Full house

This morning the fifth and final member of the household moved in. Technically he should be the “first”, I guess, since he was living her last year and has had his stuff stored in his room over the Christmas break. He occupies the room that we had supposed belonged to the alleged Phantom, but it turns out that, while we still cannot explain the shower we heard running late one night, he was overseas at the time.

While describing such an eclectic mix of people to friends I have fallen into the habit of giving them names based on their descriptions and not calling them by their actual names. For the purposes of this blog that works nicely since I don’t have to work out nome-de-plumes for them all that exist independent of reality. So we have (in the order I met them)...

The Space Cadet, formerly known as Dougie, named as such because every sentences he utters includes the word “man” at a ratio of at least one “man” to every verb, making him sound as spaced out as he no doubt is at any given point of time. He’s a friendly enough guy, when not giving me the shits, but I don’t trust him. He has, however, desisted his “ostensible showers” and general shifty behaviour since I ceded the bathroom to him last week, so things are looking up.

Then we have The Optimist, whose room is above mine, the nineteen year old first-year maths/science student who is awaiting tomorrow’s classes with an undying optimism that can only be affected by those straight out of high school and/or those who have never dealt with university bureaucracy. On the one hand it is refreshing to see such bald-faced enthusiasm while on the other I’ve found myself almost jealous of his uncanny ability to make a 9am, Monday morning IT lecture sound appealing in any way.

Next there is The Accountant, who lives upstairs also and never turns off the shower in his bathroom hard enough to stop it dripping (which doesn’t affect me in any way, it’s just that I hate dripping taps). He’s an international student from China, and when I asked him what he studied when I bumped into him in the kitchen on the day we met he answered “accounting, all Chinese students study accounting, don’t you know that?”

And then last but not least is The Brit, so named because he is British. I know this because The Accountant told me so, it’s not that I can place his accent or anything sleuthesque like that. I have literally spoken one sentence to him as I rushed towards the toilet and he rushed towards the front door so I guess I will have to reserve judgement for now. He is, I should add, by far the best looking of the five.