House of the disappearing pants

3Willings
1) OneRepublic - Mercy
2) 600mL Pepsi Max for breakfast
3) Kingdom Hearts 2

My brother and I said goodbye to the house we stayed in for most of 2007.

It was our little home away from home (even though our parent's house was just a three minute drive away).

Our exuberant lifestyle meant that it was better to rent the house and go our separate way.
So my brother has moved-in with his partner and I've moved back home.

Now as I think back, living away from the parent's watchful eyes had its ups and downs. Yes, I got to do what I want, but I was also responsible for taking care of myself. So I had to do my own laundry, shopping and cleaning up. I had lots of house jobs, albeit small ones coz I’m pretty low maintenance (so I’d like to think).

At home with the parents is a communal style of living. Chores such as dining, laundry, shopping and cleaning-up are done together. We all try and do our fair share (try is the operative word).

The thing I liked the most about living away from my parents was being able to control when, where and what I had for dinner.

I really enjoyed trying out the Men's Health recipes (my favourite was where you use salsa chip-dipping sauce and you simmer that with chicken - what a surprise dish that was). Its so hard to eat healthy or gourmet when mom owns the kitchen.

Sometimes, when I'm especially hungry, I make my 'Will's bowl-a-rice special'. This recipe has cooked rice thrown in a baking bowl with ham or chicken or whatever meat I can get a hold of. Add some peas and a fried egg (the runnier the better). Mix to a slimy consistency and squirt a bit of ketchup for colour.

Then I eat with an especially large spoon while watching TV.

It’s so Korean, I love it.

*Warning! Have a glass of water when having this dish. I nearly choked twice because I was shovelling too much food to my mouth.

But apart from this, walking around naked, leaving the toilet seat up, the numerous hooker house calls and the messy house parties, moving out didn’t really have that much pros for me.

Im sure its different for some other people. But not for me.

What I definitely won’t miss was my disappearing pants!

See my brother has this really really really really really REALLY annoying habit of not buying work pants. So when he realises he hasn’t got any pants for work – he steals mine!

Figure this equation out for me. Every year, for the past five years, I’ve bought three or four pants for work.

So surely I had about fifteen pairs?

No sir.

I had two pairs.

These two pairs I kept specially clean. If one got dirty, I’ll only have one left. People at work would notice me recycling the same pair for the whole week (Its not so obvious if I alternated the two pairs).

One time, I asked my brother if he knew where my pants were. He said he didn’t know.

But checking his wardrobe, I find four pairs with the initials “W” on the inside pockets. His excuse ? “Ooops..”

GRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRR!!!

This didn't just happen once or twice.

This happened EVERY WEEK!

I was close to tears when I was telling my cousins about my brother’s pants stealing habit. It really was very frustrating.

I have bad dreams about pants now.

Its like two people in an elevator and one smells flatulence. You both know who did it, but the guilty one just doesn’t’ want to admit it!

Now that I’m living away from my brother, my collection have grown back to a healthy five pairs of pants.

There were more ups and down to living away from home. I was gonna go on about the neighbors and very convenient two minute drive to McDonald's.

But now I grow tired after thinking about my disappearing pants.
So depressing that was.