Monday, September 29, 2008
This is a post inspired by April’s comment on writing an entry on cleaning washrooms and pantries in the lovely cluster of Hwa Chong Boarding School. All rights reserved. I do not own any of the characters below, except for my pathetic self. Any similarities to existing people or events are merely coincidences. Please don’t sue me.
One lovely night, as we were minding our business as usual; our peace and quiet was interrupted by an ominous knock on the door. The squeak accompanying the opening of the door was forbidding and caused fear to shoot to our very core. Arvil Lavigne’s retarded singing was interrupted with the entrance of an alien being. (or at least, alien to our room)
Zhang Yue.
She stepped into our room gingerly.
“Cluster meeting.” Were the words that escaped from her mouth, the words that permanently sealed our fate.
We were hoarded like sheep to the tiny space masquerading as our common area. Our cluster mentor took her seat in the middle of the yellow plush sofa and decided to speak, or so I assume; since there was sound from her mouth.
My poor grasp of Chinese enlightened me that what she was speaking was not gibberish, but actually some sort of delegation to clean the cluster.
“Oh no!” we thought.
“Oh no!” we said.
“Just do it!” our cluster mentor replied.
As we were a group of four, we were one of the only three miserable rooms who had the honor to clean the washroom.
Due to our limited knowledge of cleaning washrooms, we took upon ourselves the tedious job of using rags to polish the mirrors. We were overjoyed when the mirrors looked significantly cleaner than it previously was, when we squinted hard enough. Satisfied with the job well done, we proceeded to splash water on the sinks; thus guaranteeing its cleanliness. Well, we did clean the sides a little with the dishrag.
I have to admit, we started off with a rather optimistic note. We blasted music through the stalls, occasionally lip-synching as we worked, despite it seeming like a bad Disney-movie-reject impersonation. This of course, included Arvil Lavigne’s songs; of which I am ashamed to admit all of us once enjoyed.
The worst part was getting rid of the clumps of hair stuck to the drainage system. Squashing my fear down, I bent down and stared at it; willing my probably dormant telekinesis power to work when I needed it the most; then. It took me ten seconds to realize that my powers possibly were ineffective against hair and another ten to convince myself that I needed to actually form physical contact with that hideous thing to actually be rid of it.
I was NOT risking my chopsticks nor any utensil, stationery, etc. on the ridiculous object stuck to the ground. Neither was anyone else.
My valiant attempts to bat at it with a broom failed; as I only managed to push it into another corner. Hitting it did not make much difference as well; despite my usually-reliable foresight that it would disappear by itself should I project enough hatred on it.
I winced, realizing what I had to do.
I grabbed handfuls of toilet paper, in an attempt to reduce as much skin contact with dead hair cells as possible and snagged the stuff on the floor and threw it into the sanitary bin. Immediately after, I rushed to the sink and scrubbed my hands with as much hand soap as possible.
One down, five more stalls to go. Loop this and you get the idea.
After getting rid of the hair, we had to actually wash the floor. Brilliantly, this was achieved with a lot more splashing, and quite a bit of soap. However, I must concur that we attempted to clean the floor a little with the mop, and occasionally the broom. Of course, they remained as mere attempts and did not cause as much impact as our ingenious splashing did.
We wasted approximately 12353258354 litres of water in the entire process. In fact, I would like to add that it would probably have been cheaper for the boarding school to hire full time cleaners to clean the washroom than for us to wash it ourselves; considering the amount of electricity/water we wasted. This is especially because after washing the lovely toilet; we all took showers; trying to feel some semblance of cleanliness.
Consequently the washroom was dirtied again, after our use. Obviously, we weren’t going to clean it again; as it would have meant us taking another round of showers; leading us to once again cleaning it, and then showering, and then... you get the point.
So we slept at around 12, following our showers, not including the amount of time it took for our hair to dry. Also, many international calls were issued overseas following our educational activity to whine about cleaning the toilet.
It was a Monday night, thus we complained loudly to Miss Sia the next day. Note, we were all half-dead from our strenuous activity by then, having both tortured ourselves over the place we dubbed our washroom and waking up at 5.
We didn’t think it was that bad yet; considering we assumed that this would only take place once in a blue moon; and we would probably clean other parts of the cluster the following month.
Thus we were introduced to the pantry.
The pantry is another equally lovely place, of which is about a quarter of the size of our bedroom. It consists of a refrigerator, a water cooler (our lifeline), a double sink and assorted cupboards attached to the wall.
This refrigerator is shared by 20 people in our cluster. It is no surprise then that it stuffed to the brim with mostly dairy products. Or so we thought.
For not only were dairy products and perishable goods were inside our fridge, but; lo and behold! Fish! Dead aquatic animals were squashed beneath equally dead BUT processed animals (also known as can food).
The entire fridge positively STANK. (which is why I do NOT touch it) We emptied it, convinced everyone to take their stuff temporarily away and proceeded to actually clean it.
The bloody thing was actually bloody, with stains of unidentified substances emitting suspicious smells. Somewhere in my clumsiness, I managed to break a jar of chilli paste; thus making our job even worse. We used cloths in our attempt to clean the fricking thing before continuing to splash water on the thing again; in our trademark fashion.
Even the sink was scrubbed and the dusty-ish water cooler, cleaned.
So yeah, BOARDING SCHOOL ROCKS!!!
And please, if you did not detect the sarcasm above; attempt to obtain a functioning brain asap.
Operation getalife to begin in approximately ten days time.
3:14 PM
