So I was about to retreat to my room and put on some Maxwell to accompany me through the night, when I saw this wretched creature in the corner of my eye; this brown crusty shell parked nonchalantly on the wall, right beside my collection of CDs. With bated breath, I calmly walked out of my room and called for reinforcements. Mum promptly redirected me to our domestic helper, cos she too, was afraid of cockroaches and refused to be anywhere near it. Alas, my helper was in the shower, so I went to the next best person – my grandma.

Grandma, in her full gung-ho spirit took out the fly swatter, commanded me to take out that can of Raid and marched straight into my room. Of course, by now, the roach wasn’t there in the same spot, so grandma decided to spray Raid all along the side of the wall so she could lure it out. Two minutes later, this vile thing walked right into her trap and she did all she could to squash the roach with the swatter. Unfortunately, it was smart enough to perch itself onto uneven surfaces, so grandma wasn’t able to annihilate it immediately. This was a lucky break for the roach as it managed to limp its way into the tiny gap behind my table.

By now, our helper was already out of the shower and standing at my door, bemused by the commotion. She has always found it rather baffling that I have this fear of roaches and lizards, and constantly teases me about it whenever I engage her help in killing them. She then took over the deathly duties because grandma didn’t know how to get the roach out of the gap. We knew the roach had little chance of survival as it was already suffocating from all that Raid, but we wanted to make sure. Some “tools” were brought in, and after about 10 minutes of fussing over a tiny little pest, she finally managed to ensure its destruction by poking at it repeatedly with a little pole. Everyone then left my room feeling victorious, and left me feeling completely inadequate.

I’ll probably never get over my fear of cockroaches and lizards, haven’t been “attacked” by them when I was much younger. So, Dia & Nessa – I’m officially going to entrust these pest-killing duties to you girls if we really do end up living together. Cos now you know I’m just gonna run away and hide.