What I Reckon: 10 Types of Inconsiderate Hostellers

Now I  am not entirely sure whether this extends from my genetic predisposition to have zero patience for morons (thanks Dad!) or whether I am just getting way too old for this shit,  but the people I am meeting in hostels of late are doing my goddamn head in. And there are particular categories of offenders that I can throw out there that are up there with the worst. Here are 10 kinds of people that shit me.

The 6am packers

In what fucking world did you grow up in where it is OK to turn the light on while 8 other people are still sleeping at 5 or 6am so you can screw about packing all your junk into a bag because you have an early flight. Here’s an idea! Pack the night before so you don’t need to wake everybody up and piss everybody off while you are trying to fit everything in your bag. Nuff said.

The 2am shaggers

I get that you’re drunk. I get that you’re horny. But hostel bathrooms are there for a reason. Not just for showering and doing your hair. Be a gem and disappear now because I am pretty sure that most people don’t want to be subjected to your too loud moaning or your bed rocking. Especially the bed rocking. This also applies to masturbation. One time in  El Salvador I woke up with a shocking hangover and thought I was in the middle of an earthquake. After 2 minutes I thought to myself “hold on a minute?? They don’t usually go this long” then got up to go puke only to discover the moron in the bunk above me was jacking himself watching porn….. hello! Anyone can walk in at any moment and I am right there!!! Have some dignity! Shake that shit elsewhere.

The food stealers

There is nothing worse than coming home a) hungry b) drunk c) hungover d) broke or e) all of the above to find that some arsehole has decided to take it upon themselves to steal whatever lovely snack you had set aside for yourself in the fridge all and eat it all for themselves. In a land where few of us actually have a lot of money, this is the lowest of lows. God help you if I ever catch you because my hangry self will probably krav maga your arse back to the supermarket to buy me another dinner you tight arse lazy fucker.

The plastic bag rustlers

There is nothing more grating in this world than the sound of a million rustling plastic bags while you are trying to sleep. Now I am all for plastic bags because they are useful. But fifty million of them!?! All on the go between 11pm and 7am. Are you fucking kidding me. Control yourselves. Organise your shit. Stop being a disturber of the peace.

The loud fuckers

There is jovial.  And then there is just too fucking loud. Two days ago whilst lying in bed with a sinus headache I was subjected to a fucking hyena laughing her head off in the bedroom at 8am whilst drinking her tea in bed. You know what?! Nobody cares to listen to you talk shit at this time of day and laugh about it. Who the hell is this fucking happy in the morning anyway? Maybe if you’d have done us all a favour and shared whatever drugs you were on I may not have had such an issue with your ear piercing ridiculousness. Better yet, just take it outside.

The ‘Wayyy too drunks’

Now we have all been here at some point in our travels. Even I will admit to being somewhat of a menace at 5am coming home to find an equally drunk fucker in my bed, getting disoriented and trying to figure out if I was in the right room and then having a cry about Goldilocks being in my bed and the pizza all being gone (granted, the guy was blonde. And the pizza was my tasty snack left by my sober self on my bed in foil for my drunk self. He managed to throw it on the floor and the cats had gotten into it.  You can understand why I was upset here….) anyway… I am getting off point (always good in a rant). The point is, we will allow for this on some occasions. What is at all times completely unacceptable are the following. 1. Puking on people, beds, or on people’s luggage.  2. Same goes for urination. 3. Climbing into bed with strangers. I had to wake up to a guy doing this. I shoved him out on the floor. Serves you right shithead. 4. Doing this every night of the week when you are the only person in your room doing it. If you are going to be a menace in a quiet hostel, book into the party hostel down the road. Don’t be an arsehole.

The complainers

I don’t know if you noticed. But I’m enjoying myself right now.  I’m having a great time. If you are not, remove yourself from people who don’t really care how shit your day or your life is. I’ve just met you. I don’t care.

The comparers

If everything at home is more awesome than it is here, why the hell are you here? Either shush, enjoy yourself and the new experiences or stay at home. Same goes for food. I don’t care if they don’t have a tofu burger with fries in Vietnam. Eat a goddamn noodle for fucks sake and enjoy it.

The ‘I know everything’s’

There’s being helpful, then there’s being a fucking know it all. Nobody likes a know it all. Even if you’ve been to a million countries and the rest, you don’t need to weigh your expert opinion in on every single conversation had in the hostel. Stop trying so hard and actually listen for a change and maybe you’ll learn something new. Like the fact that you don’t actually know everything and that other people have interesting things to say too.

