Saturday, August 29, 2009

Pictures Part 3

Okay, so part 3 of the pictures will now attempt to capture the essence of the squalidity in which I find myself. It's actually not so bad, but as you will see, things in this apartment are old and in major need of repair. When you see the new place, you'll understand what I mean by old.

And here we go...




So this is the window. It has no screens, so when we open them, we get lovely swarms of flies and mosquitoes. The windows also don't close all the way because someone (maybe a previous resident or the housing office) messed around with some of nuts and bolts of the window. In any case, it does little to protect us from the wonderful noises outside. Like the MetroNorth rail. It's currently 1 AM so I won't take a picture of the railway, especially because it's pouring outside, but I'll take a picture in the morning.


This is our kitchen sink and counter area. Really, the counter area is that small. The dish rack is new (courtesy of one my roommates and also 1st year MD/PhD Tim) but now imagine that the counter not being as white as it looks now and the sink consistently piled high with dishes (and the rack still somehow full). That's what it looked like when I came in in June.


This is the kitchen stove and oven. It's all gas run (I think the oven is electric), but it's white now because we Clorox wiped the entire kitchen area and I think Tim also took some 409 to the whole thing. It used to be splattered with pasta sauce and grease spots. Definitely not pretty.



These shelves are meant to hold stuff for people. If you look closely you'll see these 3x5 notecards taped to them. They're the names of people in the apartment and everyone claims a shelf (Tim and I took the cupboards above the sink). But the clutter is just overwhelming (I'll explain below).




The umbrella and jacket on the left are mine. I just got back from a downpour of rain so I left them outside to dry. Anyway, the table is filled with unclaimed things, but there's just no where to put them! Again, clutter that I'll explain later.



This is the toilet seat. I took a picture of it because if you look at the bottom right section of the toilet seat, there is a nice, deep crack in it.

Yea, we need a new toilet seat.

Oh, and random note, New York doesn't have toilet seat covers and the toilet paper definitely is not as good as CA toilet paper. Just a thought...


This is our sink. Now you see that jar of stuff in the right? Imagine all that strewn all over the sink? One of the guys (Steve, who now no longer lives with us) had his sister and his sister's friend over for a few days, and I'm pretty sure they did the tidying up. Where's my stuff, you ask? In my room. The only thing I left in the bathroom is some benzoyl peroxide.

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Alright, so I promised you an explanation for what I think is going on with this apartment. This is a 6-person apartment right next to the MetroNorth Railroad tracks which happens to go above ground right at around 97th St. We live on 98th St. So basically every 10 minutes you hear the train clackity-clacking away either towards the North or the South. And in the mornings, because of the tourists and little kids who stand on the bridge of 97th Street and wave at the train, the conductor feels obligated to blow that horn of his.

It's a great alarm clock. (No, it's not).

The apartment itself is also in need of repair and is pretty old. However, I'm pretty sure the real estate office has let things stand where they are because people don't stay for long. They come in, realize it's not a fun place, and get the heck outta here when they can. Or, for those that stay, they don't complain at all. Our common room A/C used to be broken. Then I arrived and the first complaint I wrote was that it was broken. Sure, my room AC works just fine, and it's not that unbearably hot (all the time), but when I'm cooking and then eating...I want it to be a nice temperature, not a Stanford-summer-with-no-AC-and-no-fan-and-I'm-living-in-the-4th-floor-of-Mirrielees temperature. So now the common room AC works.

I think the clutter also exists because as people move out, they leave things with the other roommates...who then leave it with the newbies when they move out....who then...you get the picture.

Well, hopefully when Tim and I move to our new rooms that will change. We'll be moving out all our stuff of course, but I'll also be taking some of the dishes and pots with me that I can use myself. The new guys with whom we will be living don't cook and I think they eat out a lot, so it seems like Tim and I will have free use of the kitchen. And considering my training when it comes to washing dishes (long story short, I've been washing dishes since I was 5 or 6) and keeping a clean kitchen (thank 717 for teaching me how to hash properly), I'm sure we'll be fine, especially since Tim is also a neat cook.

My roommates aren't horrible people. Eric is a nice guy who doesn't even cook at all because he's in his clinical rotations now, but he's an otherwise neat guy. Kevin's presence in the kitchen is hardly felt at all because he washes what he uses. Hao cooks as well, but also cleans his stuff. Basically, the older residents who are no longer with us contributed a bit to the mess. There is a stack of dishes under the sink that a previous resident left behind because he "didn't have time to wash them."

And as for all that clutter? At some point, it will have to be tossed, but until then, it'll sit there.

Again, it's not because we're horrible people. Sometimes it's just a matter of not knowing what to do with the stuff or being preoccupied with other things. Like the fact that my first final is this coming week.

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