Persona - Commuter

Hello, you can call me Sam for short. I am a Malaysian female who is further studying in Singapore. At the same time I am also working as a designer assistant for a virtual company. I spend most of the time out in school or at work, so you can see I’m hardly home at all except during the weekends. I am not very social, which is the reason I bought a studio apartment so I do not have to share with a roommate whom I am not familiar with. It is easier for me to work in peace without getting constantly distracted.

Seeing as I am a foreigner, I have to work part time to pay the bills and some of the tuition fees (the rest are being paid off by my family in my homeland).  I never had much money in the first place so I was only able to rent a studio apartment as it is cheap. It was either that or the dorms. The dorms are more expensive but the fees can be split with a roommate, but it makes me uncomfortable when socializing with people.

I noticed that the studio apartments in Singapore are quite small, but honestly I do not really care. I am too busy to take note of the lack of space around me. However, when I do notice it, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the sheer lack of space. But other than that, I’m pretty much indifferent to it. I mostly keep my studio apartment minimalist to make the room comfortable. Again, although it is too small, regarding that I only come home to take a rest after work and directly go to my workplace in the next morning, the small size might not be a serious problem for me.

Plus living in smaller spaces means cheaper electric bills, since it takes less energy to light and cool the room. So it really helps with saving money. It also helps me in deciding whether to buy something or not, since I have to get rid of something else to make space. It is also easy for me to multitask since everything is within reach. I don’t have to go from one room to the other just to eat or get something for work.

However, sometimes, having a small space can be problematic.  I can be very messy and disorganized at times and that leads to having things around the place. It is very annoying having to walk through the clutter and it can be rather distracting whenever I am doing something important because my eyes tend to stray to the mess.

Then, there is the problem of where I am living in. I’m lucky to have lived near a train station so I can get to the campus or my workplace with little difficulty.  But there are times where I wished I could live nearer so that I do not have to take so much time to get from my apartment to the campus or the workplace. Then I could have gotten a bit more sleep instead of having to wake so early. I don’t really have much of a problem with my neighbours as they are mostly quiet. Even if they are noisy, I can handle it, since I am a heavy sleeper. Getting to sleep is the problem.

Then there is also the problem with having guest over.  There was once a time I had to bring my group over for a group discussion. My group consisted of 6 people including me. If you do not know, I am claustrophobic, which means I cannot handle tight and closed off spaces, which is also one of the reasons why I’m out almost all the time. So when I had them over, I could barely breathe. There were so many people in such a small space. It was almost suffocating! And if it is already this bad having 5 people over, I cannot imagine having more people than that coming in.  And sometimes I have to keep their itchy fingers away from certain compartment. It would be so embarrassing if they found out what was stored in there.