The unwanted sexual advancers

Here’s a novel concept. We’ve just met and that means your hand should not be attached to my arse. Or my waist.  Or any other part of me. And I don’t give a shit if you don’t understand my language. No is pretty easy to understand. As is me removing your hands from me and glaring at you like you’re a fuckwit. Get the hint.  Not interested.

Anyway, I think that is my rant just about covered. But if you have anymore that you would like to add, please sign them up in the comments box below. Peace out!

 

What I Reckon…. About Selfies

A couple of months ago while I was roaming around the streets of Sofia, I met a young English couple and we got chatting. Somehow we managed to get onto the topic of his mum constantly being on the soapbox about something. Add to this another conversation about words that people hate. Many women hate the word ‘moist’. I personally hate the word ‘flannel’. My Canadian ex-boyfriend hated the word ‘reckon’. No matter how much I hounded him about saying it, he just wouldn’t.

So from here the English couple and I started throwing around the word ‘reckon’. It was agreed that the words ‘I reckon’ are usually proceeded by a massive rant, in agreeability to the statement of another, or is usually proceeded by a dumb activity and the phrase ‘hold my beer’. We decided that this should become the foundation of a blog post and here it is. The first ever ‘What I Reckon’.

The first thing I want to get on my soapbox about is selfies. I absolutely LOATHE selfies with the fire of a thousand suns. While I can appreciate that there is the odd occasion where one might take a photo of oneself to say ‘I was there’ or ‘this was a special occasion’ to family, friends or not yet thought of grandchildren, there is absolutely no need to take a million photos of yourself and post them to the internet.

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Classic Duck Face

I sat behind a girl on the bus who was dolled up to the nines and took about 25 selfies before she chose one to put on Instagram. ‘Hey guys! Look at me! I’m on a fucking bus! How cool am I???’

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Aren’t I Sexy? Face

I was also warned by the hostel worker in Croatia about taking selfies on the boardwalks at Plitvice Lakes. A person died there falling off the edge of a waterfall being a dumb arse trying to take a selfie. Fact. More people have died this year from selfies than from shark attacks. Most of these people are doing dumb shit trying to look cool for the people of social media. “Hey, I am on the roof of a train! And whoops, I just got electrocuted!” or “Check me out on the edge of a cliff! And oops, I just went over the edge of it!” or “Don’t I look cool posing with this loaded gun! Oh I just shot myself or my friend in the head with it! Oops!” Wouldn’t it be nice if people actually stopped to think about safety first instead of how cool they will look on Facebook.

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“Like, I am so excited!’ Face

While I was at Plitvice, I came down the hill and saw a massive line. Thinking to myself ‘this cannot be the boat queue, I haven’t walked 5km yet’, I asked about it. The woman couldn’t tell me what the queue was for, so I started pushing in along the side. Turns out the queue was for selfies. And there they are, hundreds of people lined up trying to get a million pictures of themselves on their selfie sticks. Here is a novel idea. JUST TAKE ONE and then move the fuck along.

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“I am being silly because I am bored and have nothing else to do” Face

Arseholes everywhere are harassing you about buying their selfie sticks. I personally relate to that Cyanide and Happiness cartoon where the guy stabs the other guy with his own selfie stick. This is how much I hate selfies and selfie sticks.

from http://imgur.com/gallery/ffbbcrj
from http://imgur.com/gallery/ffbbcrj

Other selfie related loathing comes from boys. No I DO NOT want to take a selfie of myself or my tits and send it to you. I HAVE BETTER SHIT TO DO WITH MY TIME. That and I don’t need to be putting that shit out there to the world. I have seen what happens here. Ask all the celebs who’s t and a wind up stolen off of iCloud. I loved it when I had a smashed front camera on my phone. Couldn’t even selfie if I tried and what a great excuse! Stop pestering me about sending you a selfie. I look the same as the last time you saw me and if you want to look at my glorious face, find a picture of me doing something cool on Facebook. Because I am not sending you a picture of my tits.

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Boys, this is the only picture of ‘my boobs’ you are going to get!

