When the door taught me a lesson

I have anger management issues, that is, I don't manage my anger at all. I can flare out with the slightest of provocation and at times, even with a complete absence of one. The boy woefully complains about it. But then again, he should just be man enough to take it.

One fine day, after erupting over a non-issue, the boy huffily walked out on me and out of the apartment. I ran after him and punctuated his dramatic exit by banging the door shut behind him. The walls of our apartment shook in approbation. Well, approbation or not, they shook nonetheless.

Having no one to argue with, I started to miss the boy. And soon after, guilt crept in.

Mmm, why am I so fussy; should have just left it alone....
Poor thing wasn't wearing a coat; must be freezing outside....
.....ack left his specs also....

Reason finally decided to regain control over my rapidly shrinking brain, having previously relinquished the authority to fury. I was all ready to call up a truce when somebody up there (or maybe down there) decided to teach me a lesson in anger management. Or, more accurately, a lesson in why one should not bang the door shut.

The door, which earlier very helpfully enhanced my histrionics with its reverberating echoes of defiance, is now steadfastly refusing to open. I did not know what to do. Multiple scientific experiments revealed that jiggling the door handle and kicking the door did not help.

Fortunately, the boy came back a few minutes later. However, he was hardly in the mood to rescue a damsel in distress. At this point, having been made acutely aware that I was locked inside the apartment, I struggled to tell him that he was inversely locked out.

It can be surprising what agents reason sometimes use in forcing us to realize how foolishly we were behaving. Locked inside a cell of my own creation, I forlornly looked at the person I hurt through a keyhole with shameful admittance of fault reflected in my face. The filmi quality of our situation did not escape us and we were close to recapturing a poignant scene from Romeo and Juliet when apartment maintenance decided that we both learned our lesson.

The next time I try to angrily close the door behind him, I hopefully will remember what I am invariably closing in and what I am inadvertently leaving out.

A check in the mail

But it is no ordinary check. It represents the culmination of a month-long battle against a spurious system that systematically devours deposits meant to be reimbursed. No longer! Included with the check is a reference to an apartment immaculately maintained with promise of a glowing recommendation addressed to our future potential landlord.

Thank you, Ithaca Renting Company, for restoring our faiths in an inept system and proving to us that sometimes, even inept systems work. If you find yourself homeless in Ithaca, NY or thereabouts do not think twice on renting one of their properties. They can be officious and unnecessarily fussy but they refund your deposits %100 plus interest for as long as you empty and clean the place before you move out.

To give you a sharper picture, in contrast, if you rent from Ithaca Rentals & Renovations, Inc., in particular the Westview Apartments, then you can kiss at least %50 of your rental deposit good bye. They will charge upwards of $500 for painting per room, which is roughly %40 of your rental deposit. Other miscellaneous charges will undoubtedly eat the remainder. Admittedly, we left the place in a distressed state but nothing that a $70 cleaning service cannot manage. The deductions were unwarranted and the raped refund took 6 months to arrive, visiting the rental office and insisting on getting back the deposit included.

At Summer Hill, according to a friend's experience, his rental deposit was battered by fees that he would have thought he already covered since before moving out a. he retained the services of the same cleaning lady that the management uses to clean the place after a tenant moves out and b. he had the carpets professionally cleaned. However, both were still deducted from his rental deposit providing no plausible explanation for the redundancy except of course that they can do it.

In case it is still not obvious, you will have the least headache dealing with Ithaca Renting Company. You can consider it as a paid advertisement on behalf of the company. After all, they did send back my deposit check.

Confirmed: Vijender Singh Gets the Bronze

A little bit more details here.

Fixated

It is a fact that citizens of at least two third-world countries, do not depend solely on paper or other synthetically manufactured products in complying with the sanitary requirements of the bottom (i.e. butt, ass, behind, junk in the trunk etc). They might not be able to afford a forest equivalent of toilet paper supplies but they manage without. Call them poor or impoverished but in these backward states, people perform ablutions of the bottom after every "noble deed." With soap and water. Something that I am beginning to suspect is unheard of in these parts.

