On the up: The Hostel
On the down: Managing it

You know how things can get so wrong that you start to find it funny? The Kechara Guest House has been a monster house since it opened... I'm starting to think even Bates Motel didn't have as many problems (apart from the getting killed in the shower thing, of course).

There was that thing a few days where Su Ming and I found ourselves squatting on the hostel shower floor at midnight scraping the lacquer off the floor tiles with our fingernails because it had melted off and was starting to peel. There is NOTHING fun about scraping off bits of rubber or whatever it is with your fingernails, but it has to be done.

Beng Kooi came along with some Coke and poured it over the tiles to dissolve away the scum. It didn't work.

We had to come back the next day and scrape it off with knives.

The next day, I seemed to find this incredibly funny although no one else seemed to think so - a sure sign as ever that maybe you're starting to flip out a bit.

Then, the next next day, we came back up to the hostel to sort out some last minute stuff and opened one of the doors and discovered
that the whole damn room
had
flooded.

This is AFTER a giant leak had already been fixed a few months ago.

So we spent the rest of the evening mopping up puddles and chucking out heaps of sodden things.

A few weeks ago, the toilet didn't flush and then suddenly Margaret or Paulyne or May called me up and said "guess what, the toilet doesn't flush and now it overflowed and there is shit all over the floor."

But a Bodhisattva managed to get someone in to fix it before the day was out.

And then all the furniture that keeps appearing and disappearing from the hostel. Like, I'm sure all six of those five-foot tables weren't there the last time I came up! Where did they come from?! And what happened to the sofa? And why did the microwave grow legs and run away? And why do baskets and baskets of food keep manifesting on the shelves like an Enid Blyton book?

It's all very peculiar, said the girl to herself.

I am starting to find it all very funny but I hope things start to find some sort of order because I can't spend my whole life solving the case of the missing furniture and scraping away at tiles like that crazy lady from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (read it, it will freak you out!)