I also rounded off 2009 by going something close to 72 hours without a shower, which was an experience I NEVER EVER EVER WANT TO EVER REPEAT AGAIN. Catch me scheduling two flights consecutively one more time, especially when one is a long-haul and transit time in between is especially long and dreary, and I promise you you can smack me. Oh oh and not to forget-- how could one ever forget the madcap dash to the airport after Mark convinced me there was no way I could make it to the airport in time if I tried to go and take the train from Stockholm, especially with my lovely monster blue luggage? And so because of that monster I spent 450SEK on a cab ride. that's 100sgd. bloody hell come to think of it it would have turned out cheaper to just put my luggage in storage for 15 days. bloody hell!
p.s. i still cannot figure out how i dragged 50kg worth of luggage (backpack, black trolley, blue suitcase) from uppsala to stockholm to bergshamra to toss the monster blue luggage with mark. i really can't. but i think that would explain my near-complete breakdown that night and why i couldn't raise a hand to even scratch an itch on my back for the next week or so in italy. before you sneer, there was one reason why that luggage night was aptly named worst night of my life-- EVERYTHING that could go wrong went wrong. I couldn't get my luggage out of my apartment because it was so heavy-- called Inese begging for help and the girl came out immediately, she's a complete saint; dragged all my stuff onto and off the bus and then played luggage tag with it all the 50m to the station, which might as well have been a hundred miles. how to play luggage tag, you ask?
you need: 2 very heavy pieces of luggage
optional: heavy, incredibly slippery snow and lousy heeled boots, plus a 12kg backpack to drag you down
instructions: drag all luggage off bus. carry one as far as you can until fingers give way and you drop it in the snow. go back for the other. carry this one as far as you can, pray hard that you pass the first, until fingers give way again and you drop it again. go back for the other. rinse and repeat.
then my klippkortet refused to be refunded so i had to beg the counter lady like crazy, my next train to stockholm would depart in 2 mins at the furthest platform, on arriving at mark's place he didn't pick up and i had to beg station lady to let me leave the bag there so i wouldn't miss my train; dashed back to stockholm, black luggage trolley handle suddenly refused to work so i couldn't pull it properly and ended up missing train by 2 minutes; black luggage proceeded to break all its wheels; next tickets on train cost something like 250sgd for the cheapest; next available bus ticket was just 90sek=about 20sgd, but would depart at 3.45am and station closed at 1am so i faced pleasant prospect of waiting in subzero temperatures for 2h45mins (even the staff were alarmed and asked me if i had anywhere to go-- she sounded genuinely concerned that i would catch a cold, which honestly touched me); went out in complete defeat and unthinkingly helped a romanian man with his luggage, but he turned out to be mildly insane and insisted on catching a non-existent "autobuss" to romania-- an autobuss which was either a bus or a train or a plane, judging by the various "whoo whoo" noises and flapping motions he made at my head. no he didn't speaking a word of english, yes i tried to ask the station people for help, no he was not cooperative and just screamed at them or cut random people's queues or got angry at me for not calling a random number he gave me on my phone (when i had something like one sgd's credit left and no money to buy anymore, AND my mum to contact tomorrow AND mark to find since my luggage was still homeless at bergshamra). then drunk guy decided to make my life complete by breathing sour alcohol all over me and scaring me half to death; i felt like a complete shit when i let him take confused romanian guy off to find the "autobuss" which he'd insisted he knew the location of but which i DEFINITELY knew he didn't know the location of, not as inebriated as he was if he could hit on a hobo-looking stressed out stumpy chinese chick when he was surrounded by leggy swedish blondes. but i was just so exhausted and in pain at that point that i just wanted to curl up on a bench and stone until i had to go out and curl up in the snow and freeze.
here, have an eyeful:
not the clearest picture, but the stuff on my calves-- shins?-- are not shadows, they are bruises. and i have them on both arms too but i needed one hand to hold the camera.but that shitassed night turned incredible, even though it still took a world of pain before it got there-- mark finally picked up on my 83rd call and it turned out he'd fallen asleep, not gotten drunk or murdered or run over by a car (all of which I'd thought were distinct possibilities). it took forever until i managed to find him, and dragging a screwed-up piece of 15kg luggage and your 12kg backpack through heavy, disgusting, beginning-to-be-slushy snow is not a piece of cake. i was ready to collapse with relief when i found them, and THEM it was-- a whole bunch of students from Lund, including the indomitable Amy, AND Mark. we ended up camping in a night kebab store instead of the casino as Mark'd originally intended and then I had help schlepping my luggage back to the station AND company on the way to the airport in the form of another Singaporean girl from Dalarna who Amy and friends had met in Kiruna.
Somehow things just work out :D
Oh and the next day was another nightmare because my phone ran out of credit firmly and I ended up being unable to find my family in Rome and having to drag my luggage all the way to my accom after waiting about 2 hours for them and not being able to contact them and being desperate enough to email, use Starhub and Singtel SMS and consider slamming my head on the table in morse code for S.O.S or "where the effing hell are you effing assholes" before my mum suddenly showed up in the doorway of the computer room and screamed "THERE YOU ARE". it turned out they'd waited like 3 hours for me, going without lunch and wandering termini station like mad, only to give up and go back to collapse upon beds and eat cup noodles, only to enter the room and find my bag and jacket and scarf thrown all over a bed and dash about looking for me since I was obviously somewhere in the building.
okay i didn't mean to go on and on and on but once i got started i... well, got started. it's like when you're carrying crap-heavy luggage once you've started moving you don't stop you know, or else it gets even worse when you pick it up again.
anyway, look what i found in my post-return-clean-the-damn-room-up-so-i-have-some-space-to-breathe:
i miss my Feste, my Olivia; even Aguecheek (i do think that smiley had quite a winsome touch).
hello Singapore! hello to crazy people who call me and say they're near my house (only they're not, they're at changi PRISON omg what was the insinuation huhuhuh) and ask me for directions and force me to come out of my house dressed in skanky tee and fbts smelling and looking like crap from a whole day of wiping 12 years' worth of dust out of the rafters and throwing three million things out, and then proceeding to abduct me and go on a joyride for food only to realise hot damn we both have no sg currency and to drive me home and try to parallel park before slurping boiling hot ayam noodles down and dashing off home again. hello to my miserable dog, which is suddenly the size of my thigh (eh i've put on weight but that basically means my dog got skinnier) because apparently my maid decided feeding the dog was an extraneous duty, secondary to rooting out a completely unwarranted shade of paint so that the living room is now bilious yellow instead of the orchid white which my mum and sis picked out and which is languishing in the backyard now or something; my miserable dog, whom i've been feeding as much as possible so that he will actually have energy to do the first thing i wanted to do when i came back to sg-- go to the park and play frisbee with him (yeah, it wasn't so much a "what do you want to eat first when you come back to sg" as "what you want to do first"). hello to blessed tarmac, i can't wait to meet your surfaces in running-shoed-feet; hello to rollerblades that i am sure have rotted and are falling apart but which i will test anyway first thing
and hello to the sudden unquenchable longing for snow I have acquired, snow and a quieter world than this, snow and a lonelier place than here.
No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.
As I know, Astrid Magnussen. As I know.