One of my long standing neighbour cleared up her house as her youngest married and moved out. She gave away furniture and things to me, her sisters, and left what the tenant wanted. I saw her moving car loads of things over about six weeks. Two lorries (trucks, called in America) came to take big items to the sisters and one son.
Interestingly, her daughter who moved from her first marital home to a condo did it differently. The first home was a one-storey town house with three rooms and two baths. It was rather small for one great-grandmother, grandfather and grandmother, husband and wife, two children less than five years old. The new condominium consists of five bedrooms and six bathrooms. The husband hired a 2-ton truck and moved a few beds, dining table and chairs over. All the inmates of the new condo have no wardrobe in their bedrooms. You see, in Malaysia we do not expect developers to provide built-in wardrobes or cabinets like in any average house in America. I was flabbergasted and asked my neighbour (that was before she moved out) how does she manage to keep clean clothes. Her own clothes she kept in a plastic drawer set. The children's clothes she keeps in baskets.
The shocking bit came when she revealed that her daughter did not move the washer to the new condo. So, how does she manage laundry? It was going to public coin-operated laundry shops, which was quite a craze lately, appearing all over the city and towns. Now that was unusual. This daughter of my friend holds two degrees. If I remember correctly, she holds a first class honours degree from a premier university in town. Why would she choose to spend two to three hours daily in a public laundry place rubbing shoulders with the poor? After all, her old machine still works in the old house an hour by car away from the new condo. Anyway, if she could afford to pay eight hundred dollars (M) per month for playgroup education for her five-year old, what is so difficult paying for the cheapest Japanese washing machine the could be had at about one thousand?
All the left behind things are still in the old house, they own the old house absolutely, perhaps they are a very busy couple. The old house is not let, neither is there any plan to sell it. That house is probably worth a cool eight hundred thousand dollars. If someone fancy the forest reserve behind it, it may fetch a rental of thousand one or two dollars a month. It is crazy to leave it to gather dust and untenanted. A fair bit of lost opportunity of cash income. But, well, millennials perceive things differently.
Yesterday, I told all these puzzling details to my eldest son. He sagely nodded his head and told me: too many old women in the condo. Well, there is old great-grandma and two grandmas. The new arrival of number three makes it necessary for the wife's mother to move in. Three children under five required three women to care for them while mum and dad go to work. Then after work, mum does not like to stay indoor suffocated with three old ladies, so she does her laundry at night, catching up with her facebook and twitter or whatever social media. Oh! I see.
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