My Dairy:Lost
Updated: 2006-08-08 09:30
The apartment delivered. The faux-wood door opened first to a new-looking TV, nicer than anything I'd own at home. The TV anchored a sparse but halfway-to-lively living room with pale yellow or maybe green walls, a blue couch with too many pillows (one had a labeled visage of Pluto the dog), modestly funky lighting courtesy of a lantern-like orb, and a modestly funky mirror trisected by two wavy lines. Wooden floor switched to tile for the small but operable kitchen with a few plastic Ikea-esque chairs of different colors coupled with a definitely funky breakfast table that had a glittery shelf below the transparent tabletop, possibly meant for condiments but would likely be relegated to bills and envelopes if owned by more permanent residents. The kitchen, furnished with one pot, a cleaver, a rice cooker, a microwave, and several chopsticks, seemed to already know which instruments to highlight for its new Westerners -the microwave alone was blessed with English labels.
A quick bathroom stop revealed a booth as small as any college shower, checker-tiled with a sink, toilet, and a shower hose and drain in one corner. To the bedroom to unpack, with its green walls and bright blue (new=clean!) queen bed that was low and felt like the floor. Desk, check; dresser, check; jet lag weighed heavy on my brain as a flip through the TV reminded me that just one channel is in English. On a scrap of paper I scrawled a shopping list: toilet paper, water. Fatigued and awake, I lay down hoping I didn't get up before sunrise.
