New roomate vs. old roommate (part 1 of many)

I have been here for about six days, and I am already seeing a huge improvement on my way of living.

Let's start with my new roommate. He is a VERY chill guy. I asked him yesterday about friends popping over for a bit, and his response was "I have no problem with that, as long as you are quiet during the night", which I always am. I had to ask my old roommate if it was okay that someone came over for a bit. But here, I don't need to ask. Friends are welcome whenever they want to.

The second thing about my new roommate that's different: I am allowed to use the washing machine and the dryer. My old roommate forbade me using his washing machine, out of fear that I might break it. I asked him to show me how to use it, but he didn't have the time or the patience. So it's nice to have a new roommate that lets me use his washing machine and dryer.

The third thing: The kitchen. The kitchen here is huge! It makes it easier to prepare food. Where I lived before, the kitchen was cluttered with things he never used, or by empty boxes, which I suspect was set on display for everyone to see. I lived there for about three years, and over those years, I have seen him buy expensive things for the kitchen, like an optigrill+, air fryer and a coffee maker, only to never really use the things more than twice a month. The weird thing about this: My old roommate never drinks coffee, so why does he need a coffee maker? Furthermore, there was a coffee machine in the kitchen beforehand, so why is that suddenly not good enough? I also got extremely long messages if I had the audacity to not clean up the kitchen before I had eaten the thing I had cooked.

The fourth thing: My new roommate is not really bothered about expensive things, whereas my old roommate bought expensive stuff all the time. We're talking big TV, PS5, a big soundbar.. Recently, he has had an alarm system set up, because he's afraid that some people will burglarize his home, and make off with all the expensive stuff he has shown off.. Here's a tip: If you don't want people to know you have expensive things, stop showing them off.. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had something called "clap for the heroes", which was aimed at the people working in the medical industry. Every Friday evening, he would haul his two expensive speakers down into the courtyard, and blast them at full volume. The speakers are fairly expensive, but yet he showed them off. I have a sneaking suspicion, that if he won the grand prize in a lottery, he would DEFINITELY show it off to everyone.

The fifth thing: No loud movies/tv. Don't give me wrong, I like loud movies as much as the next one, but having it on full blast all the time is not doing anyone anything good. My old roommate had a tendency to blast YouTube videos on full volume, even if it's just a small how to video on setting up a tv or something else. I measured the distance from the tv to the sofa, and it was about 8 feet. You don't need to blast videos on full volume over that distance. I remember multiple times where I was upstairs, watching a movie or playing a game, when he would put on his entertainment. I had to turn my sound up, in order to hear anything.

And the sixth thing: No long winded messages or condescending conversations. My old roommate would often send a message that was a mile long, if I had forgotten to wipe off the kitchen counter. I remember one instance, where I accidentally deleted Minecraft of his PS4. I got a message that took me five minutes to read. In that, he listed the price of the PS4, and was VERY adamant in saying it was a Pro as well. He treated it like I was damaging his things, when all I did was delete a game by accident. Also, the way he spoke to me in those messages were not really what I would call nice. It was VERY condescending, like he was talking to a 5 year old child.

I am very glad to be away from there. More blogs to follow about my experiences living there.