just another sunday. maybe.

Went to church. Took a bus with girlfriend. Took lunch with friends. Had a little conversation. Went home. Wrote an article. Read a book. Sleep.

I realised I haven't had a Sunday like this in a really long time.

Day 24, Week 3, 2 More Days

It's been 24 days in this place at Taman Jurong, or more specifically, BLK 63 Yung Kuang Road. It sure wasn't the best 24 days I could ask for, really.

I don't have much time to write, as I have got one (one last) essay to complete but I shall write for writing's sake, but also because I want to write while I am still qualified to write about the place while I am still at the place. (even though right now, I am typing this in school, which goes to show that I hate the place so much that I really don't want to even stay in there after my school is done. And really, I've never stayed at the flat for an afternoon from the day we moved in. I simply had to get out.)

At first, I didn't care too much about it. Sure the place was a little out of the way. It was small. The floor was a little dirty and dusty but it got fixed with a little clean up. Only one shower room and one toilet bowl room. Kitchen was damn poorly equipped. I could live with that, I told myself. And I could, really.

But what got on my nerves (and onto my skin) was the bedbugs. Yes, BEDBUGS. It is absolutely irritating, and annoying (I know both words are synonyms but I used them anyway to make my point that IT SUCKS). I didn't know it was bedbugs at first. I thought it was mosquito bites. So I got my mum to buy this mosquito repellent thing for the room. But it didn't work. And I was wondering why the mosquito were still biting me when I have already installed the repellent thing.

Days went by like this, and I kept getting bitten. Then one day my girlfriend asked me if it could be bedbugs, and that was when it struck me: it could be bedbugs. Like OH MY GOD. I went to google "bedbug bites" and wala, it looked exactly the same. I read up more on bedbugs and their bites and realised that everything fitted my circumstance: multiple bites around the same area, huge swell, little blood stains on the bed (like, urgh). I confirmed it was bedbugs.

Went home to tell my parents, and they didn't believe me. I don't know. It's either they didn't believe me, or they didn't bother and couldn't care less since they were not the ones getting bitten anyway. So what did I do. I can't exactly just let those bloodsuckers bite the hell out of me.

I took a can of Baygone, and sprayed around. I hunted down the crevices and cracks where the bedbugs could be hiding and alas, there they were, hiding in these little holes in the wall. I took the can of Baygone and spray right into the hole and watch one, and two bedbugs die in it. I camped at night, spending up to 1 or 2 hours without sleep just looking for those pests, and then spraying them with my can of bug killer or just squashing them with tissue paper.

There was once when I saw one crawling on the bed, and I told my mum, "Look! Bedbug!" and she just squinted her eyes, "Where? I can't see it.".

I pointed right at the where the bedbug was laying motionless, and she was like "where? I can't see it. My eyesight very bad." I took a piece of tissue paper, grabbed the bedbug and put it right in front of her eyes. Ah, THERE she saw it.

After a few days of Baygone treatment, the bedbugs were still having a good time. I decided that it was time for me to move out of the room. I migrated my mattress to the living room, gave the spot where I was sleeping a good Baygone treatment, and slept there. But it was to no avail. There were still bedbug bites when I woke up the next morning.

Another night, I was camping again, looking out for bedbugs. This time, I employed another tactic (albeit a more traditional one): 风油. I sprinkled it around my bed as a sort of area defence, and I just stayed around to observe. I don't know whether it was because of the 风油 but I noticed this bedbug travelling on the wall. I took a tissue paper and crushed it right where it was, and a huge bloodstain was left on the wall. MY BLOOD. The bloody sucker has apparently taken a good meal while I was on my bed doing my work and was about to go home to rest for the night. Not so fast, sucker.

Three nights of 风油 treatment and the bedbug problem still persisted. So it didn't work. Bedbugs were not afraid of 风油, contrary to what a friend of mine suggested. And by some interesting turn of events, another friend of mine noticed the bites on my arms and asked me about it. I told her it was bedbugs and she was like, "oh no! I actually had a YCG member who was also plagued with bedbugs and I bought her these cans of bedbugs spray to eradicate the problem..."

Immediately there was a sparkle in my eyes, I tell you. Bedbug spray, eradicate problem. That was just what I needed right now, I thought to myself. I told her to try and help me obtain one can of the miracle spray to save me from getting sucked dry by the bloodsuckers. So two days later, she got a can. $7.90, and my saviour is in my hands.

I went home, and gave the place a good spraying. No bedbugs appeared, but I wasn't confident that it would work. And if it didn't, I would really have no other options left, since this was THE bedbug spray and my parents wouldn't care to call up the landlord of the place. Next morning, I still got the bites.

But I was at my wits end. So I just sprayed every night before I sleep. Spray and spray and spray and my parents could only complain about how smelly the spray is and they couldn't sleep because I kept spraying the can.

One night, as I was preparing to go to bed, I looked around for bedbugs again. And I saw one, trying to hide under the flooring, but still visible in the open. I took the can, aimed it right at the bug and gave it a good shower of bedbug spray. It struggled a little, and eventually its lifeforce ebbed away. I took a piece of paper with a sticky end, got the bedbug's body to stick on the sticky end, and took a picture with the word "bedbug" pointing to the body. I left the paper near where my parents put their keys so that I can prove to them there were bedbugs.

My mum called up the landlord, and they came to check but couldn't find any bedbugs. The landlord then said she will bring in an "expert" to check, who turns out to be her mother from China anyway, who didn't even turn up in the end and no one bothered to follow up with it. It just irks me how everything was so half-hearted.

But it's alright. In another 2 days time I will be moving to Yew Tee, to a place that is normal where my normal life can happen and where I can have the privacy of my own room and joys of a clean and comfortable environment to sleep in. A place where there are no bedbugs (the whole mattress had to be thrown away because we were afraid there would be an infestation in it). Where I have a table where I can work and study.

And I am glad. I am very glad that I am getting to leave this hellhole. This place that is fit for an episode of "Survivor: Singapore".

But the place isn't that bad anyway, I am contradicting myself here. As in the conditions are really bad, but the softer things aren't so bad. For one, the food centre near the place boasts of very nice egg pancake and roasted meat rice. Apparently, the legendary roasted meat rice stall opens at 11.30am and is all sold out by 1.30pm. If you are lucky, he may open until 2pm.

I have also witnessed a sight that I probably wouldn't have gotten to see elsewhere. One, there were some really poor families who were living there. However, these people were not miserable. There was once when I was waiting for the lift and this family was with me and there was this baby and they were all talking with each other and playing with the baby and suddenly I just felt that the place wasn't that bad afterall and I was really being childish and pampered to keep complaining about it. Maybe they didn't have a bedbug problem, but still, it was their contentment with the simple things of life that struck me.

And to wrap it all up, I would say that it was quite an experience. To stay in this place. Both good and bad. Think of it as when you stay overseas at some rundown place while you are doing OCIP or some volunteer work (I know of the whole overseas volunteer paradox, but I'm leaving that out of here) and then you feel that you appreciate your home so much and you learn about how people from other less-well-to-do areas obtain pleasure from the simple things in life. It's a little like that, really.

A month in Taman Jurong, BLK 63 Yung Kuang Road was all one need for the same experience.