A friend once told me that she'd tenanted out a room in her flat to the same tenant for four years.
That information caught me by surprise.
Because, see, even though I'm not personally familiar with rental (and all that), I've heard stories- and as far as I know- it really is a rare thing that a tenant will rent a single room- in a three-bedroom apartment- staying together with the landlord- and for so long.
A couple of months- maybe.
A year- doable.
But four whole years?
That's definitely some cordial relationship going on there.
Yeah, you can say I'm cynical.
But whilst renting a room can be a tricky thing, renting out a room can also be a tricky thing too.
In this world there're good tenants.
There're crazy ones too.
I've heard of good tenants whom, even though they do hang out in the living room and cook up a storm in the kitchen on the weekends, tend to spend most of their time in their own rooms and keep the rest of the house respectable.
These are the ones who blast hip hop music to destress when they're back from work but care enough to adjust the volume so as not to disturb the elderly landlord sleeping in the room next door.
Some tenants spend most, if not, all of their time in their rooms, only coming out when they want to do the laundry, go out, or shower. These are the tenants who make a special trip to IKEA and march back with comforters, cushions, table lamps, clocks, even mirrors, and (somehow) manage to survive on tea and cereals, or instant noodles, in their rooms when they're at home. They're the ones who buy air fresheners for their rooms, and spend most of their time on their laptops in their rooms working on projects and assignments as well.
Not that they're complete introverts.
They just seem to not mind being by themselves.
Amongst those who prefer being by themselves are also those who decide to rent the entire apartment- pay for it- and make the whole place their own.
The landlord told me that when they dropped into the apartment to pick up a couple of things, they were greeted by the homely sight of a checkered tablecloth draped over the coffee table- and a tenant at the dining table eating out of a tub of strawberry ice cream.
The landlord was impressed.
Here's the thing however.
for every one good tenant, there is also a challenging one.
There are tenants whom were renting two rooms (out of three) for a period of only three months but somewhere past the second month decided that the IKEA sofa in the hall was too small for their liking and went to get their own, unceremoniously dumping the smaller one by the water meter outside.
There are tenants who get all hoity-toity (simply because they're young and because they come from Europe) and start describing a condominium apartment a 'HDB' because it has no balcony.
These are the tenants who tell you that the place is filthy but who leave their rooms in a mess (how do they sleep at night), don't remove their shoes outside the house but instead carry the dust and dirt into the house through the living room and kitchen right up to their rooms.
It's their way of life, the landlord grumbled to me, but how not to have a dirty house like that?
The landlord couldn't understand how people could be this messy.
"What, they have pixies in their home?"
But if arrogant upstarts and dusty persons made for headaches, what made it impossible were the dubious, questionable standards of hygiene some of her tenants had.
Nothing is worse than a refrigerator shelf stained with spilled raw chicken blood after a tenant has taken out a piece to cook and is too lazy to tighten the bag properly.
Nothing is worse than a house filled with stale smoke and grease because a tenant chooses the cheapest, smokiest cooking oil- and leaves the chicken wing oddly positioned in the pan for half an hour whilst the oil splatters everywhere.
"There's no use cleaning up," she complained. "It starts all over again tomorrow."
This- she told me- had to be one of the worst tenant experienced she'd ever had in her life.
It was a nightmare.
Worse than a nightmare.
There were cigarette butts on the floor (in a non smoking house!)
The remnant chicken bones of a finished meal were left on the plate on the dining table for more than ten hours in the sweltering afternoon heat- whilst the tenant stayed in the room blasting loud music, playing video games.
Maybe the tenant thought the frail-looking elderly landlord would be impressed by the sounds of the game, and the accompanied sounds of gameplay.
She was not.
This was a landlord who had been familiar with computers and computer games for more than a decade, and who had, in one of her latter business ventures operated a LAN gaming shop when that trend was in its heyday.
No, the dropping of f-bombs from one player did not intimidate her.
She'd had had nine of them doing the same thing at the same time in the same place on two different games.
Suffice it to say she was more amused than impressed.
Because for all the masochistic, spoilt brat, 'my game is more important than cleaning up' attitude- it was very clear that the tenant was not leveling up.
Despite being on the game for more than six hours every day.