The Philosophy of toilet-washing

Dude... I washed a toilet today, mannnn....

It was like, so fucking disgusting and shit? and you know, it, like, totally grossed me out? Duuuude.......... I can't do this. It's totally not cool...

Enough of the surfer dude. Honestly, washing a toilet is a humbling affair. An honest-to-goodness test of your humility. Oh you're too good to wash a toilet. Your dad's the mega-corporation director, what the fuck are you doing washing toilets, you ask. You can hire a billion maids(if the phillipines and Indonesia had so many people) to wash your toilet can't you?

Anyway. I was like that. For me, toilet washing ranked right up there with making out with Sailor-moon (this horrible monstrous Quasimodo of a girl in my university who liked to blind innocent young boys by dressing her disgustingly fat body in Japanese anime schoolgirl uniforms) and eating nato(fermented Japanese soybeans) as one of the things I least wanted to do. But today, I decided that my bathroom was too filthy to ignore anymore.

I'm temporarily living with my aunt, and I like my living spaces to be squeaky clean..... that is, if it's not me that has to tidy up. I managed to harass my lazy-ass, good-for-nothing, spoilt-brat of a roommate to participate marginally in our weekly cleaning operations when I was studying in Melaka and shared a room with him. The spoilt little boy had an even bigger aversion to manual labour than I did, and would prefer to live in a pigsty than touch a broom. Fortunately for me, he didn't really like my harassing and insulting him whenever I got a mad urge to clean the place (the room wasn't really big, maybe 4 by 5 meters, so it was actually quite easy) and would do all the 'sidekick' work(change dirty mop water etc. etc.) when we cleaned. He's still rubbish at actual cleaning, I tell you.

Anyway, I've had people clean up after me ever since I was born. And now, I realise *surprise surprise* that my aunty doesn't really care about cleanliness or tidiness. As far as I go to keep my own bathroom clean, she pours her dirty mop water into my bathroom instead of the back drain, causing all the tiles to acquire a layer of scum. My devil of a cousin does me no favours by refusing to flush after using the toilet, even after I ask him to.

"Flush already or not?"
"Flush already!" *cheeky little pukimak grin on his face*

I know better after so long, so I grab him as he tries to run, pull him to the toilet bowl and ask him what's that little pukimak turd doing floating around in my toilet bowl.

"okay lah okay lah."

So I let him go, expecting him to flush his own fucking turd, and the fucker bolts before I can grab him again! Bloody little motherfucker. In the next post you will read about me catching him doing that and smacking him or pinching him so hard he screams. And then I'm going to push him into a little corner of my room and keep poking him in the ribs with my finger and stepping on his toes, mentally torturing him until I'm satisfied. And then I'm going to smack him one more time, pull him to the toilet bowl and make him say sorry to the toilet bowl for not flushing, before smacking him again, and only then letting him go. Recalcitrant little turd.

But I digress, the point is that my expectations for a certain standard of hygiene and cleanliness is way above that of my aunty and her family. Being quite a tolerant little fucker myself, that's saying something. I will not tell her this of course, since I'm the one staying at her place and causing her whatever inconvenience that I can't avoid. I'm choosing to stay at her place, and beyond asking if I can help to clean, it would be plain fucking rude to tell her to keep her house clean.

I came back home from Johor a few days ago to discover fucking creeper plant stalks and leaves all around the bathroom! Along with it was a blue pail and a small plastic container filled with water and sand. I threw out the vines and took out the pails, but there were some rotten leaves that fell off that formed another stained layer on top of the scum already there. I tried to ignore it for a few days, but today I couldn't take it anymore and decided to clean the fucking bathroom.

So I flooded the whole disgusting place, took out the huge brown brush, a bottle of Jif, and got on my hands and knees to scrub it out. You have to understand how momentous this occasion was in my life, given my afore-mentioned dislike for cleaning toilets. All the while I was thinking god, this is so fucking humiliating, I'm cleaning a toilet, fuck this is really shameful, dammit, why can't I have an aunty that's anal about hygiene and would keep the whole house spick and span, oh gooooood, this is so fucking humiliating..... even though, get this, I was all alone at the time.

Now that I think about it, there's nothing so humiliating about cleaning your own toilet, it's just the logical extension of keeping your living space clean. But at that moment, for a person who really hates the idea, and would do almost anything to avoid it, it was.

It's a great way to keep you humble: Try telling someone with a smug face that you just cleaned a toilet. Hard isn't it? It also puts into perspective what mothers all over Malaysia are expected to do (except in the household that I live in *sigh*) without any appreciation. People say guys get the hard work bringing home the daily bread, and "all the girls have to do is clean house and cook." Oh no no no. Despite my wanting to believe this drivel and perhaps even passively propagating it, I realise sheepishly that I would much rather go out and make money rather than stay home and clean house(and the toilet). After all, if you bring home the daily bread, you have the power and the wife has no other choice than to listen to you, thus you think you're superior and that she's really so thankful that you care to share some of your money with her. But the actual truth is you'd rather do anything else then get on your hands and knees and scrub the wet dirty floor of a room that you shit and bathe in.

Now all I'm looking forward to is the day I can afford my own house AND most crucially, maid(s) to keep the place sparkling shiny clean and tidy for me. Another motivation to achieve great things fast: One less time I have to clean my own toilet. I only hope that I don't come home anytime soon to find dead plants and another dirty layer of scum water on my really squeaky bathroom floor........