Du Le was a very simple person, without a bad bone in his body.
He just didn't look very bright.
And his luck was pretty average, too.
Back in school, his grades were mediocre, and he had barely managed to get into a university.
But in the year he graduated, the school was acquired.
In other words, the university he attended ceased to exist right after stamping his diploma.
The school wasn't well-known to begin with, and after the merger, it vanished without a trace.
If you searched for it online, you couldn't find a single shred of information about it.
This made his diploma look even more fake than a counterfeit one.
He had spent years studying at a university, only for it to become a university that never was...
I often found myself at a loss for whether to laugh or cry at his incredible lack of intelligence and luck.
Regarding the move, since Sun Qirui wasn't moving, Du Le conspired with his family for a long time.
The final decision was: not to move.
His big eyes, glinting with what he thought was shrewdness, he earnestly tried to persuade me, "Feng Jie has been in Singapore for so many years, after all. She has roots here. You shouldn't move either. It's good to have a big tree to rest under."
I rolled my eyes at him so many times. "She tricked us with promises of high-paying jobs, scammed us out of our tuition fees, and is charging us rent that's several times higher than the market rate.
"She's a heartless scammer. What damn good is it that she's familiar with Singapore?"
But that simpleton Du Le was unshakable in his belief that he had a powerful connection to cling to, and he resolutely refused to move.
In the end, I moved by myself to a place closer to the school.
Luckily, I hadn't been in Singapore for long, so I didn't have many things. I was able to move everything in a single suitcase.
Du Le staying behind did have one benefit, though: he got to witness every single one of my predictions come true, one after another.
The more they were proven right, the more he admired me.
His admiration grew until it reached the point of utter prostration.
In the end, he still moved in with me.
Of course, that's a story for later.
The place I rented in Payalebar was a terraced house.
Housing in Singapore is a bit different from the concept back in China. It can be roughly divided into three categories.
The first is public housing, called HDB, which is similar to our apartment blocks back home. The land lease is for 99 years.
They come in various sizes and usually have elevators.
The storerooms also function as bomb shelters.
This type of housing is subsidized by the government.
As long as you have a job, your provident fund is enough to cover the mortgage.
Even if a couple both work as dishwashers, it's enough.
This ensures that everyone has a place to live.
The second type is the private condominium. The land lease can be 99 years, 999 years, or freehold.
These condos are very different from what we call "apartments" back home.
We call those small, pigeon-coop-like units with 40-year property rights "apartments."
But in Singapore, private condominiums refer to high-end residential properties, usually equipped with luxurious facilities like outdoor swimming pools and gyms.
The people who can afford these are typically high-level executives at large companies or business owners. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The third type is landed property, which generally refers to villas. This includes terraced houses, semi-detached houses, and detached houses.
The ones who can afford this type are either first-generation or second-generation wealthy.
In our eyes back then, people in the second and third categories were unequivocally rich.
They belonged to a social class that seemed impossible to cross.
A peak too high to scale.
Beings with whom we would never cross paths in this lifetime.
It wasn't until much later, when I saw many people around me break through that class barrier, that I realized it wasn't so insurmountable after all.
Of course, that's also a story for later.
As for my landlord, I wasn't sure which generation of wealthy he belonged to.
Because I had never even met him.
They owned more than just this one property.
This one was just for renting out.
They didn't live here.
They didn't even show up in person to collect the rent.
Maybe because they weren't short on cash, they weren't too particular about the rent amount.
Because of this, I was lucky enough to get through that financially tight period.
Now that the move was done, it was time for school to start.