Salient

Big City Life

By Miyuki Mcguffie | 28 Apr, 2008

So the holidays are over and it’s back to the ol’ lecture hall. For you guys. I’m not at uni so I don’t identify with those age-old clichés you always hear about: first years… and… like I said, I’m not at uni. I can however identify with the nightmare that flatting can be, and having just had our first major change of flatmates (although could any change of flatmates be minor? Maybe if you had a twin in the house and they switched, and they didn’t tell you till afterwards, that might be a minor change, but only in a physical sense. I don’t know any twins so I don’t know how many of their personality traits they share if any), I’m in the perfect space of mind to share.

Over summer before we’d started looking for places, a friend of ours from high school had been hanging out with us a lot. He was a fun guy who was also going to be looking for a flat and happened to love cats (we have two). One fateful night as I was making party invitations and the flat was boozing Rochelle said, “Why don’t you come flatting with us?” Later on he asked if a friend of his could come too. Why not? We’d never met this guy in our life and the things we were hearing weren’t the most favourable but hey, the more the cheaper.

The reality of the situation (this being that the boys were messy, dirty, lazy and smelly) was punctuated by the cringe-worthy situation that I slept with the first one not so long before we moved. I know they say don’t screw the crew but I’m not really one for following the rules. And not all crew are bad. Perhaps they should change it to don’t screw the crew when you know you’d never do it sober. And have a boyfriend. But that’s getting a little too personal.

Anyway, one dramatic weekend, as I was headed towards Napier at five in the morning, the boys brought what Rochelle calls an entourage of people home from town to not only be rowdy drunken fools but to be eco-unfriendly power wasters. This was the final straw. Rochelle said to shape up or think about moving. They moved. Far out though, looking for flatties is a bit of a worry. 300+ views on TradeMe and only a handful of enquiries, the only good ones being the girls we have in the house now. They’re great though. I just have to be sure not to jump into bed with either of them.