Ah to be 25 again

---

This is where things start to get weird.

I've been staying at this YHA hostel in Bondi Beach. Bondi is a little bit like Tiburon meets Cancun meets Rodeo Drive: beautiful beaches with crystal clear water in the bluest of blue shades. Lots of snotty little kids running around whining about how they want a lolly and lots of yappy little dogs in their designer yappy dog outfits to keep them warm (because it IS winter here after all).

I've been keeping a pretty low profile at the hostel, and while some of the faces were beginning to become familiar, I certainly hadn't made any friends. Pretty much everyone is 22 and fabulous and just came from The Club or just about to go to The Club or very busy talking about what happened last night at The Club and who passed out on the curb and who got the most shitfaced.

Note: this breed of backpacker is called the "flashpacker". It is actually a technical term, I didn't make it up.

The hostel does have a couple of redeeming qualities. One is that my room has a lovely view of the ocean which I really enjoy waking up to every morning. At night, I can even see a few stars, which I also really like. Another is that it has a roofdeck and if there aren't many flashpackers sitting up there playing Kings of Leon (whom I normally love but not when it's being played by flashpackers while I'm trying to recover from swine flu) and talking about The Club last night, it is quite pleasant to sit up there and read.

Lastly, the hostel has a video room which is just a room with a bunch of comfy chairs and couches, a tv and a VHS (yes, VHS) system. I was bored out of my mind last night and decided I'd watch a movie. Fortunately, I was the first one in the room so I got to choose...lots of oldies on the shelf, I went with Vanilla Sky.

I'm about 10 minutes in when a flashpacker-y type comes in and sits down. He is eager to make conversation and so we start chatting. Since 1) I am desperate for human contact and 2) I have already seen Vanilla Sky like 18 times, I am very happy to chat back with him. He's 25, from Vancouver and says "f'ing" this and "f'ing" that, like all the cool kids now-a-days. Another 2 folks come in and join our chat-movie. They are from LA and also 20-something, and I must be getting old because they really looked like they were 14.

Inevitably, whenever you meet someone in the backpacker scene, you must go through the cursery outline of Q&A including: where are you from, how long are you traveling for, where have you been? Vancouver guy tells me his story, he's been traveling a year and because Australia is so expensive, he bought a tent and has been pitching it on any blade of grass he can find, not necessarily sanctioned. His latest haunt is a cave of some sort that's part of the Sydney municiple golf course. He shows me a tear in his jacket, "I got this climbing over the fence". Even squatters like to keep up appearances so he'd been sneaking into the hostel to use the bathroom, laundry, kitchen and just to shmooze with people. Can't say the guy isn't resourceful.

Then it was my turn and I thought, well, my story is a bit different but here goes.

I told him all about how I came to Australia hoping to have great times with my family and "friends"* (*term used loosely, as dealing with swine flu makes you realize who your real friends are) and do a live-aboard dive trip in Cairns, only to have come down with the swine flu and been in bed for a week recovering. How I moved into the hostel to control the spread of my insidious germs.

For the record, I am no longer contagious. But it is still fun to see people shrink away when I tell them I've had the swine. This guy was actually very impressed and said so, "Now THAT is a good story!" he told me. I felt so cool.

After the movie ended, we all continued to chit chat and Vancouver guy starts off a new conversation thread with, "I know you're not supposed to talk religion or politics with people you've just met, but you guys seem really cool. So I want to tell you about this. You need to know, because there's going to be a civil war in the US."

Yes, a civil war in the US, in case you didn't read correctly the first time. You wanna know why? Because the mean, evil, corrupt government are controlling everything, that's why. So now that you know why, do you wanna know what you should do about it?

Well, funny you should ask. There's this movement called The Venus Project and if you go to their website, zeitgeistmovie.com you will learn all about how you can be a part of a new system of wealth and resource distribution. And this system, unlike any other tried system in the whole-wide-world, is actually going to work.

After having traveled in SE Asia, I feel pretty confident saying that I hardly think the US is the most corrupt government in the world. But we are the most visible and because of that, unfortunately, the US is always going to be the 800 pound gorilla. I was feeling a little frisky last night, so I felt the need to say a few things in defense of my country, I couldn't let a little Canadian walk all over my homeland with his ignorance. And I had to tell him that ultimately, government is just a reflection of the greed that's in all people and greed is the problem, not government. I think at that point, he and I were speaking two different languages, but it was all in good fun. We parted as friends, he back to his golf course cave tent and me back to my $80 room with a view of the stars and no bathroom.

So with that, I have checked out of the YHA and am now at a "real" hotel with my own bathroom in downtown Sydney, a neighborhood called Potts Point which is nice. The hotel is not so nice, but it's cheap(er) and at this point, I don't even care anymore. I have no idea what I will do all week. I am actually beginning to feel better physically and so I might be capable of having one last teeny-tiny adventure before I return home.

---

Comments

[Joe]

Hang in there and thanks for defending us.