Hi guys! It’s me again! As I promised last week, I gonna share my experience living in Battersea Court in this blog. Together with 14 flatmates, I was living in level 2 of Pickard House. 15 of us were sharing three bathrooms, three toilets, and a large kitchen—Yeap, 15 people! There were 10 boys and 5 girls, (however it is up to you if you wanna choose a unisex accommodation.) I was the only Asian in the flat, most of them are British, the others are from Luxemburg, France, New Zealand, and Finland.
At first, I was so nervous that I couldn’t really understand what my flatmates were saying, since I was not good at listening and speaking English at that time. They spoke so fast that I couldn’t catch up. Sometimes, I feel bad because I couldn’t join their conversation topics. However, they were really friendly. They always slowed down their speaking speed when they talked to me. I still can remember the first night when all of us had moved in. We sat in the kitchen and introducing ourselves. Everyone was so excited and looking forward to experiencing our uni life here.
When the term started, everyone started to get busy. Therefore, we only met each other in the kitchen in the evening. It was quite interesting to see my flatmates cooking different dishes, such as spaghetti, grilled salmon and burgers. It was quite interesting that they didn’t use rice cooker to cook rice. Instead, they boiled the rice in a pot, they sometimes added in some salt to speed up the water boiling too. They always used the oven to make dinner, which is unusual in Malaysia, because not every family has an oven in their house. Moreover, they were so curious about my Asian style fried rice too. Since cooking Asian style dishes requires a lot more time, they always saw me cooking in the kitchen. Thus, they thought that I was very good at cooking, but actually not XD.
Furthermore, we celebrated Halloween and Christmas together. Each of us would spend one or two pounds to decorate the kitchen and the front door. For example, we carved pumpkins together to make jack-o’-lanterns. We also made ribbons by ourselves using colour papers too. Moreover, before we went back home for a winter break, we managed to have a Christmas dinner. We grilled a whole chicken (since turkey is a bit pricey), and prepared pigs in blankets, potatoes, some water-boiled vegetables, gravy sauce, and apple crumble as our dessert. I really like the atmosphere, when all of us worked together and chatted with each other—it is like a family.
However, sometimes, we had conflicts too. For example, some of the boys didn’t keep the kitchen clean, eg. they filled up the sink with dirty plates and bowls that blocked me to wash my dishes. The sink might be clogged because they didn’t clean the sink after washing their dishes. Moreover, my flatmates always turned the music loud and invited their friends to our kitchen for a drink, but they didn’t clean the mess on the following day. Some of us might use the others’ cutlery without asking their permission. The dustbin in the kitchen was always full-filled with rubbish, because no one wanna change a new bin bag. I understand that everyone has different living habits, and more importantly, this was our first time living without our parents by our side. Therefore, it is normal that we would make some mistakes when we live with so many flatmates, and live independently. Fortunately, we had a good communication: normally the one who messed things up would clean up the mess after being remined in our group chat.
Overall, it was great to live with my flatmates last year. We had many wonderful memories together. In addition, I would say that it is crucial to be considerable and understanding when we live with different people. Living independently is definitely a great opportunity to learn and gain experience in communication, money management, food preparation and taking care of ourselves. This may be one of the reasons why I wish to study abroad: to learn to be mature, and become a true adult.
