My first half day

Last morning, at about 3am, I was talking with my housemates. I was narrating to them my horrible firsts here in Australia. After groaning and they laughing till I almost cried at the terribleness of my experiences, E remarked that it would be a great idea to record our interesting days here in Brisbane where we only club and sing and hold house meetings at 3am. +_+ Right…

Anyway, I think E gave a very good suggestion right? So here I am, blogging about my first day in Brisbane. It was on the 9th of July, 2005. I had just spent a whole 30 minutes trying to get the keys to my room. What was the problem? I had stupidly arrived on a weekend. Even though it was 9am, there was no one around. Apparently, it is not the norm to work on weekends here in Australia, except for some of the shops that open until 3-5pm. So be warned! DO NOT ARRIVE ON A WEEKEND!!! Anyway, there was supposed to be someone around to pass me the keys but no! He did not answer to my pleading calls! The driver who drove me over and was supposed to see to my safety was fast losing his patience. He banged the phone, and I stupidly, apologized like mad even though it was not my fault. Bah! Blame my excellent upbringing. Hahaha… But he was not pissed at me lah… He had to drive other students to their lodging also.

Anyway, we went to the intercom of the building where I was SUPPOSED to be taking at shower at that time, and called up my unit.

喂喂喂, 你在不在?

Nothing. Bah bah bah! Finally, the guy answered his phone and arrived to pass me the keys and helped me bring my luggage up the stairs. Oh! Talking about luggage, I was struggling and running after my luggage while it was on the belt at the airport. I looked like an ass lor! Then this guy saw me running then he more hiong than me. He sprinted past me and lugged himself at my suitcase, heaved it up, turned it one round and bang! There it was, right in front of me. WooOoOO!!! My hero. Clasping my hands together in gratitude, I fervently thanked him. Before that, I was contemplating whether I should wait and wait and wait until everyone has gone then collect my luggage. Well, back to the story.

So I reached my place and saw the house that I would live in for the next 5 months for the first time. Wah! Bigger than what I thought leh!

G, E and N are my housemates. You can't miss me right?

Then hor, I felt a sharp pang of hunger. Die! NO FOOD!!! And according to what the guy said, there’s no shops that’s opened here on weekends. *sobs* Then I heard some noises. Hmm… I thought there was no one around when I came in? I walked out tentatively, wondering if it was going to be my first excitement in Brisbane. A WOMAN WITH LONG BLACK HAIR!!! She was rushing into the toilet, then I thought to myself: What a friendly housemate! Hahaha… It was E lah. She was sick and could hardly stand (That’s what she said during our morning conversation. Wu ngai bo? :P). Then I thought that it was great to have someone around; at least I know where I can get some food. But sadly, E wasn’t in the best of mood to entertain me. You can’t blame someone whose room spun around her when she stood up, can you?

Of course, the most important thing I had to do was set up my computer. TMD! NO FRIKKING INTERNET! What the hell?! Isn’t it supposed to be free like NUS and using wireless? What stupid things do I need to connect to internet? And I had to let my parents know what I have reached safely! How how?!

I whipped out my handphone only to realize that I pathetically did not have auto-roaming activated. How clever can I get? Room phone? Sure! But there’s no credit in the phone and I had to go to the office to top up phone credit. Guess what? Yep! It’s not opened on weekends! How nice! So I had to swallow my pride and knocked on E’s (who apparently did not want to talk) door and asked her how to get the internet up. She was very helpful; lending me an extra cable and coming to help me set up but to no avail. Why leh? Because I had no credit and I had to top it up in the bloody office that was so conveniently closed! There’s supposed to be a free internet account from school with a quota capped at 150MB but guess what again? I WAS NOT ENROLLED! I have to go through the whole orientation thing to be considered a student. What? I paid school fees right? Anyway, this blog is not about the idiosyncrasies of the administrative world.

So, no phone, no auto-roam, no internet. Telepathy? Sure, but I think my range is only 1km max and I was thousands and quadrillion of kms away from home. So an idea hit me! Try sms! Yay~ I could finally breathe when the sms got through and I msg a few key people. But I still wasn’t sure if they would receive my msg and so, again, thickening my skin, I asked E if she could let me use her internet account to msg my brother (whom I hoped was online and thankfully, was) on msn. If you had received my msn msg on that day, you now know how horrible the situation was!

