I hate cockroaches

Friday, October 21 - I hate cockroaches. I fear them. I loathe them.

Up until now, I've had very limited experience with roaches. I have never seen them in my house and very very rarely do I even see them on the streets. That all changed tonight though.

Jason and I went to pick up the keys to my apartment last night. Because it was after-hours, we had to pick up our keys from this other girl in the rental office at the building next door (the two buildings are owned by the same company). This girl clearly had NO IDEA what was going on - not only did she give me the wrong set of keys, she was also somewhat annoyed (I guess she wasn't having a good day?). Anyway, we went up to check the apartment. First impression: strong paint odour but very nice. They repainted my kitchen cabinets white, so my kitchen looks brighter than ever. And then I opened one of the cabinet doors...

Out came a bug. I didn't know what it was because before we could catch it, it had disappeared.

Ok - I told myself - one little bug won't kill you. I initally thought it was a spider.

I went into the bathroom and was about to close the door when I saw another "creature". This one was lying on the floor. There was no doubt about it. It was a roach.

I didn't have time to react because when I turned around, there was another big one crawling along the tiles above the bathtub. Jason managed to kill both and flushed them down the toilet while I just stood here in shock. Jason suggested that I check out the closets for possible bugs...

Opening the linen closet door - another one came crawling down the shelves and into a hole down in the floor.

Four roaches within a span of minutes. Not a big deal you say ? but as I remember what my friend Erik once said, behind four bugs are possibly 400 or 4000 of them, hiding somewhere...

The whole experience left me pretty disgusted (and pretty disappointed) - mainly because 1) I have never seen so many roaches before and I'm not used to seeing them 2) I had not expected roaches or bugs of any kind 3) there's no way I can move in this weekend now.

So we left the apartment and I called the rental management office, leaving a detailed message of how I had found roaches in the apartment and I need to get the place sprayed. The whole time, I kept thinking about the place as being infested.

On Friday, I was still a bit distraught and I skipped my conference yet again. I went back to my building to talk to the rental office. The lady was nice enough and told me the pest control company would come on Monday. She also gave me the right set of keys finally.

So now it looks like I won't be moving till at least next weekend. That means I'll stay at home for another week. Frankly, I don't mind. The whole roaches experience is giving me the creeps.