitures. I have been living out of my suitcase ever since I left (ok fine, kicked out) of home at 16 years old. My first ever piece of "furniture" is a 10cm thick mattress my mum bought for me before she uncaremoniously dumped me in a rented room 365km away from home. I slept on this same mattress for the next 2 years until the cheap cotton thingy inside disintegrated.

When I was studying in the UK, the only piece of household item I owned is an alarm clock. Everything else is rented, comes with the house, dumped on me, on loan or donated by sympathatic friends. I didn't do so badly, I thought. Somebody put a TV in my room for a couple of months. I even had a Playstation as well at one point. My lack of furnitures doesn't bother me because I wasn't home much. I was out partying.

When I moved back to KL to take the Bar exam, my rented room comes with only a crikety single bed (which by the way The Queen broke with her fat arse) so I reluctantly bought a table because I actually need to erm...study. The table stayed with me for the next 4 years. I believe it is now retired in Phillip's house in KL even though he annoyingly denied it. ("Phillip: I dunno what happen to that old thing. It is NOT yours. No no. Uh uh").

What possessed me to make that Ikea trip last night was a sudden realisation that dawned on me when I was sitting in my very very bare new room talking to myself. I don't know if anyone else does this too but I have a strange habit of sometimes pretending that I am "a-person-who-knows-better" so that I can nag at the real life lazy ass me who don't know.....any better, that is.

'Frou-who-knows-better' was looking around the empty room that 'Frou-who-doesn't-know-any-better' just moved into and immediately felt a nag bubbling up her throat: "Goodness gracious me! Look at you! Why are you living like this? Do you know how old you are now? People your age are owning houses, cars, morgages, Gucci bags and what not. And what do you have? One bed and the same miserable alarm clock. You don't even have a frigging book shelf".

Hence explains the frigging bookshelf.

I sat admiring my new useless furnitures. They look the price I paid and their colors don't match. What is worst, I have absolutely nothing to put on that frigging bookshelf. At least the beside table holds my beers.

Nonetheless, I am smiling at my 'adult-ness'.

What's next? Diapers?