After breakfast, I suddenly remembered I had to call John Bester again, so rushed out to do that. Naturally, despite the 2 days grace, he hadn’t gotten around to finding out whether I had any money due – not the most organised of persons, I’d say – so I had to ring him back in 10 mins. I was then able to discover I had about $20 due – not as much as I might have hoped, but better than a kick in the teeth. A small kick anyway. And then Val + I went out on our usual shopping + foraging expedition into town. As usual tho’ there was very little method in our madness, more a zig-zagging back + forth. An exhausting business in any conditions, but with the sort of heat there is up here, it’s just killing. Eventually I became so wearied that I suggested we split up – I walked out to collect the battery pack for our Sony (being fixed for the second time) + left Val to cope with the groceries. The battery pack was an exorbitant $8, considering one can buy them for less than that in Sydney.
We did nothing for the rest of the day, just lazed around our room, but the real blow came at around 7, when Val went to the kitchen to cook our dinner, + discovered that our whole bag of food from the fridge had been stolen. We searched all the fridges + all the cupboards in all the kitchens, but without much hope – it’s not likely that any thief would be stupid enough to stash it where it could be found, +, as it turned out, without success. Lots of things have been stolen from people in the hostel – food, clothes – but never yet from us, so I suppose we had become somewhat smug. So I reckon this is a good enough cure for smugness. Fortunately, there hadn’t been that much in the bag, but it had all the makings for tonight’s tea, so that was wrecked, plus it was, as you can imagine, a severe blow to our mental well-being. Being robbed is a traumatic experience.
We walked along to the takeaway, + Val had a dim-sum, while I had a hamburger, then returned for coffee + cake. Val had made the cake during the afternoon, + fortunately that had escaped the attentions of the thief, as it had been sitting in our room. A couple of games of cards then, + then bed.
A photo from yesterday, of me in virtually no water – at least I wasn’t going to drown.
Disappointing about the loss of the food – such things are depressing, not so much for the loss, but because of the evidence that one has to look out for thieves.
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