1. If you throw a small, intimate housewarming party, remember not to order food for 20. You will spend the next three days eating leftovers. Burnt Chilly Rice tastes very sad after a while.
2. You cannot tell the bai you don’t know where your mom left the garbage bags. Instead you discreetly call up mom while bai is not watching and then pretend that you know exactly what is going on in your house
3.You need to set the rules for the bai. You are no longer bystander who puts her feet up on the sofa when the floor around you needs to be swept
4.You discover how wonderful it is to have a CD collection. And you discover how much you miss the background noise of your parents talking
5.You have the time to read every single page of the newspaper.
6.No one notices if you have not had a bath all day
7.The TV remote is under your sole and eternal control
8.You check your mobile ten times to see if there any SMSes and send up blessings for friends who have sent some. It reminds you that you are not a lonely old maid sitting atop a house in a building wondering if you should get a cat
9.You realise that keeping your fridge stocked involves more than wearing cool clothes and dashing off to grocery stores. Apparently you need to check your fridge to see what is in stock so that you don’t end up with enough tomatoes and cucumbers for a week but fall short on potatoes.
10. You have time to think – good thoughts, bad thoughts, strange thoughts, and clever thoughts.