Survivor: Alaska

Yes, this bitch is still alive.

Doesn’t mean that this hebitch is overseas, I don’t get to bitch no more. Been really busy... nah... not really... I have been sleeping a lot. 15 hours at most.

This is how screwed up the time here really is, its past 9 in the p.m. here and it’s still bright and sunny outside. Seriously, I think my body clock is going insane - normally it would be hard for some people to call it a day with the sun all bright outside or they would automatically wake up when the sun’s up, even when it’s like only 4 friggin’ a.m., but I just sleep through it...
But who’s complaining, I get pretty much decent rest here. Maybe cause back in school, when you’re an architecture student holed up in the studio, you can’t tell if its night or day, you just set your own body clock.

I’m supposed to post the snow pictures, no? Yeah, so it snowed. For just a day... And then a couple of days later, it’s... guess what?

Its summer. Flowers blooming and the sun’s really heating up the place.

I noticed it on Sunday morning; suddenly the morning’s not friggin’ cold anymore. And boy, the whole day felt like a day in a shopping mall in Singapore.

Sunny boy, I sure missed you.

But lemme get something off my chest, I haven’t really bitched... I mean blogged... about the living conditions here, did I? Well, for starters, I’m staying at the women’s atco, while Zic and Ching Hei are staying at the men’s.

And these two lodgings are as different as night and day...

Well, firstly, the women’s dorm is run by this lady. And the men’s by, you guessed it, this guy.

The rooms and halls and kitchen of the women’s atco is like spotless clean, warm with the heater on most of the time and you need keys to access the main door. Safe and clean, kinda like ‘Singapore’. Also about a quarter of those living here are students from Singapore (not necessary Singaporeans though, we have a couple of Chinese and Vietnamese students, and a Malaysian too) and that includes two other guys (including my roomie).

And over at the men’s atco, it kinda reminds me of some cop show where a cop would just bust open one of the doors anytime soon. It’s full of graffiti and holes in the walls and ceilings. Plus the main door is open 24-7 and anyone could just walk in anytime.

Zic and Ching Hei were at first apprehensive about staying there but that was just in the beginning before a lot of things happened.

The ‘politics’ of hostel living soon reared its ugly head and clique lines amongst the Singaporeans were obviously drawn - the newcomers and the old birds (they were just here a week earlier). Looking back, I find it utterly immature of us to be talking behind each others’ backs and all that. I really can’t blog about what happened cause that would take me a whole hour to type it all out (and God forbid I take away an hour from my 15 hours nap time).

In a nutshell, there were talks about having Ching Hei and Zic moving in, resulting in two 3-men bunks and some people moving out of their rooms and some more reshuffling. Our middlemen, the landlady, turned out to be playing both sides and she actually kinda created like this rift between us.

But that’s all behind us and yeah, it was uber dumb. I can’t believe that three days into our stay, it already felt like we were in Survivor after a merge. Like seriously, claws were out even before the gloves come off.

So, back to our landlady, she turned out to be this really weird schidzo who is one minute quoting from the bible and calling the Beatles demonic, and another minute, cussing and using the ‘f’ word and going around nailing ‘No Trespassing’ signs on our main door. How strange is that?
Plus she has all this ridiculously strict rules and all that, which ironically makes living here really like living in Singapore! Schidzo-iron fisted-government.

And that makes living in the men’s atco suddenly very appealing with all the freedom. Plus, those other guys living there aren’t so bad after getting to know them better. I even contemplated bunking in with Zic and Ching Hei on several occasions. But yeah, I’m fine with my room and roomie.

Yup, so I’m just adjusting to everything as the days go by... Especially to the showers. You see, I’m sharing the place with a dozen other females and the showers are like separated with only French doors and a shower curtain.

You can call me lucky, but I’m just conservative... right...

Going to get busy once the restaurant opens this Thursday night. So I’m desperately using every free second hiking up and such; especially with the snow on some of the mountain peaks melting away and all. I just went up alone yesterday on this trail to some place on the mountain where there was actually snow everywhere! At first I was having cramps on my thighs (cause I went cycling prior to that) and I was worried cause I started quite late and I was worried it would get dark (but then again it only gets dark after 10p.m.; but I wasn’t going to take any chances) so I was thinking, “Shazi, you’re alone, its summer so the bears are probably awake by now; and you started late, and you only have a bottle of water to last you for the whole 6 hours hike... what the hell were you thinking?” But I still managed to reach the snow-covered areas, not exactly anywhere near the end of the trail though. But that’s for another time.

Oh, did I forget to mention, I’m also a member at the local gym. It blew my socks off the first time I went there, really impressive.

So yeah, that’s all for the updates. I will post pictures sometime this week. But for now, its nap time.