What about both? Well let me tell you...I've had the privilege to experience both in the past few weeks. Here's how it all started....

One night at about 3am in the morning I was awake in my room preparing for a class that I was going to teach the next day. It was then that I realized....I was not alone. I heard a little clicking noise coming from the region just below my bed (which was behind me). I turned around and BAM a roach as long as my index finger burst out from hiding and scampered across the floor to find another dark spot to hide in near my closet. Now you may have seen roaches before, but I guarantee you, this roach is on a whole different level. It was sleek, shiny black and compact, kind of like the Batmobile in that movie Dark Night. This thing moved like the Batmobile too with the quickness. I had no time to react as it went back into hiding. So.....I continued to work and forgot about it. Until it came back. Just when I thought it was safe to stop thinking about where it was hiding and how to get it if it emerged from the shadows again....it ran back across the room and under my bed again. I had mixed feelings of surprise, awe, and slight fear as I realized how big this thing was and that at any moment it could creep up onto my bed while I was sleeping and.......who knows, the possibilities are endless. Well, it might come as a shock to you that I decided to just forget about the roach and assume that I would never see it again. After all, I'd been living in the room for nearly 3 months and this was my first sighting. I finished my work and went to bed.

The next day after work and then teaching I returned home quite late, tired, hungry, and not in the mood. I flicked on the lights, and took in a sight that stopped me dead in my tracks. In front of me was the big mother roach from last night, sitting on my bed, right beside my pillow. It's keen senses alerted it of my presence, it took one more milisecond to enjoy the softness of my bed and then scampered off the other end of my bed and into the shadows. I couldn't believe it. It was then that I realized that this roach was real and it meant business. I was hoping previously that it was just a figment of my imagination. My friends, I have never been more wrong. I decided to take action. First of all, those of you who know roaches know about all the nasty dirty spots they like to frequent so I stripped my bedsheets and my pillowcase. Secondly I decided to start sleeping with my head at the other end of my bed, away from the wall where I saw the roach disappear. Thirdly, I slept with the lights on that night. I was determined to not share my bed with this roach. I made a plan to get a bottle of Raid the next day so that I could send that roach home to sleep with its ancestors.

The next day I spoke to one of my room mates who then presented a solution to my roach problems that would not require me going out to find Raid. She gave me a little container filled with white stuff that looks kind of like grains of rice. She said the roaches couldn't stand the smell and would leave me alone (I'd filled her in on my recent encounters). I gratefully accepted it and for the next couple of days slept soundly with the feeling of roach invincibility. Until about 3 nights later when the inconceivable happened....you guessed it. The roach came back. I had just flicked off my lights, when i heard a clicking sound on my night table, not far from my head. I slowly slipped my glasses back on my face, and reached for the light, very very quietly. I flicked on the lights with speed and looked, about 1 foot away from my FACE was the roach. Standing proudly on top of a bottle of  Pei Pa Koa (Chinese medicine) that I had just bought. It looked like it was challenging me and wanted to plant a flag on top of my bottle to claim it's territory. It was a magnificent yet horrible sight at the same time. I reached for a slipper but it was too late, the roach vanished into the night. It was then that I realized that the bottle of Pei Pa Koa was located right on top of the area where the 'roach poison' (that my room mate had given me) was located. So either this roach is hard body and made to last, or the ad on the roach poison container was making some fraudulent claims. I decided to resort back to plan A, a bottle of Raid.

Since that fateful encounter I've slept with a bottle of Raid beside my pillow, just waiting for that one chance to catch that roach slipping. I think it senses my intention though and knows that I have something for it so it hasn't emerged from hiding yet. One day, one day, it'll come out....and when it does, I won't hesitate. Believe me. I'm Michael Jackson bad.

Well, the story doesn’t end there. This is where it gets thick. Because this is where bigger problems than cockroaches get involved. Let me break it down to you. The Byzantine Empire was ravaged by a plague during the sixth century…then during the mid 1300’s this nasty plague called Black Death demolished approximately a quarter of the population of Europe…this plague then traveled to China where it supposedly brought the Yuan Dynasty to its knees…the most recent epidemic of this plague originated in Central Asia in the mid-19th century and killed millions of people in China and India (thank you Wikipedia). In case you don’t know much about obscure historical facts, we’re talking about bubonic plague people. And this disease is caused by fleas, which thrive off of rodents, especially rats. You can probably guess where this big build up  is going.

It was last night around 12am when I arrived home after a long day of work, doing a presentation, and trying unsuccessfully to buy plane tickets off Chinese websites with a foreign VISA card. Since it was late all the lights were off in my apartment. This is not out of the ordinary for me, so when I get home late I usually just brush my teeth, wash my face (…etc.) in the dark without turning on any lights so that I don’t wake anyone up. So that’s what I went about doing. I went to my room, dropped my bags and stuff, changed into my shorts and headed to the kitchen to brush my teeth. Little did I know that a little furry fiend was lying in wait for me.

Now you have to visualize this to really appreciate what I’m about to tell you. There’s a sink with two pipes in it, one hot and one cold. They’re on the right side of the sink. Directly across from where you stand, on the opposite edge of the sink, is  a little garbage bin. Now when you brush your teeth, you lean into the sink with your head right in front of the garbage bin so that you can access the water on your right. So basically your head’s in the middle of the sink, not that far from the garbage. Well….as I leaned in to get some of that precious water in my mouth, I smelled fresh banana peals emanating from the bin in front of me. I paid it no mind. Until I heard a rustle. As I was in mid-stroke with my tooth brush, moments after I had turned on the tap and started brushing, I heard the noise. I looked up just in time to see a fat furry shadow jump out of the bin in a hurry. Remember the lights were off, but there was enough light from outside that I could make out the shape of a RAT. Yes people, a RAT. My reaction was delayed by about one millisecond as I took in the sight and realized what was really happening. Then I bolted, like Usain Bolt-ed, out of the kitchen, because the rat started to run towards me. I guess we were both panicking. It ran towards me to get out of the kitchen but I wasted no time. In about 1.19 seconds I was out of there, I smashed into the door but that didn’t matter. Somehow my body managed to manoeuvre and get out of there. It’s amazing what your body can do in do or die situations (and yes it was ‘do or die’).

The commotion woke everybody up and in no time one of my room mates was asking me if it was a big cockroach. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t a roach because I didn’t know the Chinese word for rat at that time. Instead I had to act out a rat like it was charades. The water was still running so I surveyed the scene and tip toed back into the kitchen to lock off the tap. That night, I barely slept. You can usually hear the rats in the walls and the ceiling, but I never thought they were actually in my apartment. So to put it lightly, I was a little jumpy. 

I’ve learned since these testing experiences and adjusted my habits. As I mentioned earlier, I sleep with a bottle of Raid beside my pillow, face down, locked and loaded. And I now brush my teeth in the washroom instead of the kitchen if I get in really late at night. And although it’s been challenging and a test of my nerves, at least my skin’s a little thicker now and that’s the honest truth.

Thanks for reading peoples, much love.