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Come February, I will be moving in with a family of Chinese immigrants — a mother who speaks no English, two toddlers and a father who works for a restaurant — in Long Island. With my meager writer’s budget, the only option I had moving to New York City was to share an apartment.

In Indonesia, it’s normal to live with your parents until marriage knocks on your door, or find some semblance of independence by renting a room in a boarding house. Living with someone you’ve never met is unusual. So the majority of young Indonesians overseas tend to either live alone or share a place with friends or family.

But for those with neither family nor friends at hand, and who are willing to risk living with strangers, the experience can be an interesting one.

Finding the right housemate is like finding the right lover. There is the quest for “the one” — the perfect specimen, the Holy Grail — followed by the courting. There’s the first meeting where potential housemates size each other up, the host looking for flaws and the applicant seeking to please and impress.

So how did I navigate the treacherous world of housemate hunting? I started by looking through classified housing ads. In Paris, I once found a lovely room in the suburbs leased by an Irish-Hungarian artist advertised in a free magazine.

In London, I used the gumtree.com Web site and found a Fulham flat occupied with nine Poles. In New York City, both locals and foreigners find Craigslist.org to be the best source for sublets and room shares.

The trick is to know where to live, which area of town is safe and where the nearest train station and necessary amenities are.

Here in New York, my preferred location is east of Central Park, where the green subway line runs from the Lower East Side to Harlem.

Narrowing down the search by location doesn’t mean the job’s done. I usually scan the housing ads carefully for deal-breakers: Is it a smoking household? Do they like to throw parties? Have pets? Do drugs? Some listings are outrageous, even for me, like that ad promising half-price rent if I walk around naked sometimes.

I, the applicant, must then e-mail my future housemates a description of myself and list reasons why I’d be a compatible addition to their household. If my “resume” pleases, then I’m called over to be screened at an interview with all the other potentials.

Like a first date, both parties ask questions, laugh at appropriate moments, and try not to appear too eager.

The words “I’m so glad you’re normal!” is a good sign. But am I normal? And are they? Fear of sharing a space with anyone psychotic often resides in the hearts of both the owner and the applicant.

When all that’s done — which can take up to a month — the fun part begins: discovering the people I’m living with.

Boys, I noticed while living with two in Australia, really do love their protein. In the mornings, I was greeted by the strong smell of bacon and eggs, the popping fizz of Coca-Cola, and bass music pounding the walls. I apologized often to our neighbors for both the stench and the sound.

Girls with curls prefer them straight. At least they did back in the ’90s when I was living in Los Angeles with three girls who stood before the bathroom counter each morning, tugging, pulling and heating their frizzy mounds into a perfection of straightness.

Living with strangers also means living with different cultures, clashing and compromising with them, befriending them, and ultimately, learning from them. I’ve learned how to boil an egg from a Puerto Rican, whip up treacle pudding from a Brit, bake a banana cake from a Filipino, and brew tea from a Kenyan.

From my nine Polish housemates in London, I learned about being committed to a dream. They had all come from the village as migrant workers joining a growing Eastern European labor force in hopes of earning enough British pounds to buy them a better life in Poland. The women worked as nannies and housekeepers, the men as construction workers.

Though my goal isn’t to buy a better life but to write, living with the Poles taught me that sacrifice and perseverance is needed to reach any dream.


Titania Veda writes a weekly column. She is a former features reporter at the Jakarta Globe.