Water impurity or lack of it does not deter these impoverished citizens from depending on water for support in bottom after-care and from living a self-imposed independence from toilet papers. A compelling evidence to this assertion is that a pail or variations of it is considered a standard fixture in their bathrooms. The more progressive ones have fitted their toilets with a jet-spray, from which one's bottom can enjoy direct water hit, rendering the pail unnecessary. The even more elite installed toilets that came equipped with the jet-spray.

Another such proof can be found in their bathroom accessories department. Wander down these aisles and without fail, one will find an array of multicolored pails in all shapes and sizes. Adjacent aisles feature shower heads not only for the typical shower but also for the jet-sprays I have mentioned above.

In comparison, even an inspired search for pails of this purpose, or even jet-sprays, in the retail stores in this country, from a behemoth chain to a localized one, yield unfortunate results and several unsavory inferences of the general hygiene of this country. One of which is that, people, after several swipes with the toilet paper, wash their bottoms while perched on the bathtub thereby eliminating the need for any water pails. However, this leads to several more unsavory inferences and more mystery: bathtub as repository of "particles" which are the by-product of the official toilet business? and what about those homes without a bathtub and are equally bereft of pails?

Perhaps, because these pails are rather unsightly and as a matter of utility rarely go well with the established decor, people here are wont on hiding these essential bathroom tools whenever they have guest/s. As such, since my sample size was mostly derived from bathrooms I have visited as a guest, if this were true, explains a lot. However, I am rather sure this is not the case.

It can also be true that after toilet paper swiping, the official business is wrapped up. In which case, euggh. I know that facial tissues are now equipped with aloe and similar nonsense so as not to hurt the nose when one is infected with a cold. However, I have not come upon a toilet paper product which is lined with soap and water that in using it alone is enough to meet the sanitary challenges of an official bathroom business. There are these innovative wet wipes which closely meet this function but still not quite. Besides, these wipes evolved from the wipes used on the bottoms of babies. And, babies' bottoms need wiping because they cannot wash their own bottoms, yet. What is the official adult excuse?

I do not know when this questionable practice started but I hope it be displaced soon enough. I do not want to imagine what all sorts of hygienic regimens will soon be substituted by toilet paper swiping. Taking a bath? Washing er wiping the face?

It is not an entirely hopeless case. It is not like the people here are afraid of the water. They do find hand-washing important, which in itself is a positive start. There is even a federal law which requires business owners to post notices reminding employees to wash hands prior to handling food. Is it too much to ask to include bottom-washing as well?

The next time you snootily raise your nose in the air upon hearing the filthy and backward practices of citizen X of poor country Y, they might be inclined to snootily raise their bottoms in the air in retort. Considering the above, there is just no winning argument against that.

Hans

There are many mysteries in life, one of which bothers me the most while I am browsing through the internet. It is the inexplicable behaviour of people to continue visiting/reading sites they avowedly disdainfully dislike. And this is something that affects me as I can be an exhibit A to this phenomenon.

There are about three blogs which I banned from my reading list either because the writing style does not appeal to me, the subject matter does not interest me or the combination of the two. Despite being able to define my reading list preferences, I still find myself on the same three sites that largely define what I, erm hate in blogs. In short, I am what I'd like to call a Han--a hating fan.

Many blog sites benefited from people like me, catapulting them to the most visited sites in all of cyberspace. Perezhilton.com is one such classic example of a hated website benefitting from the inadvertent support of the Hans. A cursory glance through the site's comment section will show that at least a handful of people took the time and made the effort to visit the site, read through at least one of the posts and hurl their insults at the site and author. Time and time again. In fact, "Most Hated Website" is an honor which the site triumphantly wears as an accomplishment.

I guess such behaviour reveals a curious inadvertent effect of hating and the alternate reality that exists with it. Typically, what happens is if one dislikes to an extent that one hates something, one will not support its propagation or its continued existence. In this case, however, the more the Hans hate, the more that it contributes to the existence of the object of hate.

So, even though I think these three blog authors should stop writing, but because I keep going back to these sites, regardless of the somersaults that my sensibilities are doing, they will continue to write. Because they are guaranteed of at least one reader, albeit a Han.

I should have one of those.