Roommate

For those that don't know already know it, I have a female roommate. We're not involved in any way other than the friendly roommate kind of thing (we were paired up by the hagwon we work at), but since my family is always curious about it, I suppose I'll describe things better here.

RK (those aren't even her initials) is an interesting character. She's an adopted Korean from Kansas City who went to college near Seattle and even attended medical school before pursuing the English teaching gig. She's dating a guy from Minnesota who she'd met at a conference for adoptees a while back, and who's recently moved here to work in the financial sector. He stayed with us for a few weeks till he found an apartment and got settled at his job in Seoul.

He seems a decent enough guy; he works out, has a career-type job, and has had a good conversation's worth of life experiences. He can be a little risqué in his comments, but on the whole he's all right. He's definitely a Type A alpha male.

RK talks about him a lot -- mostly about what they fight about. I play confidant in most of these conversations, listening politely and asking detail questions but not letting it bother me too much. We agree that he has a penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or at least saying it the wrong way, but I privately I also think they have one of those blue-giant star relationships -- they burn hot and bright with a lot of intensity, but it'll end in the fiery, cataclysmic death of a massive supernova.

Rather than break up, though, she's decided that she'll give the relationship a 90-day trial period to see how things go. They moved rather quickly from acquaintance to international phone relationship to live-in coupleness, so she hopes things can move to normal soon now that he has his own place.

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As for the roommate dynamic, it works pretty well. I'm good at wiring the electric, phone, and coaxial cable for minimum messiness; she's good at aesthetics. I'm good at cooking; she's good at washing dishes. She can't stand pets; I have two plants. She's good at saying, "Hey, let's clean up this weekend," and I'm good at ... uh ... well, I'm good at getting it to that point. And I'm good at listening, too, did I mention that?

RK doesn't have a lot of pictures to put up, while I have a lot. That works out well for me, because then I can pack the bookcase with my framed pictures without worrying about competition. I also have a lot of ingredients, so I use up a lot of cabinet space. Again -- not a problem, since she mostly just stocks ramen noodles.

The only issue I have with RK is her laundry. Well ... that's a little vague. Let me put it like this: we have no dryer in our apartment. We have drying racks. All our laundry has to be hung on the enclosed balcony for it to dry.

I don't like her "laundry."

This leads to interesting roommate situations. Stuff like "Hey, can I ask you a favor? I'll be in Seoul for the weekend, so could you put my laundry on my bed when it's dry? I don't want the sun to fade it." I'd seen what was on the laundy rack that morning, but rather than come off as either a jerk or an uptight weenie I said, "OK."

This became an interesting situation. I think a certain level of roommate distance is reasonable and acceptable (even desirable), so this taking her stuff off the clothes racks was not my idea of "reasonable distance." I ended up using one of her T-shirts to move her "laundry" from the balcony to her room, since we have no laundry basket. In the end, perhaps it was uptight weenieness, but if you've ever lived with your sister I think you might understand the predicament.

As far as roommates go, life rolled me a good one with RK. Aside from the laundry issue, things work out pretty well. Only ten more months to go....