A very odd day

So today, I decided to move into my new apartment. That involved signing out of my old apartment. Let me preface this by saying I'm no slouch. I cleaned my room thoroughly two months ago, when I moved out. I'm fully aware that that was two months ago, and things happen in two months. Also, I'm a single 23-year-old guy. I'm not a French maid. I man-clean. If I was dedicated, I'd find the PvP episode that describes what it means to man-clean something. Basically, it's an illusion hinging on not opening any cupboards, drawers, or closets. The apartment was, in fact, much better cleaned than that. There was fuzz on the carpet and dust in places, but I would think that's hardly surprising.

But the guy who checked my apartment must have been the biggest clean-freak in all of China. First, he tells me I have to vaccum the floor. As I said before, there wasthe occasional piece of lint here and there, and I didn't mind vaccuming the floor. But then he checked the drawers of the desk and the chest of drawers. And he pointed to the drawers in the latter and exclaimed, "This is dirty. There are hairs in it." I was shocked. I looked in it and said, stupified, "But it's close enough, right? It's pretty clean." And it was. There was a bit of dust in the corners, and, if I may say, perhaps four human hairs between all four drawers. I wish I was exaggerating, but in this case, truth really needs no embellishment. He just looked at me and said I have to clean it, asking whether I had any cleaning stuff with me. I reiterated, as I had stated before, that I had moved all of my stuff out of the apartment. As my room was as empty as a room can be (save, apparently, for fewer hairs than Patrick Stewart has on his head), it was fairly clear. But then he insisted that I use paper towels (where he proposed I procure some paper towels, or whether he assumed I had moved out everything but the paper towels, I know not). I instead used pieces of toilet paper pilfered from my roommate. As he was standing and watching me clean, he said, "Maybe that's too small. Maybe you need paper towels." I just said, with gritted teeth, "It will do." And it did. He looked again, and it was fine.

The apartment he moved me into was, I kid you not, a mess. The carpet was filthy, the paint was rotting off the walls in several places, and I found a bag half-buried in the finger-thick layer of dust behind the chest of drawers. There were large, bent, rusty staples sitting on the desk and one of the drawers in the desk had what I can only assume to be unusually large, chunky pieces of granola. The mattress had large, brown stains I can only hope came from coffee. When I pointed these out to him, he just shrugged.

The biggest irony? If my new apartment is in the condition it is in now when I move out, I'll be fined or forced to clean it again.

That means that, effectively, they're forcing me to be their maid.

What a world.