Peter is back

Peter broke his foot in Taiping on the first day he was there, even before he got to the hostel. It was dark and he stepped into a drain and how he has a fractured metatarsal, his left foot is in a cast. He was miserable in Taiping so I went to Taiping to pick him up and bring him back to KL and for another 2 weeks, he was staying with us. It was not easy because of these things:

1. He doesn't always want to eat what we're eating, so that's a bit inconvenient. I find this hard, but I try to deal with it one meal at a time. See Ming is more and more annoyed about this every day.

2. He also eats very slowly, which I wasn't used to at first, but now I find I am allocating more time for meals and also having to remind him we're on a schedule, and often, I still have to change my schedule because of how slowly he eats. And on top of that, because of how particular he is with meal choices, we often need to spend some time finding food that works for him. There's just no such thing as grabbing a quick bite with him.

3. Because of how particular he is, things always take longer than I think it would. I thought picking him up from Taiping would just be a quick one and we'd be back in time for lunch and I'd have time to catch a nap before I get on with the day, but there was so many requests and delays that we got back at 4:30pm.

4. He didn't want to get the regular arm crutches and was holding out for a hands-free crutch, but no pharmacy or hospital in Malaysia had heard of one. Meanwhile, he's scooting around on our dining chairs. He didn't really ask if he could do that. He just told me he was going to do it and he did it and of course my wife hates that he does that. In the end, I found a used hands-free crutch on Carousell, pickup in IOI City Mall. He wanted me to drive him there and see it and then think about it. Knowing Peter, he probably wouldn't be able to decide on the spot, and I would be committing to driving him there twice, which would not just be annoying to me but to the seller as well, so I just bought it and had it delilvered to the house. 

5. He likes to turn on all the lights in the house, even in the daytime. I think maybe he has some cataract and everything seems dark to him. I don't mind it so much, but the fact that he just assumes this is normal and didn't ask drives See Ming nuts.

6. He asked me if he could have visitors. I said ok. See Ming didn't want anyone coming to the house. So I took back my offer. Then See Ming told him he could have friends picking him up and taking him out to dinner. But at the same time, she told me not to give out our address, then she realised that's not going to work and so we decided that his friends can visit tonight. I'm glad that's sorted. At one point, I was getting messages asking for our address and I was going to say you cannot come because my wife doesn't want people coming to the house and See Ming said I can't send that message because it would make her look bad, and when I asked her for a solution, she said, "Just don't reply." I told her that's easy for her to say, but super stressful for me to have all these acquaintances sending me messages and I have to pretend for the rest of my life that I didn't see any of the messages. I sent a more diplomatic version that said my wife is dealing with a lot and she is not comfortable with anyone coming to the house right now, but in the end, I took that back and said visitors are welcome. I just get super stressed out when my wife tells me I have to do something or I can't do something and then I am not allowed to explain to people why because the real reason why is that she is a bitch.

7. Another inconvenient quirk of Peter's is that he has no phone line. He just uses Wifi for the Internet. He has no Whatsapp, no Grab, no mobile data, no phone number, and is generally unreachable when he is on the move, and he needs to be dropped off at an LRT or MRT station whenever he went to town (before he broke his foot), which is not easy for me as I drive everywhere and I am not familiar with the LRT and MRT. He claims he hates technology and therefore he doesn't have a SIM card in his smartphone. He didn't elaborate until one day when I asked him, he said he used to have a SIM card in his other phone for phone calls in Japan but his smartphone always just used WIFI. I took him to buy a SIM card and then took him on a separate trip to register and and he was so resistant to it and he asked "The question still is What can I do with a SIM card that I cannot do without it?" and I was too speechless to reply. The obvious answer was that he could install Whatsapp and Grab and be more independent and didn't have to rely on other people, but I felt like saying that would be rude, so I just said, "I think you need it" and put the card in there. Now he has Whatsapp but Grab still doesn't work on his phone is so old, it can only run an ancient version of Android that is not supported by Grab.

8. He hasn't been offering to pay for anything. See Ming feels like he's taking us for granted. We've been paying for all his meals as he hasn't offered to pay for anything. The straw that broke the camel's back is when I took him grocery shopping. All the items were his. At the cashier, we realise we forgot to bring a bag, so I went to get a trolley. When I got back, he was just standing there and hadn't paid yet, and the cashier was looking at us wondering who was going to pay. So I paid. At first I thought he's just an awkward guy who doesn't understand how society works, but I'm beginning to think he's just broke or miserly. 

9. He always has to drink tea at every meal. At first I thought he brought his own tea, but then I later found out he's been drinking from See Ming's tea collection. He didn't ask, He just helped himself to it. It's no big deal, but we often have to boil just a bit of water for his tea, and I feel like at every meal, I'm just having a simple meal and drinking water and when I ask him, he'd like some tea please and I feel obliged to oblige. Then one day, I took him supermarket shopping and he couldn't decide what tea to buy and I asked him, "What do you normally get?" and he said, "Oh, I don't usually drink tea." So all this while, he's been indulging in tea just because we had some. Is it me, or is that just weird?

10. He's always talking about what he's used in Japan, but we're not in Japan, so I wish he was more flexible. 

11. We're very cordial with one another but sometimes I find that when communicating with him, I have to hold back on things I would normally say to other people, in order not to over-commit to helping him.

12. I think the most difficult thing about Peter is he just presumes he is entitled to help. He tells me he is grateful for the help we have given him, which his actions doesn't seem to suggest he thinks along the lines of "these people are helping me, the least I could do is make it easy for them to help me." He needs tea (which he doesn't even drink normally, he has to have a hands free crutch, he takes dining chairs and scoots around on them without asking if it's ok, he requests for a different meal than what See Ming was ordering, he doesn't offer to help pay for anything, he doesn't really clean up after meals. He just took the "make yourself at home" and presumed to extend it for the duration of the 3-months the doctor said he needs to heal. He spends a lot of time bemoaning his fate and saying he is unhappy and I don't really know how to deal with that. I'd say he should see a shrink, but then he'll say he can't afford one and the conversation would end because I'm not paying for him to see a shrink. I can't even afford to see a shrink myself. 

We kicked Peter out of our house so that he could stay with Ron and Simmone in the other house nearby but Simmone and Ron has since left and he is there by himself now. And this week, we need him out of there as well because we need to get some renovations done in a hurry before we rent out the house next month. I feel like I helped him out some, at least financially, by providing him food for a few weeks and a place to stay for more than a month, and I wish I could solve all his problems but I also wish he had other friends who were willing to help.