chapter 13: Theft at midnight

I am drinking tea that smells like ground meat and tastes like rotten sausage out of a stolen mug...

I found it in the kitchen...it should belong to one of my flatmates. I don't know what she uses it for ...but it's probably not for drinking tea.

I miss the quarantine hotel. I miss how warm it was, how the bed was so comfortable and how I never needed to care for mugs or pilliows. I just moved in to the student accomodation on Campus. It is 2:42 am...so even the young ones who like to party have gone to sleep. Me?

Well am here. huddled under my dad's super thin field blanket and freezing to death. I have no pillow so I am now breaking my neck on my bag. My hands are freezing that I have no doubt they will soon start swelling like they did back when I was in Asia.

I think ours is a mixed(co-ed men and women) apartment, although it does not say so the document.

After the 5 hour bus journey here...an hiur of which was passed sitting next to an old man who was breathing so loud that scared the hell out of me, me and my countrymate, Martha hopped into a taxi. She got off really quickly as she was living in a rented apartment she found by herself that was close by. I was left to the mercy of the taxi drivers. Then the taxi kept driving and driving I almost thought that the taxi driver was kidnapping me. But we arrived at last and he asked if I had a key, and I said that I didn't and he said I had to get the key first from the reception- which I had no idea I had to do. He called the guards for me on his telephone and they said it would take them half an hour to comeback as it was a Sunday and past 6 pm and I just stood there...in a freezing cold...and...it started raining! Of course!

The rain knows exactly where and when it should execute the sad scenes.

Many students passed me by untill a guy and a girl came over. The guy didn't seem like he wanted to get involved but the girl convinced him to come over and talk to me. They asked me where I came from and what I was doing there. They took my bags and put them under a waiting area across the street that was sheltered from the rain. Then they rang up the security officers again so they can give me my room key. In that little open metal cabin, we talked and talked and laughed and laughed.

I got along with them really well...and they were so funny.

As we were standing there...a guy came up and stopped his car and we thought he was the security guy we were waiting for and rushed to him. He tried to give us drugs...and we laughed nervously and told him he got the wrong people.

Then the security guy, tall, lean and handsome showed up in a car that screamed luxury and very politely gave us the key and told us what we needed to do. My two new African friends said they wanna help and we got lost trying to find the house.

We pulled the luggages here and there and everywhere until we've walked in circles untill we met some kids, really young but all very tall, who said they wanna show us the place. They ran around the area trying to find us the house and actually found it. They were all so cute. I wanted to kiss their foreheads and pat their head. But that would have been awkward, since they were all taller than me.

Most people here are taller than me actually.

But so what ?

It's the effect of gravity or genes.

Too late to care about that now.

I couldn't sleep. ..I stayed up till 3:00 till I occured to me to turn the heater on.

I looked around the kitchen and found someone 's mug and made tea out of it. Drank a tap water tea that tasted disgusting. I washed the cup and returned it to where it was at first. Hurt my gum eating the only ready made food I had from home.

Then I buried my head and my disappointments under my bag and shut out the world around me. This isn't the grand campus move in I had expected. It was alright and adventurous right to the moments I failed to fall asleep.

But that too. ...did pass. Morning came and I dozed off to sleep.