Bed bugs

Right, I’m going to tell a story about what happened to my house. Yes, the house which I was staying last year and I’m currently staying. We thought of since last year was ok to be here, this year will be fine too. But, the answer is NO. The house has given me so much trouble since I was back to UK in end of September.

I shall start the story chronologically. It was an afternoon in the mid of summer this year, when I was still working with Boots for my summer placement, my housemate knocked on my door and asked me about the bites on his hands. To me, I could recognize that it was insect bites. Therefore, I asked him to get some antihistamine cream to apply on his hand to relieve the itchiness. I didn’t suspect anything goes wrong becuz there were more insects in the house during summer compared to the colder seasons. I thought I was just some normal insects’ bites.

Nothing happened until I heard from another housemate that the house is infected by bed bug, it was around mid of September. The new housemate was got bitten badly. (The housemate I mentioned earlier has left Nottingham and back to his home country.) I don’t even know what was bed bug at that time becuz I never hear d of it! It’s named as bed bug becuz it live in the bed! The bug will be attracted to your body heat when you sleep on the bed and come out to suck your blood. Sounds disgusting right? Bed bug infection is very common in hotels and hostels. It is possible to stick on your clothes or luggage and bring the bug to your home. My housemates had contacted the house owner and the house owner asked the people from the council to do a treatment. Bed bug treatment from the council is free in the area I’m staying. The council had sub the contract to a private company to come and spray the chemicals on the day when I flied back to UK. The house was in a total mess and I had to stay in other friend’s house for that night. In order to get rid of all bugs and their egg, we had to wash all clothes at 90 degrees and clean very single item of the house. I had spent a whole night doing these when I returned to my house.

We thought it was the end of the story, but no. The new housemate still got bitten by bed bug after the treatment. This has caused my new housemate had to break the tenancy contract and left the house. She had loss her deposit and 2 months’ rent, which is quite a huge amount of money to a student. Three of us who remained in the house bought bed bug powder from a website and spray the powder in every single corner of the house as prevention. The company claimed that the powder doesn’t kill bed bug chemically but physically by causing the bugs dehydrated and die. Is the powder strong enough? I don’t know. But, one of the housemate got bitten by the bug after she had vacuum the powder that we sprayed in her room. This proved that the treatment earlier (spray chemical by the private company) was failed and the infection has spread. The failure could be due to: 1) The private company didn’t do the job properly. 2) We didn’t clean everything carefully enough.

Last Wednesday, the council’s people came again to check the house and we made another appointment with them. This time, the council will do the treatment by their staff but not sub the contract to private company. We were busy cleaning again for about 4 days before the treatment. We packed the cleaned items into a bin bag and left it in our own room. I swear I never use so much bin bags before in my life. As the bags were everywhere in my room, I hardly walk around for 4 days.

Finally, the job was done by the council’s staffs. My house looks like it has been burglared. They had turned everything upside down to spray the chemicals. I think this hint that the council’s staffs provide better service than the previous one. The person from the private company was just too lazy to move things around. I spent another 2 days to put everything back in place. Gosh, it takes me a week to get everything done! This is damn time consuming isn’t it?

Will this be the end of the story? I do hope this is finale. I have no energy to clean and pack everything anymore. According to the bed bug expert from the council, it’s normal to get bitten by the bed bug in the following two weeks after treatment. But, if we got bitten after two weeks, treatment has to be redone. If the infection is coming back for the third time, I’m gonna leave the house. I rather breach the tenancy contract and lose money, than continue the cycle of get bitten-clean everything-spray chemicals-put back. Wish us good luck.

And…don’t rent this house if you are coming over to University of Nottingham to study soon.

我是马来西亚人

不明白为什么，时常在这里听到华人称呼马来西亚人为马来人或马拉人(广东话)。每当听见别人说：“你来自马来？”， 我的心里就会有一阵不爽。因为，我不是马来人更加不是马拉人，而是马来西亚人。

别人说，‘马来’是马来西亚的简称。可是，我做了马来西亚公民20多年，从来都不知道我的国家的简称是‘马来’。‘马来’两个字，我真的不知道从何而来。据我所知，马来西亚就是Malaysia 的翻译。如果觉得马来西亚四个字太长，大可以将她缩写成‘大马’。请注意，是大马，不是大麻。用大马代表我们的国家，这是每一个马来西亚公民都知道的基本常识。

马来西亚由三个大种族而组成：马来人、华人和印度人。马来人是我国的一个种族，占了国家大约60%的人口。我是马来西亚华人，并非马来人。我身上流着的血与中国人没分别，不同的只是我的国籍。所以，每当别人将我称呼为马来人，我都会理清，纠正别人的错误。

我不是马来人。我只会很自豪地对别人说我是马来西亚人。

泛黄

我随身携带相机

全为将秋季的风景化为永恒

现在，这照片是我的电脑的屏幕背景

Christmas decorations

Old Market Square, Nottingham

Omg…it’s only October but they have started putting up the Christmas decorations! What?!Why do they putting up these 2 months in advance??? I’m just thinking that it’s too early to do so. By the way, it feels so boring to see the same decorations as last year.

夜

迷灿的灯光
震耳欲聋的音响
沉醉于狂欢声浪
欢乐在深夜里弥漫
挥霍
青春年华
旁观
反思
这样的夜
我不喜欢

self-portrait

me

秋

University Park, Nottingham

我喜欢

树叶泛黄

徐徐坠落的时刻

这是秋季

最美的时刻

some where

I was here.

害怕

这几个月
忽然之间与死亡靠得很近
别离接踵而来
我突然有很多很多的感叹
我害怕死亡
害怕的不是我自己撒手而归
而是害怕我身边的人不辞而别
害怕一早醒来发现我再也看不到你的踪影
害怕突然之间别人告诉我再也看不见你的笑容
我还记得我知道曾外婆去世时的心情
那种无法控制眼泪的悲伤
那是永远都烙印的心底的痛
所以
可不可以
努力地活着
不要对我不告而别
请坚强地生存着
好不好?

travel

I was looking at my old pictures on Facebook and it reminds me about this picture. This was taken at Lizard Point, Cornwall. It was the most comfortable trip we had since we were in the uk. Never realize that going on a trip by having a car is so fun. By the way, it can only be our first and last road trip because our Malaysia driving license cannot be used in the UK any more. Can someone volunteer to get an international driving license so that we can have another road trip? This time, our destination will be the north part of the uk.

秋-冬

泛黄的叶子一片一片坠落
黑夜渐渐长过白天
慢慢走向春夏秋冬最后的一个季节
迈向人生的第二个冬天
这一次
我不期待了

uk

i'm back to uk again.
i hate the cold weather!!!!