Remembering 55CC

Occasionally I reminisce about my 4-year stay in the UK years ago - in solitude usually, or with MHH sometimes, but this time I feel like sharing in my blog, do bear with me. I’m remembering 55CC, short for 55 Cliveden Close, the house we rented in our final year in Cambridge. This was brought about by a combination of Mommy Lyna’s post on renting houses to target occupants (which was actually dated months ago) and an announcement I came across on a college university building a campus in Semenyih (and I remember thinking that it would be a good investment to buy a house in Semenyih to be rented out to students because there’s a number of campuses there and looks like there’s more to come). By the way, I like to trace my trail of thoughts this way.

Anyway, back to 55CC, most colleges at my uni guarantee accommodation in the first three (or at least two) years, but usually students are requested to find their accommodation outside in the fourth year, especially if the colleges are facing shortage of rooms. Sometimes the college can still provide rooms, but it’s the students themselves who choose to be more independent and looked for a place elsewhere with their own gang. My gang, came together naturally – me, A, L, and N. After the usual search and hunt, we shortlisted the houses down to two. A was away in the USA for a student exchange program, and L had to fly back to Malaysia because an aunt passed away, so I looked at the 2 houses with N, and preferred 55CC to the other one. We were quite amused when the owner, a Mr Fesharaki hold an interview with N and myself. He was also interviewing several other interested groups. The questions were easy. Do you smoke? Do you have late-night noisy parties? Mr Fesharaki chose us as his tenants.

55CC in winter
55CC is a double storey terrace house, but it’s not as big as the ones in Malaysia. I estimate the build-up area to be less than 1000 square feet. The rent was 900 pounds per month for a 12 months lease. 900 pounds is pretty expensive, but we didn’t really have much choice, that was the market rate for Cambridge. The house has 4 rooms, with the fourth being the only bedroom downstairs which was converted from a garage. It wasn’t difficult to choose rooms, because I wanted the smallest, N wanted the warmest, and L and A, well they didn’t really mind. How did we divide the rents? We sat down and each wrote a suggested rent (which I believe was all reasonable amounts) for each of the four rooms, compute the averages, and rounded them up. The house was furnished, each rooms came with a bed, a cupboard, and a desk. There was a sofa set, dining table, and tv, and the kitchen was fitted with a stove and washing machine. The living room saw many nights of watching Blockbuster videos, playing Uno and cho tai ti, ordering halal Flying Pizza, holding parties (jamuan), even majlis tahlil.

Other than sharing the rented house, the four of us also bought a car. The Nissan Sunny was as old as ourselves then, and costed us 400 pounds, or 100 pounds each. 100 pounds can buy a brand new bicycle, which is the main transport around Cambridge, especially for students. We still cycled to lectures because there’s no parking available for students at all, and we had different schedules. The car was used mainly to do grocery shopping in the weekends and to go to Arabic classes or other talks outside the city centre.

This entry is dedicated to A, L, and N (although only A reads my blog occasionally). To ten years of friendship - and more to come, insyaAllah ;)