kill! kill! kill!

ok, just a little update on the situation of my apartment, 1.5 months after moving in.

all the leaky pipes have been fixed and the burnt out light bulbs and faulty door knob replaced. i’ve bought my furniture and as you all know, my shipment has arrived.

i’ve yet to unpack everything, tho’. all the boxes that contained my kitchen appliances and food stuff are still unpacked, due to the cockroaches. that was why i’ve not taken any photos to be posted here, coz the pic would look so awful with all the boxes lying around in the living room!

and yes, the roach problem is still persistent, tho’ it’s getting better. i’ve been reading up a lot on ways to get rid of them, and in the process, have learnt quite a bit about these little buggers. i found that the species of roaches in the middle east are called the german cockroach, and are much much smaller than those we have in m’sia, which are of the american cockroach species. i also know that these german cockroach didn’t originate from germany. in fact, they don’t exist in germany at all!

anyway, i’ve seek the expertise of my company’s executive housekeeper for some tips on getting rid of these pests and he gave me some gel to apply to the corners of my kitchen. it’s said that when the cockroaches eat the gel, they will go back to their nest to die and when other cockroaches eat these dead ones, they too will get the poison into their bodies and die as well. it’s like a domino effect and the idea is to kill off the whole colony.

after applying the gel, i do see some dead bodies on my kitchen floor, but i still see some live ones walking about! i just pray that they’ve eaten some of these gel and are just waiting for the poison to take effect. or if not, hopefully they’ll come across the gel soon, or go back and eat their infected family members!

i’ve also read that boric acid are very effective in killing cockroaches too. then one day, as i was out shopping, i spotted a box of boric acid powder in the pharmaceutical section of a supermarket! frankly, if i were to look for boric acid, i’d have searched for it at the insecticide section. who would have thought i’d spot it at the pharmaceutical section? anyway, i’ve applied it around the kitchen and my whole apartment but as it’s in powder form, it’s quite difficult to apply. i used an old makeup brush to brush a fine layer onto surfaces, but if it’s a vertical surface, most of the powder would fall off. but they seem to work too, so it’s good.

then i remembered that my dad used to buy those chalk kind of poison for cockroaches and i realized that those must be boric acid too. i reckoned that the chalk form will be easier to apply, so i e-mailed my dad to help me get some. of course i didn’t let on how bad the situation is, just that i need some of those to get rid of cockroaches in my apartment. i guess my parents didn’t know how serious it is, coz they replied, “hahaha, those are dessert cockroaches. not sure if the chalk will be powerful enough!” and since sw would be going home to attend a friend’s wedding, dad can ask sw to bring them back for me.

and another friend, kg, mentioned that there’s a kind of cockroach bait that acts just like the gel as mentioned above. but i’ve been searching for it in supermarkets all over dubai and can’t find it! so i got kg to help me buy some and as he has some friends coming over to visit sw and sf, he got them to bring it over for me. so today, sw came over to pass me those packages!

5 boxes?? my parents must be seriously thinking that dessert cockroaches are harder to kill than those in m’sia! :D

2 boxes of baits, with 6 baits in each box. just what i need!

the WAR AGAINST COCKROACHES has begun!!! kill! kill! kill!