Ah, the joys of hostel accomodation. If you want to really save money, stay in a place with 10 beds to a room. You’re bound to have at least one really irritating person that way. Let me introduce some of them:

Matt. Andrew. Jackson.
OK, you probably know these ones already. And if you don’t, I’m sure Andy will put up some pictures soon to re-educate you.

Guy in white shirt and pants near the door.
Very affable, with a quiet voice. Oddly, he’s from New York. He sits on the bunk above Jackson and cheerfully admits that he can’t tell the difference between us. He admires our ability to transform from lazy bums to clean, nice job-seekin’ people though. He was a bit surprised to find out that at least 50% of us were computer geeks. And that another 25% could juggle.

Smelly Man.
Our senior roommate sleeps under Matthew. Or rather, used to. Matt has since evacuated to the bed under Andy for one very sensible reason – Smelly Man is smelly. Of cigarette smoke. I’m not sure what he does with his ciggies but when he comes back in after a smoke the stench manages to engulf the entire room. As has in fact happened as I type this. He’s also prone to long political discussions with Guy in White Shirt and Pants, often concerning the U.S.

Bradley.
A newly 31-year old Australian. Tall, thin, with a high pitched voice but appealing manner, everyone in the YWCA seems to know and love Bradley. Except that after three weeks, he finally got a job the other day, and moved out this morning. This is a bit sad as you can never be too sure who’s going to take people’s places.

Mike.
A tall Canadian who was down to about two dollars when by accident he got himself hired as an electrician’s apprentice at the pub one night. This sound and simple strategy for job seeking is one that I found my subconscious warming to, but luckily enough of my brain remains to dismiss this as a one-off. Mike put his alarm clock radio a fair distance away from him due to positioning of powerpoints, and it fell to me to wake him up the other morning, when the alarm started blurting out awful static. He disappeared after one night however. Hopefully he’s not sleeping outside, as we’ve all pretty much decided this is fatal.

Demented Andy.
A french bloke with massive tattoos on one arm, who looks rather like Andy would, if

• the wind changed while he was playing Igor
• Someone beat the front of his face soundly
• He developed a reasonable level of psychosis
• He took to wearing bandanas.

This guy scares me, but luckily he appears to have moved out.

This morning, we met a new canadian construction worker. Our friend in the white clothes informed him we were the laziest Aussies ever. I may have to kill him.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, December 6th, 2003. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.