HOW TO LIVE WITH A TAMAGOTCHI

Well… well… well… there you are my sweet, diligent and behave pupils of mine. Today I woke up with mutation in my eyes or “muta” in short. I feel like Japanese so I crawled out from my beautiful bed and walked geisha like to the fridge and look for something to eat, I found a three days old sugar-raised doughnut, it’s hard as wood so I made hot chocolate and dipped the hard bread with it and ate. I’ve read my horoscope, it warns me about not swimming in a shark infested waters… strange… I’m in a land-locked country.

Well, anyway I had the best weekend to date thanks to Ms. Frida for the good time and the wonderful dinner… and the unexpectedly wonderful massage I had last Saturday night. I enjoyed playing “Taboo” it’s good for titillating your already waning lust for life… charing… hahahahaha…

Two weeks ago my horoscope told me that a man with chinky eyes will come to me and change my life… huh… of course you know me I always believe in everything that would change my life. Anyway, the next day I received a call from Shun asking me a lot of stuff. It’s kind of strange for Shun, normally we just see each other during lunchtime at mother Helen but never bother to talk to each other. But this time he actually asked me to go out to Blue Chilli but I declined the moment he said that his taking someone with him… I don’t want to be the third wheel on the scene you know.

But in the end the strangeness finally reveals the truth. He wants to live with me; he wants to rent my other empty room. I don’t know how he knows that my empty room is available. Of course before I answered “I do” I go around researching about him. Shun is a pure breed Japanese with a beautiful “manga” eyes. He hails from Hokkaido and it’s his last two semester studying here in Cambodia before he heads back for Japan. I think his into Business Administration. I don’t know but he seems so mysterious to me and that maybe is the reason why I said “I do” (God I should really be taking that marshmallow test again which I always fail… I always say yes easily… sigh poor me) aside the fact that I needed the room to be rented for extra “lapad”.

He gets to know about my room maybe from mother Helen, He is a good person according to mother Helen which by the way won the “The most outstanding Filipino in Cambodia” presented to her by the Philippine Embassy here in Phnom Penh. I’m happy for her she really deserves it. Well, anyway… yeah I know people will say here I go again. But so far I have good intuition with this, I’m hoping. I know me and Miss Deborah didn’t fair well as housemates before but we’re already over with it. We’ve come to terms that Divas should never share a flat for it would be doomed. However I do have good housemates before that lasted for years specially the one in Teacher’s Village Q.C. and have good flat-mates here in Phnom Penh, I missed Kuky and Daniel as well.

Okay of course everyone remembers what a tamagochi is. It’s that handheld digital pet which was introduced to the world from Japan during 1996 and evolved until now. The word Tamagotchi is actually a portmanteau* meaning it’s a combination of a Japanese word “tamago” which means “egg” and the English word “watch” so it ends up to “tamagotch” but its awkward to listen so they put an “I” at the end to form the word “Tamagotchi”. But whatever is that meant to you, for me as a diva “Tamagochi” pertains to a “housemate” or to be precise a Japanese housemate.

Okay listen you dummies specially the one sitting at the back, get your pen and notebook and copy everything from the board… sigh… teaching is such a noble work… sigh…

How to live with a Tamagotchi

Prepare yourself… as an independent person living with someone is quite difficult. We with our mammalian brains are very territorial. This is very evident with our four footed cousins. So prepare yourself not to defend your territory but to open it up to someone. I know this well from past experiences.

Investigate… you don’t want to end up as another single white female, don’t you. So better to go around and ask people. Ask about his or her background from people who knew him. Ask the school, office, the restaurant he or she frequented. And finally interview him no matter how you can… don’t worry his doing the same thing for you.

Set the rules… This is quite easy because it’s your territory. Set all the rules you like as long as it’s humane, from the locking of the gate to accepting guests, to the division of basic utilities, water, electricity, gas, cables, and internet, and one more thing show him the picture of the person you don’t want to be invited or seen in your house.

Ask for documents… from passports to visa, school IDs, number of the office and give a copy to your landlord if you’re living in an apartment, give it to your lawyer if you own the place and if you don’t have a lawyer keep it.

Put in papers… again to make it official put it in word form or contract. This is the difference between a friend and a housemate because you can make it in papers. With friends it’s difficult because you have to consider a lot from the way you say it to the emotional baggage’s in the process and so on and so forth… yeah… yeah… you know what I mean.

Live normally… now that his living with you, don’t act like a controlling motherfucker or a bastard father you’ll end up cleaning his or her ass. You’re not his mother or father but his housemate. Just notice what you don’t like about him or her then in time you can tell them in a nice way.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking dummies. Don’t worry I used to live for seven years with five divas before… okay that’s it for today… don’t forget to feed your Tamagotchis.

*portmanteau is a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meaning like for example: the words “do + not” = don’t, A single word that represents the meaning of combined words…. O tandaan nyo yan ha…