Sunday, February 20, 2011

a busy week of hosting.

I have an influx of surfers coming in the next week which is good timing with the Cyclone & clean-up last week it was nice to have the time to myself but I’m looking forward to immersing myself into the travelling lives of others once again. The weather looks to be clearing up and it will be nice to have a day, or two of sunshine! I miss the sun. On Thursday we were 300mm of a February record rainfall. There is still a week to go and it rained all weekend!

So incoming I have Diana from Indonesia, despite the close proximity she is my first surfer from Indonesia. Then Seamus a guy from Belgium who is about to embark on a hitchhiking trip around Australia. Jenna and her partner Brian from Canada (I love Canadians!!!) and last but not least Paul and his girlfriend from Australia. Paul is a musician playing in one of our local clubs.

If the weather is nice I will probably head out to get the hilux a little dirty with some 4wding in the mud. One of the best things about the wet season. I also have my CS meeting at Duck’s nuts on Sunday. Its going to be a busy week I think.

What exactly do you look for when you browse peoples profiles to find a place to surf? I offer a mattress on the floor with a fan if your lucky and I still get tons of requests. But I think my place can be a little unique sometimes. There is one guy in Darwin who gives people an air-conditioned room, with a queen bed and makes a little welcome gift as well as feeding them. I guess living at my house is sort of coming into a gypsy commune. My adventures are a little out of the ordinary, from snake-catching to playing in the mud, to scottish dancing with my mum (not me but surfers have gone). I don't offer the comfort of your own hotel room but I do have a really relaxed friendly lifestyle and many people have commented on how happy they are at my place. My german couple last week said it was like home. They even called my mum Mara-Mum. My adventures are a little whack and I can't wait for the dry again I think I will be camping every second weekend.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Aftermath.

Just in case you cared but we survived the cyclone, LAME. Lost a few good trees, volleyball was cancelled and I only got two hours off work.. whilst my mother and sister got two days. But all the bad is negated because a new frog moved into my garden



He is a Desert Tree Frog and he makes a hell of a noise.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Cyclone Carlos.



Well sitting at work right now and Darwin is right smack bang in the middle of a Cyclone, only Catagory one but destructive winds are up to 130km/h. My work won't let me go home until 2pm. Lucky for me my road home is relatively clear but a tree is down on my street going across the road.

All flights in and out of Darwin were cancelled.

Keep safe!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

couchsurfing is a reciprocal thing

When a host opens their couch to a surfer nothing is expected in return except respect of them and their property. However the more a surfer offers the more beneficial the experience becomes. It can begin with cultural exchange and good conversation and ends with a thank-you meal or a six pack of beer. It really doesn’t matter I personally never expect anything from my surfers except that they come to my house independently. They clean up after themselves and they interact with me on some level.

I just recently had a French couple staying with me, perhaps my first French in a while. I find it a little hit and miss with the French. There seems to be extremes SUPER AMAZING & Total take advantage of my hospitality. That being said my German guy previous took advantage of me.. So who am I to judge based on what country they are from?

Lucky for me my last French couple fell into the SUPER AMAZING half and I was treated to great company with good food and of course, great wine. The funny thing was I almost passed them up because of their profile. They had no references except two they had written about six months ago to other people. It makes me think that there is something wrong with them. There are a few people on my profile I haven’t left references for because I didn’t like them all too much, so when I see other references not returned I wonder why.

That brings me to another point I FUCKING HATE IT!!!! When you have a mutually good time and they don’t leave a reference in return. Couchsurfing is a RECIPROCAL thing. It depends on a referencing system and being so fucking arrogant and lazy as to not to give one back is just rude. I personally refuse to host people who don’t return the majority of their references. I guess I needed to vent a little there. I don’t care if they have 100000 positive references if they never left any in return they can sleep in a homeless shelter for all I care.

So on my weekend including awesome French couple I also had two Aussie guys from Victoria on their way back from Vietnam, A Highly excitable German couple about to embark on their Australian working holiday, and A German girl studying in Manly, Sydney. Friday night I had also had a Swedish couple & a Canadian girl. Saturday night we played Pictionary which turned out to be a bit interesting when English was not the first language of most of the players and it turned into a few heated arguments about the translation but all in good fun. It was a pretty intense weekend with a lot of people around.

Spent Sunday out at Litchfield with the Aussies & German couple. Was another instense wet season experience with rushing waters and thundering falls. There was a snake in the water at wangi but I couldn’t quite work out what it was. I was pretty tired from the entire weekend though, but we swam for a few hours in Buley Rockhole and the boys entertained themselves jumping off things.

Anyway I will leave you with a great “cheap” recipe. Tastes good, is healthy and won’t break the budget.
SUPER tuna PATTIES
1 can of tuna
½ cup of breadcrumbs
2 eggs
Cup chopped fresh spinach
1 grated carrot
1 onion diced
Teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 fresh lime juice only
Any other spices you like. I’ve thrown some basil in it was good!
Mix everything together then shape into patties voila YUMMY. The patties freeze well and are delicious hot or cold!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Crazy Kiwi Surfer

What is wrong with people that need 1 million friends on thier facebooks/couchsurfing profiles I prefer quality over quantity any day. Sure when I first started I scraped the barrel a bit more to buff up my awesomness but now I just want to have the real referances. The genuine people.

I have this Kiwi girl who I met briefly in a bar as she was being hosted by another one of my surfers she has about 100 friends/referances. I didn't really like her because she requested me to pick her up at the airport at 1am and I told her at the bar (ok I was drunk and aggressive) that I thought it was rude to expect a host to do that. She brushed me off, fair enough then I walked off and talked to other people. She then went home and bitched about me to my host's roommate. Fine, we obviously didn't get along and I thought that was that.

Lo & Behold the NEXT FUCKING DAY she adds me a friend and leaves me a stupid neutral two line referance saying how great I am. Is she serious? I asked her to delete it and she ignored me, didn't even reply.

New years comes round and I get this message from her

"happy new years!!
where are you now?
love from saigon, vietnam
maxin"

Quite obviously a spam message to everyone on her list if she really cared she would know that I was still in Darwin and would have at least put Hi Amanda!

To which I reply

"you are the fakest person I have ever met. I don't know you, you don't like me as you made it clear to other people, why bother with this. All I asked was that you deleted your referance to me and I will delete my own so I can forget I ever met you."

Once again I get ignored. Ok so I shouldn't let this bother me but this isn't what couch-surfing is about. Its about real connections, real people and buffing up your resume with a lot of bullshit referances does not represent who you are.

So I left her a negative referance. Hopefully now she removes me from her life.