If anyone accused me of being prejudiced against some of my clustermates, I probably wouldn't try too hard to deny it. Some can be infuriating sometimes, with their 'different' notions of hygiene and their sometimes blatant inconsideration for other people's things.
This rant stems from the incident this morning, when I went to the kitchen and found the fridge half open and the interior alarmingly warm. I tried closing it, but found that there was some physical obstruction preventing that. It was someone's tomato, in a package of tomatoes, stuffed onto a shelf that was too small for it, such that the package had drooped over the edge of the shelf slightly and a tomatoes got in the way of the fridge door. It looked like the fridge had been standing half open all night because of this.
How brainless, I thought, as I opened the package to examine its contents. The things looked strangely familiar – because they were in fact, MINE. Someone had taken my package of vegetables from a larger nook on a lower shelf and shoved it onto a smaller nook on the upper shelf, and didn't bother to ensure that it was properly placed, the result of which a tomato had been squished between the fridge and fridge door all night. The said tomato, upon closer scrutiny, bore all the markings of ill use, with signs of mechanical bruising and cracking on its soft skin.
That put me into a fit of ill humour immediately. I looked at the place where my package used to be, and sure enough, Linh's huge package stood in its place, as she and her little boyfriend had just been shopping yesterday and brought back armloads of supplies. I suppose rearranging items in the fridge just to make yours fit is justifiable enough, but not this blatant disregard as to how you stuff other people’s items. At least, make sure the fridge door does not hang there half open, barred from closing properly by protruding items.
I stood ruminating uncharitable thoughts against her at that point, then figured it would be pointless, even counterproductive to mention them to her. There are just so many incidents in which we cannot see eye to eye on with regards food handling and storage. She was wont to leave uncovered bowls of rice standing on the kitchen table, which the crows and mynahs would come in and peck at and then leave their own offerings in return when they were done with that very good meal. I have come into the kitchen early in the morning to find a bowl of jelly dessert leftovers sitting uncovered on the table amidst various dirty dishes, presumably from someone’s supper last night. Then a few moments later who should come in but Linh, and she would take up the bowl of last night's jelly and unconcernedly have it for breakfast while I concealed disgust beneath the blandest exterior I could. After one incident in which she discovered that some fruit left on the kitchen table had been pecked at by birds, she would store her fruit in the fridge; including the half eaten ones, which she would leave sitting conspicuously out in the open, and some time later cut more pieces off the exposed, and perhaps rust-coloured surface and have them directly. Either she's immune to food contamination, or she's been really lucky so far.
Our cluster leader has tried telling the cluster in general some general guidelines to kitchen hygiene, but sometimes, kindly reminders just aren't enough of a deterrent to some of those behaviours. Perhaps it's a remnant of their cultural belief, which I have read about in a novel before, that a dirty kitchen means wealth, and a dirtier kitchen, more wealth. Fortunately we have no-nonsense cleaners that descend on the kitchen every day to clean it, and even they are at their breaking point, what with the blackened, congealed grease on the stove and the uncovered food and bird droppings all over the table. I do heartily sympathise with them.
