(this will be long because I don't have much else to do other than write)
I have probably already said this but the hostel is a real hovel. The room I'm in stinks so bad-I think it is starting to get into my clothes and make me stink. In fact a lot of stuff stinks up here. Maybe the arctic air has just cleaned out my nose and made me smell it more.
For example, the place where I'm WiFi-ing from now, Kaladi Bros Cafe, has a very strong coffee smell. Kind of like a burnt coffee and something else I can't quite put my nose on. Maybe poo. Who knows, it's Alaska afterall so it could be.
The hostel seems to be run by a bunch of guys. Old guys with beards. They are nice enough but I can't quite tell who is working there and who is just hanging around/staying there. The only reason I know who the owner is, is because he is a cleanshaven asian man. The bulding is on a small street full of several similar buildings, but they are apartment blocks not hostels. So I can understand the strand set-up of Jason's. Instead of being a building with many rooms and one large common area/kitchen, he has converted the individual apartments into dorms. So there are about 4 or 5 apartment 'dorms' coming off the main set of stairs. I'm up in 5A and share a common balcony with the dorm on the other side of the stairs.
When you enter the main door you go into an area which would have been the apartment's living room. Instead this one has two bunks in it. Today there was an 80 or so yr old guy sleeping in one, other times there have been different people. Sometimes people sharing a bed. There is a small kitchenette off to the side of this with a TV and basic cooking facilities (I keep my poptarts in there!). So far, one of my two crazy roommates is slumped in the armchair in front of the TV in there. All...the...time...
It seems like they get up around 1pm, go in there and watch TV until 3am then go to sleep. I talked to one of them yesterday, she said her parents got good jobs up here so she had to come up from California with them. But where are they staying? Why are they making her pay to stay in a hostel if they have good jobs? Why couldn't she just stay in California? Too many questions...if I'm ever around her when she's sober or awake I might ask her if I'm bored enough. She must be around me age but she reminds me of a grizzly bear.
The other roommate could easily be mistaken for a man. I was a bit worried at first because I thought she was but...it's a woman. She's the same one that on my first night here, was running about until 3am either watching TV or going outside to smoke and then when I woke up around noon and was getting my stuff ready on my bed, was whingeing about me rocking the bed and to stop cos she's 'soooo dizzy' (I'm on the bunk above her).
Far out, woman, if you don't want the bed to move then sleep on the bloody floor!!! I'm not going to lie there like a mummy just because you got smashed last night and have a hangover. Especially not when you are rude to me.
The She-Male butch asked the California Grizzly for $10 last night and the Grizzly said she'd lend it to her if she went and bought her some booooooooze. Then I heard Grizzly talking on the phone this morning (as I was cooking my poptarts) to someone saying that she had $40 missing from her wallet this morning. I didn't say anything, I was just silently glad I slept with my wallet in my pillowcase last night.
Was California Grizzly too smashed to remember she told She-Male butch to go into her wallet to get the booze money? Or did She-Male butch steal her money?
I want to stay right out of it! I just wish there were somewhere to lock my bags up.
That's right-I was talking about the hostel set-up. So after the living room area and the kitchenette there is a dingy bathroom and then two rooms coming off the end of a tiny hall. 'Proper' bedrooms, I suppose. I'm in one of those. I don't know how long these crazies have been staying in here but by the looks of the shit that is in the room, I'm guessing a while. There is an open box of pregnancy tests on one of the little chest of drawers in the room. Classy!!! 'Glamour' photos in frames of a person I suppose is California Grizzly on a good day? Even still, calling them glamour photos is a gross misrepresentation. Then there's a photo of a woman in a military uniform smiling with the American flag as a backdrop. I wonder who this is...
So yeah, those are the digs I'm in. Downstairs is 'reception' (a desk with a computer) and two internet terminals then on the other side of the stairs is a lounge room of sorts and a little kitchen. There is a big screen TV but no DVD player. Which was annoying cos I went to Wal*Mart last night (looking for Yak Trax) and saw 'Anchorman:The Legend of Ron Burgundy' for $9.50 so I bought it (along with season 3 box set of McGyver!). But I just watched it on my laptop instead.
The only other people in the hostel apart from the crazies in my room and the old guys are a bunch of Brazillian kids. I have no idea what their story is though because they are always running around talking to each other in Portuguese (?). There's about 5 or 6 of them, I think?
