Odd americansWhere do I begin. I've lived with a bunch of yanks over the years, but this one took the biscuit
Sharing a house with 2 others and a rotation of people for the for the fourth housemate whilst at university. For around 6 months we had an American dancer over. Harmless girl but none too bright. But not in an unitellegent way, but in a seriously lacking common sense way. Some gems include:
o Taking a bath in a tub covered in bleach spray
o Cleaning the kitchen and turning off all the plugs in the process -- including the oven, fridge and freezer.
o Putting things away from the surfaces: my flatmate was late one morning and didn't have time to make his instant coffee. I found the mug complete with granules and spoon in the fridge that afternoon.
o Wanting to return opened tins of stuff to the supermarket as they might be of use to the homeless or somesuch was the logic there.
I once had a dialogue along these lines:
Me: I'm off down to the supermarket, do you want anything?
Her: It's okay, but can you give me a lift down there?
Me: Well, how'm I going to do that, I'm going on my (push) bike
Her: You don't have a car?
Me: Err, no. (she'd been here for about 4 months by that time)
Her: So that's why I've never seen your car in the drive.
She was a Quaker, and a vegeterian, and used to cook huuuuge tofu/soya/whatever stews and soups that she'd freeze or fill the fridge with, and never eat.
But as a dancer, she hurt one of her feet. I think she tried a bunch of normal medical treatments and eventually moved onto a Chinese herbal thingy that must have cost her a bomb as she'd buy these every week. Anyway, it involved soaking the foot in a warm water bath of these herbs.
Problem was she wouldn't use, say, hot water from the tap or even boil the kettle, but used to boil a saucepan full of water, which, when it was too hot, would then cool with the cunning use of ice cubes, rather than, say, cold water.
There was a story one of the others had about her pulling a raw whole onion out of a boiling stew and taking a bite out of it like an apple after a misunderstanding (you know how you put whole onions in stuff for flavouring? well she didn't) but I wasn't there.
All in all an odd girl. We moved out and she came looking for us shortly after (with the rest of her family) for rent saying we'd stiffed her (which we hadn't). Very very odd.
(,
Tue 18 Nov 2003, 11:36,
archived)
Sharing a house with 2 others and a rotation of people for the for the fourth housemate whilst at university. For around 6 months we had an American dancer over. Harmless girl but none too bright. But not in an unitellegent way, but in a seriously lacking common sense way. Some gems include:
o Taking a bath in a tub covered in bleach spray
o Cleaning the kitchen and turning off all the plugs in the process -- including the oven, fridge and freezer.
o Putting things away from the surfaces: my flatmate was late one morning and didn't have time to make his instant coffee. I found the mug complete with granules and spoon in the fridge that afternoon.
o Wanting to return opened tins of stuff to the supermarket as they might be of use to the homeless or somesuch was the logic there.
I once had a dialogue along these lines:
Me: I'm off down to the supermarket, do you want anything?
Her: It's okay, but can you give me a lift down there?
Me: Well, how'm I going to do that, I'm going on my (push) bike
Her: You don't have a car?
Me: Err, no. (she'd been here for about 4 months by that time)
Her: So that's why I've never seen your car in the drive.
She was a Quaker, and a vegeterian, and used to cook huuuuge tofu/soya/whatever stews and soups that she'd freeze or fill the fridge with, and never eat.
But as a dancer, she hurt one of her feet. I think she tried a bunch of normal medical treatments and eventually moved onto a Chinese herbal thingy that must have cost her a bomb as she'd buy these every week. Anyway, it involved soaking the foot in a warm water bath of these herbs.
Problem was she wouldn't use, say, hot water from the tap or even boil the kettle, but used to boil a saucepan full of water, which, when it was too hot, would then cool with the cunning use of ice cubes, rather than, say, cold water.
There was a story one of the others had about her pulling a raw whole onion out of a boiling stew and taking a bite out of it like an apple after a misunderstanding (you know how you put whole onions in stuff for flavouring? well she didn't) but I wasn't there.
All in all an odd girl. We moved out and she came looking for us shortly after (with the rest of her family) for rent saying we'd stiffed her (which we hadn't). Very very odd.