(Day 11) My new digs

Monday 12^th March

Day 11 (part 3/3)

I got a taxi from the hostel to my new place.  The taxi driver I had was an old Greek guy and he was a legend.  He said how he moved to Sydney over 30 years ago and how he has seen the city emerge around him in that time.  He said back when he first arrived Sydney was a small dusty little desert town quietly getting on with life, but in the last 20 years there has been a massive boom and huge buildings have appeared everywhere.  He said that Sydney is now catered more for tourists than residents and that Sydney is more of a place to visit than live in.  I could totally see where he was coming from; Sydney does just feel like a massive tourist city for young people from the rest of the world who are travelling (like me).  I am not saying that is a bad thing like I honestly think that there is no other city in the world where you could meet such a range of nationalities and I would bet a small amount of money in saying that Sydney is officially the most culturally diverse city in the world.

After leaving the taxi and unloading my suitcase the taxi driver quickly came back, I had done my classic trick of leaving my wallet on the front seat.

I was pretty tired when I got in but I couldn’t relax now.  This room wasn’t in a state where I could just move it and be comfortable.  First thing I had to do was lift off all the blankets off the floor that were making a rubbish attempted of being a carpet.  The blankets were dusty and smelt damp.  In lifting up the blankets I found about 5 dead cockroaches, I also noticed some large wooden boards covering half my floor.  I saw a small crack on the floor heading to the wooden panel, I put my foot on this crack and the floor gave in like a trampoline.  I think the carpet was actually put down to hide the fact that my room only really has half a floor and the rest of it has rotted away.

After lifting off the blankets and taking them to the local laundrette along with the bedding to be washed I mopped the newly uncovered floor.  It didn’t take long for the water in the bucket to turn from clear to black.  This room was just filthy and I don’t know how the people who lived in here previously managed.  The air in the room is so heavy and thick with dust.

Another thing I noticed was the number of different anti cockroach products that were left lying around in my room.  There was clearly a problem with cockroaches in this room.  However I was confident that if I kept the room tidy and the floor clean I could clear out the roaches.

After the floors dried I found a vacuum cleaner under the stairs.  There was a layer of dust in every corner of the room and on every surface that wasn’t the floor.  At first when I turned on the vacuum cleaner it was just blowing the dust around, I had put the hose in the wrong hole (insert crude sexual reference here). 

After vacuuming up all the dust and unpacking all my stuff from the suitcase onto the shelves I headed off to get my laundry.  The place was closing and I didn’t have time to put any of my stuff in the dryer.  I hung the bedding and blankets on the clothes line outside but the sun was already going down at this point.  I knew that I would have to make do with no bedding tonight. 

I still had so much to do but it was night now and I would have to wait until tomorrow.  I tried to get comfortable in bed but despite the mopping and vacuuming the air in the room was still very heavy.  I was starting to hate this room; it was small, hot, dusty and full of cockroaches.  I couldn’t actually see any cockroaches but I was paranoid, I kept feeling itchy like they were crawling all over me.

The bed was about as comfortable as lying on a sack of potatoes.  I knew I had to give the room some time before the air would freshen up and the bedding would make the bed more tolerable but right now I was really hating this room and I knew that tonight was going to be a long night.