Living with Germophobia - Part 2

30 November 2013

My housemate, *Eugene, today insisted me to mop the floor because she found hair strands and my footprints very dirty in our common room.

I looked at her with my ‘dungu’ face, and then tried my best to pour out some tears from my eyes. Eugene saw my eyes filled with tears. She quickly sat nearer to me and she attempted to assure me that she just want a clean place to stay. However, she did not realised this ‘clean’ that she asked is rather too much for me to understand her definition of 'clean' due to her germophobia. I am not sure whether she realised she has germophobia but having me here will be a good help for her because she needs to adapt to people who does not have germophobia. Having strands of hair and some footprints on the floor do not make me fear and tiredness. Unlike her, she get anxiety and uneasiness if she sees foot prints on the marble floor. 

Living with Germophobia Part 1

All this while, i have been wondering why my room is not occupy for quite some times or my many tenants left the room and requested to move to another room even though is another building. For example, there is a Malaysian sister, *Kak Maria, used to stay in my room for around a year. But she left the room and requested to stay in another building despite these current room’s room location is really ideal. The current building i am staying is near the gate so it is easier to carry heavy items once i return from grocery shopping. It is also near the hospital, bank, bus stop and community centre. It is only less than 10 minutes walking distance. I wonder why this room left for me.

After few weeks observation, i realised my housemate is the reason, why people left my room and leave it empty for me to come in. 

My house mate is a Germophobia.

Germophobia is also known as Mysophobia refers to ‘fear of germs’ or ‘fear of dirt’. Is a kind of obsessive-complusive disorder. She has pathological fear of contamination and germs. Poor lady, always live with anxiousness and restlessness and she never knows is a disorder that needs medical attention. 

 For the past few weeks, i realised my housemate likes to clean the kitchen top. She does not clean like any typical person would clean a table. She would wipe the kitchen top, table and the stove while the stove is hot several times. She would scrub hard on the tops with wet clothes, follows with dry clothes. Then i observe how she washes her dishes. She uses all her energy to scrub her so-called non-stick frying pan till the frying pan is clean and shine. When i said clean and shine, is really clean and shine till the non-stick coating is no longer there.

Here is the proof…..

Your Brain is Torturing You....

We are a fool…. Our brain operates on neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters can come in form of adrenaline which give us the fight and flee reaction, dopamine which controls our coordination and body movement and even serotonin which controls our moods. 

Depression = Decrease Serotonin.

And what happened when you have depression, when we are in high stress level, our brain uses more serotonin hormone, and before our brain can replaces the used-serotonin, we force ourselves to function as norm as possible. Our brain never stops working. Even though we can sleep at night, but our brain works. And our brain works really fast. It gives you weird imagination and also wrong impressions. The point is depression makes you make lousy decision. It gives us nightmares, it wakes you up at wee hours, normally at around 4.00am. It makes you tired during day time despite you sleep 10 hours per day. It makes you feel insecure. You will lose confident in yourself. It makes you forgetful and scatterbrain at home and at work too.

But, i think the most difficult thing for me to handle is my brain turns against me. My mind constantly dig into my memory and pick the worst memory it can finds - my restrained childhood relationship, the low self-esteem keeps telling you that you will never find happiness, the critical inner child that keeps telling you that you are not good enough or even the troublemaker you keeps sounding that you are a burden to people surround you.

Your brain is torturing you….

And it always follow you….

Every time your mind begins to pick up with the world, your brain brings along this ‘garbage truck’. Your past can create new ideas/thoughts to torture you. Anybody who unluckily struck by this depression spell will always received the same ‘garbage truck’ in the mind. It will keep repeats till one day you think the only way to stop it is kill yourself. Believe me, i have been there. This spell is indeed a scary spell. And you will find yourself falls into the spell easily because you are tired to fight against it. You will be physically tired because you do not get the right sleep at night, and you will be mentally tired because your mind will keep repeating the same scenarios over and over again. 

Your brain will tell you:

- your friends will leave you once they know you have depression.

- you are a burden to your family and friends.

- you are going crazy and there is nowhere out except you stuck in your brain like this forever.

- you would be better off dead.

- you should probably jump off from this cliff.

Your brain is like a ‘video tape’ now. It will keep rewinds your worst stages of life. Your friends left you because you have depression. Your friends back mouthed you and said crazy psychopath. Frequent if not constant thoughts and preoccupations about past problems and issues is a sign of depression.

What Happened When You Shop in Foreign Land?

Always be prepared to wait outside the shop with cold wind blowing our faces. That is the reason i do not mind wearing my abaya and headscarf at all. 

The cool and dry air is giving me stuttering speech. However, the closeness of this people around me makes me feel warmth in this awkward situation.

We are the four foreign girls in black abaya, sitting outside a stationary shop because is prayer time in foreign land. 

Although is late and dark, but there are many cars pass by this place. I noticed a police car is driving the area several times. It feels fine. But we never let our guards down. We noticed a particular MVP drove past us twice. That is why we keep our guard. We will make sure safety is our priority. 

I am still adapting to their time. Foreign place has regular shop closing times according to the prayer time.  The first outing gave me a mental preparation for this outing except this time, instead of standing in the shopping mall while waiting for the shops to reopen again, we were standing outside the shop in cool air. burrrrrrr…….. I was wearing a short sleeves T-Shirts inside my black abaya. Dammit….

While waiting, some morons will drive their car past us, and makes stupid sounds to lure us. We will just ignore them and some of us will give them another killer glare, indicate if you come near us, you are dead meat!!!!!

There is a mosque nearby….. The azan is on now. Listening to the azan now reminds me of back home. Maybe back home, i will ignore it because i will be busy with my stuffs at home. But, not here, i am listening to it because there is nothing i can do here except rubbing our bodies because is cold….

But is fine, we are in foreign land…. is a different world….. 

IPhone's camera screen is fogged? No fear, use heated rice...

What do you do when your iPhone's camera screen is fogged with water and you cannot open the case and wipe off the fog? 

Do not laugh at my method. It will happen to you one day….

You frantically find the screwdriver to open the damn casing, when you realised the screw in this iPhone 4s need special screwdriver. Dammit Steve Job. Why would you make Apple lover's life difficult??? 

Well, this will be the better solution.

10 things to expect when you first step down on the foreign country's airport...

The moment you step on the ground of the foreign country, you must follow the follow the rule of foreign country.

Always prepare your abaya and head scarf. Put on the abaya before you step out from your plane.

Of course, in this foreign country big city, is more lenient, i do not need to cover the hair completely. However, always bring along a scarf in case the religious officers aka muttawa are around or on-duty.

What to expect in the airport?

1) Fill up the white card before you go line up at the custom counter. Make sure you have blue pen with you. Most of the official documents here required you to use blue pen instead of black pen. 

2) Expect to stand in line for looooooonnnnnngggggggg time.... The custom officers may take their own sweet time talking to each other or frequent coffee break or even just sit around linger. They will not speed up their work just because there are millions of people awaiting to pass the custom gates....

3) Expect to read certain body languages or expressions for certain instructions because half of the time, you can only communicate with broken English....

4) Never walk to another line just because the line is fast and shorter than your current one, because the officer will ask you to return to your original line, but you need to start all over again from the back of the line.