A Locked-out-of-room-door drama

Hi! It’s weeks since I’ve posted anything. Pretty busy…and tired about things in my currently dull life. Read my next entry for details about my life and the issue of dreaded monotony and changing interests.

But something slightly funny happened a few weeks back—I got locked out of my room, not once, but twice in the course of one week! Once during the weekend just minutes before my Mum came to pick me up for my Friday night church life group, then once again a few days after that, just an hour or so before a club meeting I was supposed to attend. And I even seriously contemplated of trying out that acrobatic leap into my bedroom window from the balcony located near my room. Hehe… luckily, after looking down from three floors on top of the balcony, I quickly freaked out. Any daredevil attempt would probably give me a mini lesson on aeronautics and its effects on the human anatomy, and a huge lesson on why we humans aren’t cut out for the flying race. Maybe I should have tried it out, but my mind kept imagining what my balcony railing might look like the moment I stepped onto it, with my chunky weight and all, or what I will eventually look like the moment after flying lesson starts. I may have the gift of changing the course of balcony railings, but leaping from balcony to windows wasn’t my idea of fun.

Luckily I had my daring little sis, Deb to help me out later. With the help of 2 sturdy long planks placed from the balcony railing and the window sill and a cable chord tied across her bod, my sis agilely crawled across the plank into the window and whalla, my door could finally open! I tried to imagine what it would be like if I were the one doing the crawling, but the picture turned out to be too horrible to describe. What morbid imagination! So, instead of a good lesson on aeronautics, physics and kinesics, what I got instead was a sound lecture on the effects of forgetfulness, carelessness and the dangers of cowardice. I must admit, it was very enlightening, but it’s effects didn’t last long.

So, sigh…days after that first incident, I made another ‘bu-bu’ and locked myself out again, in my haste to produce to load of squeaky-clean clothes. There was no sister or Mama to help me out then, but I had a great friend next door to lend me some raffia string to tie around my waist and to hold the chair as I climbed from the balcony to the railing. Needless to say, I was both ecstatic and disturbed by the prospect of undergoing that leaping trauma. All I could remember was finding a best angle to climb from, listening to my friend whispering frantically about being careful, then me climbing onto that steel balcony railing, and trying not to think of the horror of taking the plunge. It made me feel somewhat like an acrobat in a circus freak show, or one of those participants in ‘Fear-factor’. Then, I made the worst mistake any potential climber could make— I glanced down at that patch of dark, greeny, murky grass below, and my stomach churned. With a yelp, and in reflex, I quickly leaped down, not onto the window sill, but back onto the balcony, with that ugly image of me dangling from the string attached to the balcony horrendously imprinted in my mind. So there goes leaping and flying lessons. I had to find some other way to get in.

Since I knew the hostel office didn’t have a spare key to my room (I tried asking already, and it was no use). The only way into the room was to get my bag from that room, since my room key was kept in there. Fortunately for me, my bag was just placed directly by the window on my study table. All I had to do was to hook that thing up with a long stick, and then I could get in. Why didn’t I have the foresight to try out this option first instead of that daredevil attempt to climb-leap into my room, I don’t really know. I was absolutely frantic at that time, and didn’t take the time to consider any alternative options. Anyway, my friend got a long stick, I tried several times to ‘fish’ my bag out through the window, and then after several minutes, phew, I finally managed to hook it out! My key was retrieved and the drama was finally over. And to avoid this drama ever happening again, I made a few spare keys after that, which I gave to my mum and that friend for safe-keeping.

As for other incidents in my life, nothing practically amusing happened aside from doing my own cooking in my dorm. Well, if you would call cooking and frying rice, opening cans of sardine and warming them up, frying eggs, making egg and mushroom soup, and cooking maggi mee amusing or fun. Wanted to cook veges and some substantial stuff, but thanks to not having a refrigerator, and my not being much of a cook, I couldn’t. I was lucky enough to have a multi-purpose electric cooking pot from home last week, which I brought to save my money up on eating out. Electric—meaning I didn’t need a gas stove to cook (we’re not allowed to have that there). But what I instead ended up spending my money on was on some crappy stuff during the convocation fest in Unimas the past two days—fridge magnets, a t-shirt, a ‘cheap’ watch with straps too long, different types of drinks I’ve never tasted before etc.. etc. No substantial meals brought there—since I wanted to ‘save it up’ for my own ‘substantial’ cooking later, which turned up to be merely fried rice (with eggs and sardines) yesterday. I’m seriously planning of doing some kind of community cooking with my pals next door the next week. They’re better cooks than me, since my ‘culinary expertise’ mostly consists of the menu I mention earlier – it’s mostly fried this, and fried that, and sometimes some kind of weird soupy concoction. Well, I could gain some cooking tips from them. It’s a feeble attempt to spice up my currently boring, stale life.

Ok, gotta go now. Don’t want to drag this on and on…for other details, read my next entry, which I will post soon. Cheerio!