Day 20 - Pain; Goodbyes

When left to my own devices

April 28th, 2015

Wooziness and Pain. That's what the curtain drew back for today. I had made plans to help Ruby use my laptop to find a ride share, and go into town with Laurens, but both went out the window. I woke at 11am, plenty of time before I was supposed to meet up with Korean Mikaela in town at 3pm, I figured. I was going to try to meet up with Laurens, but even after eating a sandwich, drinking water, taking tylenol and pepto.. yeah, not happening. At 2:15, I was somehow feeling even worse than when I woke up. I shambled to the washroom, puked, and used the following reprieve (thank god for endocrine morphine) to shower, get dressed, and get the hell out of the house. I decided to pretend I was fine - to act and stand as if things were fine - to try and trick myself into being ok. It worked well enough to get me to a place of functionality.

I arrived at the meeting location to find she was not going to be there at that time, asking me to check back in a half hour. Bah. I walk to the hostel, hoping that Andy will be there, which he isn’t. Laurens is working the front desk and doesn’t seem to mind that I’m there, despite no longer living there (he told me I wasn’t supposed to be there the day before, but let it slide). I listened to Australian Dean espouse wisdom while I ate tomatoes and carrots I still had in the fridge. I called at 3:30 to find she wouldn’t be down until 4. I killed more time by speaking with some of the french guys, adding some more people on Facebook, eating the rest of the tomatoes (roma; 5 in total), and cleaning things I should have cleaned before I left.

Star Trek-ish Public Washrooms
(The door makes the same noise)

I get bubble tea from the place while I wait at 4, eventually calling her at 4:10 to find that she’s terrible with directions and has no idea how to find me. After collecting her, she gets a bubble tea and we wander around town, showing each other the various street art displays. She talks about how she misses her boyfriend and feels somewhat lonely because of it, but her situation is cream otherwise: working at a hostel (not cleaning, just the desk) for living, and a restaurant for actual income. Shit is buttahhh.

More Random Art

The plan is to meet Andy, and Yuzu at the green statue thing at 6. Andy is with a friend in Kings park (British Leanne). Yuzu is late due to the bus; Andy and Leanne meet me at the statue. We discuss geography and piece together some of the events from the previous night. They were checking out a souvenir shop when Yuzu called me to say she was nearby. I see her, get her attention, and we hug hello. 

I’m starving at this point. The group heads to a nearby place that has large portions for the price, leanne says her goodbye, and we head to sit down on some comfortable benches that I like. My god, so delicious. It's like $12 for this box full of fries/salad, lots of meat, and a couple unhealthy sauces. They catch up while I devour my entire meal, and we try to teach Yuzu the concept of Flattery vs Compliments. Much more nuanced than you’d think, so we end up concluding that they’re basically the same. She seemed a little dissatisfied with throwing in the towel, but I say we can return to it in the future at some point.

And he's off

We talk a bit more while some chavvy tweens are running amok around us. They do accidentally drop some sealed candy, which was nice. We head back to the hostel to get Andy’s stuff. On the way back, I tease Yuzu for being young looking, and she admits that she needs to grow up. We both disagree. In her normal, choppy, Japanese speech pattern, she says “I’m fucking 32.” Neither Andy nor I were expecting this, and did a double take. She wasn’t angry, I don’t think. It just seemed as though she was experimenting with the word “fuck.” Oh man, I wish I had a record of that, it was 100% unadulterated, pure gold. We tried to get her to say it again as if she were angry, but she couldn’t really sell it. I don't know that she ever gets truly angry.

The walk to the bus stop was about 75% of the way to kings park. Gah, my legs! My beautiful leggggs! We chew the fat until his bus shows up, and say our semi-permanent goodbyes. Yuzu is also going the opposite direction as me, so we hug goodbye and I walked the ~30 min walk home. It’s about 11pm when I return and people are starting to be awake back home (12h difference). I catch up with some people while attempting to write today and the day before so that I can actually be caught up and work on publishing more. 

It’s now about 1am, so it’s time for me to sign off. Nighty night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.