Finally, I could shower and that was like the first thing that went well. After coming out from the shower, I smelt something cooking and all the saliva rushed into my mouth again. I was still hungry. E was at the stove whipping up pasta. PASTA!!! She offered me some but I declined. I didn’t want to appear greedy and besides, I wasn’t sure I could stop after “some”. Poof! E was gone, back into her room. Die! Still haven’t asked where to get some food.

Haiz... I opened the fridge and contemplated whether I should steal some food. Nah… I was going to stay with them and I can’t afford people poisoning my food subsequently. So I dragged myself back to my sparse room. I looked at the bed, it looked at me. My third contemplation of the day was whether I should sleep the hunger away or maybe buy some food from E. But it struck me. After sleeping and hopefully waking up, I would still have no food. So weighing the consequences of dying on my first day and that of having a bad start with a housemate, I decided the former was less dire. Besides, I would win her over with my crappiness soon, assuming she wasn't a ninny-putt (read: crappophobic and no, she’s not). Yes yes yes… I knocked again to inquire about how to get some food.

So she told me I could take a bus to this place called Hawken Dr. You know how I looked like? I was holding a pen and paper in my hand, asking for directions to the nearest grocer and taking down notes! What I wrote was “411” “Hawken Dr”. Yay! Time to get food! So I went to my room, gather some stuff like torchlight (Daddy’s order because winter day is short) and wore my track shoes (Mummy’s order because it was cold). Yes, I officially look like a nerd. Never mind. I can go shopping soon but that’s another story. So in broad daylight at 1pm, I placed a torch in my bag and wore track shoes to take a bus.

After leaving the house, I was stumped. Which direction do I go? E just told me to go to the bus-stop and take 411. Where the hell is the bus-stop? Die until cannot die. Luckily, I saw this good-looking guy walking past. Sad. How could I bring myself to ask for directions to the bus-stop in my cringe-worthy looking state? I could because it was a life or death situation. The chocolate Raymond and Linda gave me before I left was fast dwindling. This was our conversation.

Me: Hi. Can I know where is the bus-stop?
Him: Bus-stop?
Me: Yeah… ermm.. you know, to take the bus? (Right, he looks stupid. Nice-going girl!)
Him: Oh! It’s easy! Just go up the slope and you will see it.
Me: Slope?
Him: You know, the incline there. (Points to slope. Now I AM stupid.)
Me: Oh… And the bus-stop is there?
Him: Yes! You just go up, turn right, turn left, go up and you will see it.
Me (fervently hoping he would be kind enough to bring me there): Ermm… Ok… Thanks…
Him: No problem! Have a good day! (Lumbers off into the sun and gone from my sight forever. Haiz…)

I guess I was lucky I did not take down notes about the directions and appear to be a bigger klutz because you CANNOT miss the giant bus-stop. 黄熊熊 and Retarded Kangaroo will show you why:

黄熊熊's paw is pointing to the bus-stop at Chancellor's Place and R.K's snout is pointing to Hood St where I stay.

YAY! Bus-stop!!! But where do I wait for the bus? For your information, the bus-stop is about 30m long and there were a number of signposts so I had no idea where to go. Then I thought the technique, monkey see monkey do was good. I saw this girl going up to one of the boards and decided: Yes! That’s the way. You use your eyes to see! Pray forgive how stupid I sound in this blog. I was jet lagged, had almost not made it to my lodging, met a housemate who appeared to want me dead each time I knocked on her door, approached a cute guy in track shoes, knowing I was carrying a torch in my bag in broad daylight, and was hungry enough to eat grass. You think you would fare better than me? Rubbish!

But! My heart nearly stopped when I saw the board. It was the bus timetable:

NO MORE BUS?!

I WAS going to die on my first day. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Thankfully, I was in stupid mood the first time round. This is the full picture:

Heh heh... Yeah... I frikking blind

Now just have to wait for bus! Yay!!!

*** To be continued***