Cars, Lizards and Steaks

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Sleeping with the fans out of order had been harder than I’d anticipated and as much as I liked the new guy that had moved into the room, if he didn’t stop snoring I would’ve quite happily bashed his head in with a baseball bat. Then there was the jets that persistently rumbled overhead, mum had mentioned that the storm had been on the news all over Australia and that it had been so bad that it had overturned a plane. The thoughts of one of them being overturned as they flew over leaked into my head. Now that would make it harder to sleep, then again it would stop the snoring. I got through it somehow and when I left the room in the morning I saw the full damage of what had been done, fifteen windows had been smashed, a drain pipe had been ripped off the wall and the resident spider was carefully trying to salvage his web. The power was still down but at least the buses were still running, so with my backpack in hand I head to the library.

The tree’s had been hit so savagely that they’d had to close off the building for the day while bright orange workmen scurried among the debris. Luckily the café was open and still boasted the presence of free Wi-Fi and electricity. I ordered the largest cup of coffee they had but was mildly disappointed when I received something that would’ve been dwarfed next to an uber mug. I surfed about in cyberspace while my phone charged next to me and the caffeine made its way into my system. An hour later Katie joined me, she’d got the second bus in with an Austrian friend we’d met the day before and after sorting all of our electricity issues we made for the city. However, with our great luck that we’ve been experiencing the second we stepped outside the café the heavens opened and within seconds we looked like a pair of drowned rats. We fled back indoors and all it took was one look at us for our Austrian friend to erupt with laughter.

Katie, being the cleaver one, stayed in the cosy shelter of the café and had a coffee where as I, being the less cleaver one, thought <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“hmmm, it’s raining… I need a jacket… I’m going to go outside in the rain and walk through the park, over the bridge and down the main street to buy a jacket.” Needless to say, by the time I got to the shop the rain had stopped but I was still soggy. Nevertheless I was determined to buy a jacket, which is significantly harder to do in Australia than I thought it would’ve been and the prices were through the roof! I found one in the end for about $30, overjoyed that I could fit into a size small again, by now the sun was shining gloriously and part of me wished I’d have stayed at the café but it wasn’t a problem.

The plan was going to be, jump on a train towards the car dealer at the Gold Coast then head off back to Moorooka and try and tie down some sort of deal but Katie wasn’t feeling too great so she decided to wait for the hostel bus. So it was just me and my backpack armed with a feeble knowledge of anything car related, I scrapped the plan for the Gold Coast and in no time I found myself on a train back to yesterday’s dealer. In the flawless daylight the damage to the cars was impossible to miss, dents covered every inch of them, very few vehicles got of lightly. The hail had been relentless, a few cars had bonnets that were so bad it looked as if they’d had acne.

I had agreed with Glen, the manager, to take another car out for a test drive, it was a great white Mitsubishi up for $6,900. Sadly it too had been hit quite badly in the storm but it had gotten off lightly compared to some of the others. As soon as I got inside I knew I much preferred it to the one from yesterday, it had leather seats and steering wheel, it was automatic, it had cruise control and the boot space was enormous. I did the same test drive as yesterday… well more or less… I got hopelessly lost on the second half of it but it was fine it only took me 30 minutes off course. I actually only noticed the colossal lightning bolt crack through the windscreen half way through the drive. Eventually I arrived back at the lot and as I turned the engine off I knew I was completely infatuated. We proceeded into his office and I managed to get the price down to $5,800 with a one year warranty. It was a deal I was really happy with and after signing some paperwork, I made for the train station calling Katie to let her know, she seemed really pleased.

I was so distracted by having bought my first car without my parents help that I got off at the wrong train station and found myself walking through a park that looked like the site of a natural disaster, either that or a dinosaur fight. As I made my way along the paths mum called and we discussed the deal, she too seemed quite happy with the decision and said she couldn’t wait to see it instead of the pictures she’d swiftly gathered from google. Then we got to a conversation stopper, a lizard the size of my forearm was just strolling along the path next to me. It’d occasionally stop and look at me to try and see if I’d noticed it was there, then it’d go into a state of panic and run away in lizard fashion. After a while of mutual staring and a lot of pictures, the lizard stopped, looked at me then quite beautifully belly flopped into the waters next to it.

All in all it had been a good day and when I got back to the hostel I thought I’d top it off with some stir fry steak. It wasn’t quite as good as dads but I was quite proud of it for a first attempt. The cat sat by me while I ate it and even though she was blatantly there in hope I’d feed her I chose to mistake it for affection. At least this time she let me stroke her.

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