Like I said, I went to Wal*Mart last night-it's just like Big W back home but it's freaking massive. I can't spend too long in there because it's all a bit overwhelming. I found my Yak Trax (things to wear on the bottom of my shoes so I don't fall over on the ice) and a few other bits and pieces. I went again to get a towel (couldn't be arsed asking where the one they gave me went...just as long as my one stays put!!!) and some OJ and it's been in my face for a while but the obsession with sugar over here is crazy. Jane from work told me weeks ago how her kids don't like eating Mini-Wheats anymore because the recipe has been changed to include sugar. Well, the Mini-Wheats over here are glazed with frosting. They have breakfast cereals so high in sugar it makes Froot Loops/Coco Pops from back home look like the 'healthy' option. Other weird things I've seen have been liquid butter, and in a similar vein-popcorn butter oil. I don't know if that's the exact name (I'll try to find a picture) but basically it's butter-flavoured oil that you pour over your popcorn. They have every imaginable type of beef jerky and not in those tiny little baggies that you get in Australia-they sell them by the pound. I bought a bag back in San Francisco and ate one piece and now I have to lug this big bag of jerky around with me. It's nuts.
I went into the Safeway, too. Just as nuts. Why are Americans so obsessed with sugar? They make a massive deal about their food not having Trans fats in them but it's like they can't live without sugar. You can also get Red Bull in 500mL cans here!!! They have about 10 different brands of energy drink, each with 3 or 4 different flavours. You could conceivably live off energy drinks and frosted breakfast cereals here if you really wanted to. And jerky-don't forget that all important protein!
I took a bus into Downtown today and had a walk around, went into a few different cafes. Anchorage actually isn't so bad, it's just the shithole where I'm staying that is breaking my spirit. Just wish I had a friend or something here to talk to.
Tonight is the start of the Anchorage Film Festival and there are some good looking movies I might go along and see. Tonight is the kick off at two places and one is nearby to here so I'm thinking about going. There's actually quite a bit to do in this little town (pop 225,000 approx) I just wish I didn't have to do it all solo.
I'm also carrying a large shopping bag full of kites (and my laptop) so it might be a wise idea to drop it off back at the hostel first.
There is a Barnes & Nobel that closes at 11pm nearby to the hostel too, so in effect if I got up and out early enough I could spend the day out of the hostel and only come back to sleep-therefore minimising the soul-destroying effects of the place. The sun gets up around 9am here, but the last few days I've slept til after noon. Really need to get up and going earlier. Especially if I want to get to the zoo-I should go in the next few days before the days get too short. The solstice is 3 weeks away now and the days are getting shorter by about 4min per day. Today the sun set at around 4pm? Dusk started around 3.30pm. It's weird, going outside at 1pm and seeing the sun only a few degrees up off the horizon. I haven't checked yet but I'm pretty sure it's not rising from the east (proper), too. I don't think it does a full arc of the sky, either. Just sort of slips up and over the horizon then back down around the corner.
Here are some photos from yesterday/today:
View from the hostel balcony
Let's see a close up!
Oops they are closing the cafe up. I should go soon...
One last thing I wanted to mention, when I was in the other cafe (Midnight Sun Cafe, I think?), they were playing a CD of a kind of folky band (kind of a cross between Beth Williams and The Panics?) and there was a song that came on that I really really liked, I can't say I was listening to the lyrics but something about the song just moved me. So I asked the guy who was working what the band was and he bought out a CD-it's a guy called Leeroy Stagger. I looked on the back and found the song that was just playing, it was called Saskatoon. I shit you not. I can't make this sort of stuff up! So I'll try to find the CD and buy it because I really like this guy's music.
PLUS I got the Anchorage Weekly paper and my stars said:
"When love is not madness, it is not love," said Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderon de la Barca. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you will dramatically disprove that notion in the coming weeks, Leo. In fact, I'm betting that love will make you stark, raving, sane. It will calm you down, heal a wound or two, improve your eyesight, help you understand yourself better, improve your digestion, and stimulate you to become more tolerant and forgiving towards the entire world."
Like I said, I can't make this sort of stuff up. That's what it said, and I was reading it while I was listening to that song I said I liked.
Leeroy Stagger-Depression River (2006)
Everything happens for a reason. It's working out that reason that makes it all worth it.
Take care,
-Lisha
