Saturday, October 16

news from the desk

so a lot has happened this week. apart from my 16 hour shift on sunday -- no one ended up coming to cover, so i worked 8am till midnight -- there's been a few changes. the major one is that BTC, the backpackers travel centre, the company that did all the bookings through the desk, is no more. earlier this week news came through that btc had folded, so decisions had to be made as to what the desk would become.

these decisions came pretty fast - the traveldesk remains (yay!!) but instead of booking tours around europe and the world, the main functions of the desk are the shop (which is as it was before, but we'll be getting a lot of new products soon), and the hostelbookers booking desk. so if you're in london, and want to book a hostel somewhere, come see me, and i'll book it for you.

so the desk is looking slightly different, but we remain all the same.

but decisions have to be made as to what we should sell...i'm thinking beer. beer is everyones friend. and hopefully we'll be getting some fridges in here soon for this (does that mean i can drink on the job? :P) but we'll also be selling t-shirts and what i hope is a whole range of wonderful products that we've been thinking about selling for some time now.

we're full up here at the gen this weekend..i don't think there's a free bed in the place, which for a hostel with 7 floors and over 900 beds is no small thing. and it's not that strange that we're full. it's hard to remember a weekend where we weren't now. i just keep wondering who keeps inviting all these people to come and stay in my house. they make a huge mess, never clean up after themselves, but i guess i can't complain too much. they do keep me employed here right?

but even with all these people staying here, it doesn't seem to be that busy. that said, the discoparty planned for tonite has hit the back burner for the time being.

other news from the gen of late: russ (he's a friend of mine who stays here) was trying to force dave (another friend) to eat a gigantic spoon-full of spagetti last nite, to the point where dave refused, and russ tipped it all over him. but being the gentleman russ is, he threw a glass of water in dave's face to help him clean up!

not to be out down, dave snuck into russ's room, looking to steal some things (on a very temporary basis, just really to piss him off a little really). when he couldn't find his laptop, he looked around a little more, found the only clothes he had out, alond with his locker keys, phone etc and took these. that being said, russ had a pair of boxers and that's about it to run around trying to find dave for this stuff.

so russ borrowed some clothes, and ran around the hostel for an hour or so looking to kill dave...i'm still not sure if he found him, but i think he got all his stuff back. i'm kinda looking forward to russ's comeback, cause you just know he'll be planning something pretty big!

also in the last few days, nick, a NZ guy who's been here as long as i have (over 12 months) was happily sleeping, when one of his roommates mistook nick and his bed for the bathroom. this guy apparently rolled out of bed, whipped it out, and proceeded to piss all over nick while he was sleeping.

nick woke up, realised what was going on, went completely mental and dragged the guy upstairs to get hime thrown out (and i think/hope he had a shower straight after...and change his bed). os the guy gets thrown out, and all is good. but he came back! i'm not sure exactly, but i think he's here right now, and if nick finds him, it'll be amusing for all to watch.

funnie thing about this is that it's not the first time it's happened. well, first time to nick i'm sure, but - if you dig around the net i'm sure you'll find a story about a former guest who was pissed on and vowed never to come back!

but that's half the fun of the gen. you never know what's going to happen. maybe i'm one of the lucky ones - never been pissed on while i'm sleeping...i think if i was you'd hear me yelling all the way back home in perth! haha

one final news thing - i've made traveldeskguys bootleg video cards for all my friends who keep borrowing my videos. i figure we'll make a card, then i can track where they're all going! the card is gold...i'll think about getting an image up soon...