Dear Ms. XXX
I would first like to thank you for helping me get an apartment ({Address}) even before my arrival in Amsterdam. It was quite comfortable to move into one on the very same day as my arrival in the city. However, there are a lot of problems in/with the apartment that I had hoped I would be able to adjust to but they seem to be getting even more menacing every day.
The first major problem is the level of cleanliness of the apartment. It's pretty evident that the incumbent resident (as I understand, he has been living here for around 3 years) has not taken care of it at all in at least the last 1 or 2 years. First of all, as one enters the apartment for the first time, a certain kind of stench hits one's face. My room, which I had hoped would be fairly clean, was covered in dust when I arrived. In fact, the dust (along with my flatmate's nails) has got embedded in the carpet and is stuck to the floors and woodwork in the whole apartment, so much so that even after spending 2 hours to vacuum clean the apartment a mere 1 week after my arrival (that I believe should not have been needed, since the incumbent resident should have kept it habitable, but it was not so), I could not remove the dust. There were cobwebs all around, it still feels dirty to walk on the kitchen floor without shoes. The kitchen sink looks fairly dirty, and the bathroom is beyond recognition. The toilet bowl is almost completely brown in color (I assume it was originally white), and the walls look so dirty and slimy that touching one makes me feel like having a shower. The floor is no better, and even the string to switch the light on/off is almost completely black in color. The gas stove is all covered in grease (of course it can be cleaned, but I suppose my room mate expects me to help him with cleaning of the apartment), and the balcony outside my room is home to 2 pigeons who have left no stone unturned to make it look like a zoo. I tried to shoo them away, but it turned out that they have laid eggs in their nests and are now busy incubating them. This makes me feel guilty about the idea of throwing their nests away and cleaning the area, even though they disturb my sleep every morning with their cooing.
Add to that the fact that the whole apartment in itself is kind of falling apart. The bathroom/toilet doesn't boast of a wash-basin that compels us to wash our hands in the kitchen sink, and there are leakages in almost all the external pipework. The pipe for the shower gets detached at will and it requires some skill to put it back. Besides, the walls are too weak to nail/screw the holder/hanger for shower head in place. It has already broken off from 3 positions on the wall. The walls in rooms have been destroyed by the water leaking through the roof, and even the wall paper is coming off them. There are various holes/crevices in the doors and windows (one of the windows doesn't even close well), that make the apartment fairly cold during the night. The floors creek when we walk, and they are broken at many places with several irregularities that make walking on them seem like an effort. Even the carpeting is so old and obsolete now, that while trying to vacuum out the dust, it was only the carpet that was removed off the floors. The electric circuits are also rather scary, since every time I plug an instrument in, they produce fairly intimidating sparks (my guess is those water leaks might have a role to play in that). The buzzer to open the main door to the building doesn't work either. The roof itself is coming off the ceiling and is too weak. Last week while cooking, some smoke set off the smoke alarm and when I tried to press the reset button on the alarm, the system got detached from the ceiling (because the roof tiles could not support the nails/screws) instead of shutting off the alarm. I am too scared to attempt to attach it back lest I should have the whole roof tile breaking off.
I apologize for any rudeness or uncouthness I may have exhibited in this email, but as you might understand, sometimes I don't feel like coming home because of aforementioned problems. I would really appreciate if these points could be addressed, even more so if I could move into a new apartment. I do not know if it was just a coincidence that I got an Indian room mate, but I would like to point out that I absolutely have no preferences regarding the nationality, ethnicity, sex or degree of enrollment of my flatmate. I again apologize for any offensive language I may have employed, and would like to clarify that I don't mean ill against anyone, not even my flatmate - I guess that's just how he likes to live but I am not comfortable with this. I hope you can help me with this.
Thanks
Sincerely
I would first like to thank you for helping me get an apartment ({Address}) even before my arrival in Amsterdam. It was quite comfortable to move into one on the very same day as my arrival in the city. However, there are a lot of problems in/with the apartment that I had hoped I would be able to adjust to but they seem to be getting even more menacing every day.
The first major problem is the level of cleanliness of the apartment. It's pretty evident that the incumbent resident (as I understand, he has been living here for around 3 years) has not taken care of it at all in at least the last 1 or 2 years. First of all, as one enters the apartment for the first time, a certain kind of stench hits one's face. My room, which I had hoped would be fairly clean, was covered in dust when I arrived. In fact, the dust (along with my flatmate's nails) has got embedded in the carpet and is stuck to the floors and woodwork in the whole apartment, so much so that even after spending 2 hours to vacuum clean the apartment a mere 1 week after my arrival (that I believe should not have been needed, since the incumbent resident should have kept it habitable, but it was not so), I could not remove the dust. There were cobwebs all around, it still feels dirty to walk on the kitchen floor without shoes. The kitchen sink looks fairly dirty, and the bathroom is beyond recognition. The toilet bowl is almost completely brown in color (I assume it was originally white), and the walls look so dirty and slimy that touching one makes me feel like having a shower. The floor is no better, and even the string to switch the light on/off is almost completely black in color. The gas stove is all covered in grease (of course it can be cleaned, but I suppose my room mate expects me to help him with cleaning of the apartment), and the balcony outside my room is home to 2 pigeons who have left no stone unturned to make it look like a zoo. I tried to shoo them away, but it turned out that they have laid eggs in their nests and are now busy incubating them. This makes me feel guilty about the idea of throwing their nests away and cleaning the area, even though they disturb my sleep every morning with their cooing.
Add to that the fact that the whole apartment in itself is kind of falling apart. The bathroom/toilet doesn't boast of a wash-basin that compels us to wash our hands in the kitchen sink, and there are leakages in almost all the external pipework. The pipe for the shower gets detached at will and it requires some skill to put it back. Besides, the walls are too weak to nail/screw the holder/hanger for shower head in place. It has already broken off from 3 positions on the wall. The walls in rooms have been destroyed by the water leaking through the roof, and even the wall paper is coming off them. There are various holes/crevices in the doors and windows (one of the windows doesn't even close well), that make the apartment fairly cold during the night. The floors creek when we walk, and they are broken at many places with several irregularities that make walking on them seem like an effort. Even the carpeting is so old and obsolete now, that while trying to vacuum out the dust, it was only the carpet that was removed off the floors. The electric circuits are also rather scary, since every time I plug an instrument in, they produce fairly intimidating sparks (my guess is those water leaks might have a role to play in that). The buzzer to open the main door to the building doesn't work either. The roof itself is coming off the ceiling and is too weak. Last week while cooking, some smoke set off the smoke alarm and when I tried to press the reset button on the alarm, the system got detached from the ceiling (because the roof tiles could not support the nails/screws) instead of shutting off the alarm. I am too scared to attempt to attach it back lest I should have the whole roof tile breaking off.
I apologize for any rudeness or uncouthness I may have exhibited in this email, but as you might understand, sometimes I don't feel like coming home because of aforementioned problems. I would really appreciate if these points could be addressed, even more so if I could move into a new apartment. I do not know if it was just a coincidence that I got an Indian room mate, but I would like to point out that I absolutely have no preferences regarding the nationality, ethnicity, sex or degree of enrollment of my flatmate. I again apologize for any offensive language I may have employed, and would like to clarify that I don't mean ill against anyone, not even my flatmate - I guess that's just how he likes to live but I am not comfortable with this. I hope you can help me with this.
Thanks
Sincerely
{Yours Truly}
I hope you enjoyed it. Comments are welcome.
