My Crazy Landlord

As the saying goes, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The writing was on the wall from the beginning.

My first day in Singapore found me standing at a payphone in front of one of the cities malls, named of all things, "Lucky" Plaza. My luggage was in one hand, while the other clutched a piece of paper with a number and a name of a person who I thought was a legitimate hotel Manager, who turns out to be well, what's the politically correct term for slum lord? Well, actually, he runs something like an unregistered hostel for hospital patients and Filipino migrant workers.

I'm a strong believer in premonitions/first impressions. Just reading his name, something in me already knew...this man was crazy.

It's not just that I have trouble understanding his Singlish (Singaporean-English--the kind-of Asian English that comes straight out of a Kung-Fu movie). Although he does have a tendency to repeatedly shout "Can!" which might mean "No problem" or a variety of other things, depending on the context. It's not just a problem with his accent either, because usually there are people standing in the near vicinity who can mouth what he's trying to stay and still be clearer. For example
"I take you to the Jew," might not be the eye-raiser that you originally think. Instead, he could be saying, "I take you to the zoo," at which point you can politely decline. Why? Because this man is crazy.

He's the kind of crazy that knocks on your door for half an hour at 1:00 in the morning, waking up everyone in a two block vicinity. And when you don't answer the door, because you're presumably sleeping and in your pajamas, only then does he think of calling you. And when you decide to answer the phone, he simply goes on and on about how his friend is coming tomorrow and wants you to meet the room servant tomorrow. Understandably confused and annoyed, you say fine just to end the conversation, only to wake up and see 6 Vietnamese faces peering at you, urging you to move out your things so they can occupy "their" new room. After a long conversation is carried out through jumping, hand gestures, and other dance-like movements since none of you speak the same language, you call the landlord. Of course, his phone is turned off until early afternoon, because, well, this is a Sunday, and he did stay up so late pounding on your door.

Now, luckily, that was the night you'd decided to go tango dancing, so you hadn't actually had to suffer through the door-pounding. This is unlike your unfortunate neighbors, who happily express their innermost feelings about the experience in the morning. Rather unluckily, you'd decided to join one of the other tango dancers for a late night dinner/early morning breakfast, which is a common enough tango activity after the dance ends. This means you are now operating on a little under three hours of sleep, and now have a huge sore throat for your retardedly late night activities before you're fully recovered. Unluckily for your landlord, this also means that you are happily ready to tell him your own "innermost feelings."

His answer to the crisis, is that you move out, and then all of you can go out for karaoke later that night. He'll buy all the beers. Great idea, right?

You end up moving to a single room in a nicer apartment for the same price. All the other tenants, in a heartwarming show of solidarity, parade through the streets, helping you carry all of your stuff amidst barrels of bad jokes, mostly aimed at how crazy our landlord is. You spend the rest of the day trying to catch up on sleep. That evening, as you and the other tenants are chatting with the crazy Panget, as the Filipinos have taken to calling him, he starts going on about how you should really see the room servant again. As he plies you his mother's cooking, you ask, "Who is this room servant that you keep going on about?" The Filipinos laugh. The "room servant", which you thought meant "maid" really means "room seven." So the 1am conversation was really his way of telling you that he wanted you to move out, to room seven.

Even though the mystery is solved, you still check out as quickly as possible the next morning.