I am losing track of day and time.
There is still so much to sort out it is sometimes pointless to look at the clock.
Project Housekeeper’s Room was completed over the weekend. More junk, lots of red packets, still no money, but it’s done and dusted.
Project Studyroom continues and I rope in some ‘English friends’. These are the gloves and sponge cloths I rely on to handle the copious cleaning required to keep my kitchen spick and span.
Sadly the gloves turn out to be less than useful in the humid weather. I can barely keep my hands in them for five minutes before it is soaked in sweat. There’s nothing I can do except to use bare hands for the cleaning.
The sponge clothes cope with the dust quite well but I should have brought a few more packets.
There is a set routine and I spend a few hours each day sifting and sorting the piles of paper, mounds of books and stashes of bags in this room.
Having only gone through 2% of the accumulated items, I have already found multiples of the following: magazines, loose sheets of paper, press cuttings, reports, charts, stationary, files, clocks, towels, calendars and diaries, overnight bags, small kitchen utensils, things that can be considered either decorative or tasteless such as jade carvings and crystal glass, framed pictures and scrolls, tea leaves, incense coils and 100 Carlsberg drink coasters (it is a real shame my father doesn’t have shares in Four Seasons Hotels instead).
Before I even attempted a start on this enormous task, I had to give myself a pep talk. Don’t look at anything too deeply, don’t ask why and most of all, don’t think.
However, after wiping layers of settled dust from yet another book, I come up with a profound thought:
Paper is cheap, sentiment is common, affluence is the enemy of the workforce
Like I have said to Mr Gochugaru on numerous occasions, I can always entertain myself.
Confucius, Aristotle, Descartes…I bet their fathers gave them a hard time with the stuff they hoarded around the family home. I bet they told themselves: turn mad or turn to philosophy.
What kinds of books do I find? Business books, obviously, and a few others that are surprising and interesting. I don’t want to keep or inherit any of them, and I will discuss why in a later post.
Finally, a bit about my other friends, one a hot and the other a really chilled Korean. That is to say, fragrant tea from O Sulloc and a great big Samsung fridge-freezer which dispenses ice and water 24/7. Both body and brain need to keep hydrated to continue with this increasingly challenging task.