And of course to all of you out there who have nothing better to do with your time than take a million photos of yourself, GET ANOTHER HOBBY. I once taught a 14 year old who told me she had amassed 10,000 selfies of herself. I told her the same thing. I am pretty sure everyone knows what you look like by now. Stop jamming up my newsfeed with your face.

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Sullen Face

Anyway, like I said before, time and place. I am not saying that you shouldn’t take any photos of yourself. What I am saying is take one or two, put the lens away and enjoy the moment you are in. Enjoy actually living in the real world. Because in the real world, nobody cares about what the fuck you look like this hour. You look the same as you did ten minutes ago. In fact, wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually celebrate the minds of people and the intelligent thought processes they have instead of how well their eyebrows are groomed. I am getting quite fed up of all of the selfie bullshit. Might be time to move to a village where people don’t have phones.

Shit I Learned In Milan

I went to visit Milan for the weekend. And of course shit was to be learned. Unlikely shit to learn in Milan, if I am to be honest, but here goes.

Animal related learnings

Kangaroos can swim

I am Australian and I had to find this out from a Venezuelan dude that works behind the hostel desk…. Probably because I have never seen it happen because living in drought country doesn’t really lend itself to there being loads of water.

Mosquitoes are arseholes

I go to sleep. The high pitched squealing of these bitches are buzzing around my head and I can’t sleep. At some point, because all of the rest of my body is covered with blanket, the mosquito decides to bite me on my eye socket. I awaken with my eye swollen shut. Excellent. So the following evening I ask for fly spray. Spray the room. Go to sleep. Wake up to find that my other eye has now been bitten and that this one is now also swollen shut. Fuck you mosquitoes. So much for looking pretty in pictures in Milan. I tried most of the time in my make-up-less state to not look like a victim of violence. The Venezuelan and I decided that the only thing on this planet that mosquitoes are good for are feeding spiders.

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Covering my swollen bitch eyes with sunglasses…. so damn cool

Etymology

The glorious guide I had on my free walking tour, Marco, was an incredible wealth of knowledge, if not slightly unhinged. I watched this outstanding bad ass ask the masses if we mind him smoking then proceed to pull out and chuff on a cigar around the city, no hands. Anyway, he has this thing about etymology. I am unsure whether any of the following is true but they are entertaining so here we go:

Serendipity

In the 1500’s the country now known as Sri Lanka was called Serendip. The king of Serendip, being an all round conquering wench of the time, sent an army to India in search of gold to make him rich. The did not find any gold. However they did discover that glorious thing called ‘tea’. The tea ended up making the king more money than he would have made finding the gold. Thus serendipity – finding something you weren’t looking for that is of greater value to you than the thing you actually were looking for.

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The bone chapel of Milan, where the walls are decorated with the bones of plague victims

Gadget

Upon the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty in New York, a company was contracted to make miniature souvenirs for people to take home. The company making them was a French company who was owned by a man named ‘Gaget’, pronounced ‘gah-zhay’. Anyway, as we like to do in the English language, we took this work and Anglicised/butchered it to its current pronunciation ‘gad-get’. This is still the word used in Italian to describe souvenirs, however through the progression of the times, we have now come to use the word to describe electronics.

Bankrupt

From the Italian, ‘banca rota’. When a merchant in Milan was in massive debt and unable to pay that debt back they would repossess all of his things and have a sale to get all of the money back. At the end of the sales, they used to break his desk – the thing he would use for selling his merchandise. This breaking, ‘rota’ being the word for ‘to break’ became a tradition. The banca rota. Which again, when Anglicised/butchered, becomes known as ‘bankrupt’ in English.

Other random shit

The Visconti family had the emblem of a viper snake eating a man, despite the fact that vipers are small and cannot eat a man. It is believed that they stole this from some family they conquered somewhere else in the world. Anyway, this is now the symbol of the city of Milan and can also be found in the Alpha Romeo car logo.

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Vipers eating humans??? Just a bit odd.

One family in Milan back in the day who’s name translated into ‘testicles’ decided that their family coat of arms should just consist of three testicles. And so it was.

Oh and while I was there I also saw a guy making music by running a violin bow along the sharp edge of a saw used for cutting wood.

And so, as my tour concluded, the tour guide took us to the most provocative piece of art in the city located outside of the stock exchange. And it was there that both he and the stock exchange, gave us the finger and stole our money and left. THE END.

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Milan! I salute you!

And that shall be the end of the shit! Enjoy your week!