Grrr

There are, of course, drawbacks to hostel living. You are lucky if you share a room with only one irritiating person. Unfortunately, here, I have not been lucky. In fact, I have been extremely unlucky. For a quiet hostel, my room is remarkably noisy as it's right next to the front door. I also have room-mates who really havn't heard that if you have to get up when others are still asleep (as some of us are at 5am) it's only polite to make as little noise as possible, rather than banging round fiddling with plastic bags, slamming doors, etc. Ditto for getting in at 4.30am after a night out. At least 2 of them have developed the highly irritating habit of turning the tv on the moment they walk into the room, no matter if there's nothing they actually want to watch on, and then they'll wander out leaving it on. At full volume. The last irritatant of the moment is that we have a heater in our room. It's a remarkably efficient heater that when switched on full belts out huge amounts of warm air. Mind you, this is Sydney and despite the fact that it's technically winter, it's not that damn cold! Our room is sweltering at the moment (I'm fighting an on-going war to keep the heater turned off as much as possible, I think I'm losing) and they STILL sleep with blankets on! I wake up sweating in the middle of the night, even just my sheet too much, feeling like I'm on fire. Not only that but because of the stale air (there is a balcony door but of course, opening it would let in the fresh, obviously freezing - it must be, there are people out there wearing t-shirts and shorts for pete's sake) the room reeks, as you'd expect an unaired, way too hot, full of travellers shoes room to smell. I had a minor victory today when I had the room to myself and spent over an hour with the heater off and the door wide open before someone came in and absentmindedly turned on the tv and the heater up to full. Tomorrow I move on. Not a moment too soon.