Since everyone is always on their best behavior when applying to be someone's roommate, my idea was to be on my worst behavior, then see who would still accept me. [Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here.]
"RUSSIAN HILL fully furnished room, close to tube, good for student, female preferred. $640 PER MONTH."
I phone up the flat.
"I'm looking for a room for my cousin, but he doesn't speak English. I was wondering if I can send him around to look at the room?"
"Where is he from?"
"Liktokia."
The man on the phone doesn't question the location of Liktokia. "I prefer to have a female move in," he says instead.
I ponder the notion of putting on a dress. Probably too hard, portraying a foreign female. Finally he gives in and says my cousin, Oomlat, can look at the room.
Though it's a hot day, I'm wearing a long, heavy jacket and gloves. Also, a big furry hat.
I ring the bell, and guess what? I've brought flowers. Previously, the flower/foreign guy bit failed miserably when I attempted to look at a room in The Mission. Some Marine Jarhead type opened the door only to say, "Sorry, the room's been taken."
This time, a middle-aged woman answers the door. There's a baby by her side who starts crying the minute he sees me. I stand rigidly and bow. After clearing my throat I say, "Room!" I pat my chest to make it clear it's for me. I fully extend my arm and present the flowers.
"Oh!" she exclaims with a mixture of confusion and fear. The flowers immediately go on top of a stack of old magazines and mail. I then hand her a prewritten note:
I DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH.
HOW MUCH IS THE RENT?
DEPOSIT?
WHEN CAN I MOVE IN?
I AM NICE!
I give her my best puppy dog eyes. She looks confused and annoyed.
"Would you like to see the room?"
My eyes glaze over from lack of comprehension. I smile and nod, but don't move. "Yes! Yes! Room!" I pat my chest.
The baby's crying again. The woman's getting frustrated and says louder with a pointing motion, "LET'S GO LOOK AT THE ROOM!"
"Oh! ROOM!"
I understand her now, and mime a sleeping motion with my head on my hands.
I enter the room and begin a series of ritualistic tests which test the quality of rooms in my country. These involve pushing the bedsprings, smelling certain areas, jumping up and down in the corners, and the most important -- bending my knees slightly and spreading my arms in a horizontal plane. This could easily pass as a cultural interpretive dance. The woman's too preoccupied with keeping her baby from crying at me again.
"My room!" I tell her, patting my chest again and looking content.
"This is a family house. Do you have a lot of friends who'll be coming and going?"
Didn't she read the note? I DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH! How am I supposed to comprehend a complicated sentence like that? I smile and nod.
"Yes! Yes! Good room!"
She can't think how to explain this and moves on.
"What do you do?"
"Yes!"
"No, what is your job?"
She is talking louder. I don't know what happened to the baby. Perhaps she thinks I'll understand if she talks louder, but somehow she gets through to me.
"Aah!"
I attempt to mime the type of work I do. This involves clasping my hands together and moving them in a circular motion. From this she concludes construction worker. We both laugh at my attempt to communicate. Through we can't speak the same language, we have both communicated through the international language of laughter. But our moment of fun is short-lived.
"We prefer a female."
"Yes! Room!"
"We don't want friends coming and going."
I look lost but continue smiling and nodding.
"We prefer a female." She's the loudest she's been all afternoon.
I see something over her shoulder and start spouting a few words in my native tongue. I appear to be very angry and upset. I'm trying to convey that there's something in her home which is highly offensive to my people. The baby ends up offending me so much that I leave the flat in disgust.
WOULD THEY LET ME MOVE IN? No. Only if I were a female with no friends.
In the end, I only received one invitation to move in, from the "happy Christian house." Apparently, some Christians really are nice and charitable, just like they are in certain parts of The Bible.
For everyone else, your best bets when interviewing to be a roommate are to be on your best behavior, make sure you smell good, and try not to be foreign.
Or, if you don't want to go through all that trouble, you can just live alone. Works for me.
|
|
Share on your site:
