(1245)Student housing

My thoughts turned to a young friend from Borneo who is currently studying on the island of Penang.
She paid more than a fair price for her room on the third floor. Since she needed air-conditioning, she puts up with $500 advance payment  for electrical usage. Once the balance dips below $50, she has to top up with another $500. All the electricity used in her room was metered.

The unbelievable part is that while she has no water heater in an attached bathroom yet she is not allowed to use any kettle in her room. For drinking hot water, she has to collect it from downstairs from a dispenser. There are dogs downstairs within the premise and these dogs are bathed in the downstairs bathroom. Since she is not fond of dogs, she is therefore reluctant to be downstairs more than a few minutes at a time. She thinks that the downstairs bathroom is too dirty for human use. Yet that is the only source of hot water available to her. For someone who is thin and with low immune system, she regularly catches colds or flus in Penang. She chose this house to stay in because she doesn't have a car as well as she is nervous about driving on Penang island. Some of the roads in the city centre are rather narrow. From her present abode, she could walk to college within five minutes.
The thing that she mentioned that brought goose bumps along my spine is: there are at least two rats in her building. One fat one that she regularly saw behind the water dispenser. On the very next day after she first sighted the fat rat, she saw a thin, small one staring at her from her air-conditioning unit above her bed. Imagine the first thing one looks at in the morning is a rodent, what a "charming" place to reside in!

There were quite a few of us at the gathering when she related her harrowing experience. Each one came up with one suggestion or another. None could work out for her as she placed quite a number of limitations on her daily life. So it does look like she will have to rough it for all three long years. And this is where a foreign missionary couple could rent a sea-facing condo for $1,200 monthly with four rooms and three baths in relatively good condition in Tanjung Bungah, quite a good neighbourhood to me. Half the condos in that compound were empty, crying for tenants, just one year ago.