Day 14 / Day 9: The inevitable

I’m soooo not a morning person.

We arrived at our hostel in Brisbane early in the morning, ahead of schedule (around 9am). Cherri had booked it last night and didn’t realise it was actually about a 45 minute train ride out from the city centre. We checked into the place as we’d already booked and Alice and Kate went to return our rental car as it was due at 10am (it would take about an hour to get there).

There was a man wearing all white in the room when Cherri and I went to relax in our room. He was crouched over in a corner and I assumed he must’ve been searching for something he dropped. From his attire, I gathered that maybe he was a navy dude and was spending a night in Brisbane on his way home or something. When he eventually got up, Cherri and I both saw written on his shirt, “Pest control.” That’s when alarm bells rang and Cherri asked him what he was there for and his answer wasn't what we wanted to hear. "Bed bugs."

As most people know, bed bugs are a huge problem because once they get in your stuff it’s very hard to eradicate the problem. They’ll live in your clothes, the seams of your bags and they’ll go with you when you leave. And they bite. Cherri and I decided we should see if we could get a refund and get the hell out of there.

This is about when shit hit the fan. And it was over nothing! To cut a long story short, we were debating whether we should extend the car rental for another day because we’d have to get all our stuff into the city. There was a deadline of 10am and the girls were going to get there just in time. We couldn’t make up our minds about the car so we told them to keep going towards the airport as there was another, much cheaper option of renting another car in the city. Then we found out all the cheap cars were already gone. We told them to turn around. They were stressed as they were almost at the airport. Then they decided to push on and just return the car (which ended up being a good move but added a lot of hassle and effort). A taxi back to the hostel would’ve cost about $50. So, they caught a train back and that took almost 2 hours. All of this in 35ish degrees Celsius heat. I’m not sure if you followed all that, but it was really not a big deal, but it became one.

Anyway, I think what I realised and what this all boiled down to is the different group dynamics between hanging with girls and boys. Maybe it’s just this particular group of girls and the particular group of boys that I usually hang out with – but for now, I think I’m going to generalise. Haha.

Conflicts and tensions arise from things that to me are no big deal. The other side to that is, I may be a bit “grr” about something that the girls pass over as totally normal. It’s odd. Definitely makes things interesting and tests your give and take-ness. One thing I’ve observed is that, girls talk so much – they are constantly chattering about something but ironically, their conflicts and tensions seem to arise from lack of communication. For example, there was an incident where there was a disagreement but neither expressed their views outwardly but both knew about it and both tried to cater for what the other wanted, thus making both unhappy. Very vague explanation, sorry. On the other hand though, I’ve been told off for saying too much such as, “Guys, let’s just calm down and take a deep breath.” This was said while we were shouting at each other over the phone this morning and I thought our discussion had simply turned into a shouting match. Rationality had gone totally out the window. But me saying that in the heat of the moment was not welcome. I understand I say things in infuriating ways sometimes and I'm too stubborn to change that.

I should say though, we cleared everything up and there is no bad blood or grudges. For serious!

When we finally found a hostel to stay at in town (this is after another 2 hours of looking around for one in the extreme heat on public transport), all I wanted to do was have a shower and sit in my bed and play FIFA and do nothing. That is exactly what I did until dinner time. After dinner was just a resumption of doing nothing. There were a couple of French guys in our room with us and they were very keen to practice their English on us. Not as keen as I was to practice my 3 years of French on them though.

We sat next to this socially awkward guy at the dinner table at the hostel.
Turns out he was from Hamilton (I picked his kiwi accent!).
I had to teach him how to use my phone camera.

Peak: Doing nothing

Pit: Everything until about 4pm and also the moment I realised I didn't get any photos with Meryem