Real Life

Right... I've just about had it. It seems to me that just about every other shift I'm working at that hotel, I find some moron sleeping on a couch in the bar or some other place. What the hell is it with me and that hotel. Are we random people magnets? Does the hotel scream: it's ok... you can sleep in a couch in here without getting disturbed, as long as you don't mind cleaning staff about you.

So this morning, it's a swedish 50 or so year old guy with plenty tattoos on hos hands and arms. The guy has even taken off his shoes for more comfort. It's about 6 in the am, and the cleaning fuckers are just loafing about. It's the second time I've experienced them not telling me when somebody's sleeping in the bar. I try to explain to them that it's important they let me know. But for some reason, they don't. Anyway, I wake him up with a shake of his leg. Not much for touching these weirdos tbh, but I gotta get him up. He's come to life, and I tell him it's go-time. He's looks a little bewildered, but acknowledges the request. My colleague tells him it's now. Not in 5 minutes. He gets up and starts putting on his shoes, while I walk towards the reception area.

I start messing around with a computer, when my colleague approaches me with the guy's credit card in hand. "Do we have any rooms.. He'd like a room", he asks me. I'm momentarily baffled. Does the guy actually have the nerve to ask for a room? I grab the card, and tell my colleague, that no, amazingly enough, we don't have any rooms for this guy. I walk over to the couch sleeper, and ask him if he understands me (seeing as I speak danish, and he speaks drunken swedish). He nods. So I tell him, either you get out of here now, or I will charge the hours you've slept on our couch, to your card. He accepts his card, and starts to walk towards the entrance. Half way there, he turns and mumbles that he's sorry. I disregard him and walk away.

So... go to a hotel and sleep on a couch for free. When you are thrown out, you ask if you can rent a room. Is it just me, or does that sound like a thief stealing a car, and when stopped by police, he says: Oh, I wanted to buy this car.. did I not mention that to the salesman? I know I was being a bit rough with this guy, but seriously. It's disrespectful to a degree where I don't understand how the hell they even think of doing it. And how do they get in? Do they have a masters degree in sneaking about? And it's all kinds of people. Had a bum sleeping in the conference rooms the other day... an elderly chap with a backpack sleeping on the couches.. two chinese girls, no more than 25-26 sleeping on a couch one night. Where do they come from? Does this happen to all hotels?

I shake my head in disbelief... it's amazing really.

It's weird really.. Have had this admin section open in a tab in FF for a few days now, been meaning to write in it a few times, but just never got around to it. Now I'm just thinking what the hey... got a few odd stories I can share, I guess. 

All the moving of my stuff is now completed, and I've left Ranc's place for good. Leaving the premise itself didn't bring out any tears of sadness, but I must admit some fun times have been had in that place. And of course, despite his everannoying meowing around mealtimes, catdaddy was a cool little furball, that will be missed... just a bit. But as I said, I won't miss the room that much. Afterall, I'm in my own place now, and despite the fact that things are a tad complicated around here, and too personal to be related here (not for me, but for my family), I'm sort of in limbo between feeling at home, and still sort of feeling like this is my mom's place. But I'm guessing that will be sorted within a few weeks. Most of my stuff is still in boxes on the living room floor. I'll unpack it all, when I'm all by myself, with shelves to put it all in. I've got my clothes in huge closets now, which is just a joy. 

Besides living in a new place and feeling absolutely splendid about it, work is as work usually is. One bad thing tho, is, we will lose our room service privilege come April first, meaning a huge chunk of cash will be yoinked from my poor innocent hands. The hotel wants to go legit, for some reason, even tho it will cost them a fuckload of money. But that's as is, I guess. Unfortunately, this means I'll lose some income, and I'm getting the feeling I will be able to notice. Perhaps I'll have to rent out a room for some time anyway. We'll see. This also means that a person will be hired to do the cooking and room servicing at night, at the hotel. That, in turn, means somebody else will be there all night long, very likely wasting my precious alone time chatting away nineteen to the dozen about random pointless topics. I don't know what I'll do. I guess I'll have to pull out the old Mr. Arrogant Prick routine, so people will eventually think I'm an asshole, and just leave me the fuck alone. There's a good chance I'll have to make use of my alter ego to scare people off. Of course, with a bit of luck, they'll hire somebody extremely interesting and funny, so my nights will be cut out for me. But they almost never hire people of that sort. Just me. But then, I'm me... nobody else can claim that. Or... hmm... Nevermind. It'll suck, I know it. I'll type out the story of the night cleaners now, and put it in a new post.

Besides me and m'colleague at the hotel here at night, a night cleaning team also occupies the premises. That team consists of some 4-5 different guys, with usually 4 of them working at the same time, throughout the hotel. They vacuum and buff the lobby floor, wipe surfaces down, cleans the basement and the restaurant on the 20th floor.

Most of them speak little or no danish. Some speak a little english, some speak spanish, some speak lord knows what language. Common for them is, they loaf about at night, and are, involuntarily the cause of much amusement for me. The best is then they get into an argument over something, and both are annoyed with the other, but neither can communicate it in any language the other can understand. It takes a lot of self control to not just laugh out loud at them. But be that as it may. One of them, a chinese looking bloke, does speak danish failry decently. He's a skinny little fella, and when he's here, he cleans the restaurant kitchen and floors. Now, I'm not usually the go-to guy when it comes to small talk during shifts. And as such, the cleaning staff and I don't communicate a lot. But this guy is pretty funny. He's on about a variety of different topics, most of which I find somewhat dull. But that's just me.

So anyway, yesterday he walked through the reception back office area at 07 am, where most of the morning staff had arrived. They consisted solely of girls yesterday, and while it's not bad during the nights, the fresh scent of girl perfume does lend a certain ambience to the offices. So he's walking through, taking it all in. Especially this one girl, Carina. He smiles knowingly at me, and then disappears.

Tonight, however, he's back. Asking about the hotel room availability, claiming he'd like to sleep on the 20th floor, you know, for the view. Fair enough. Then he lurks about for a while, then asks me if I wasn't impressed with the way the office smelled yesterday. I know where this is going, but figure wtf... won't hurt. I tell him the girls usually leave a certain nice and fresh smell around. "Yeah" goes the cleaner, "especially that blond girl". Sure, her as well. "Yeah, her husband is probably happy". I tell him she's not married. He looks surprised. I dunno if he had figured all nice girls would or should be married. Now, this is where he turn the tables and gets the better of me. Apparently blatantly selfaware of his own situation, he philosophises on how she'd probably wouldn't ever go for a guy like him, smelling things up from cleaning chemicals, working the night shift. "No, I'd probably need black magic to get a girl like her" he said. It startled me a bit, and I sort of felt sorry for him. I dunno why. I mean, he seems happy enough, and I doubt he was really serious about her, but still. Working the night shift as a service manager, as I do, might not be the fanciest job in the world. But the pay is decent, and I have a responsibility and I get to wear a suit and what have we. Superficial, for sure, but it does maintain a decent facade. He's a cleaner. Now, it's as honorable job as any, if you ask me. But it's inheritingly one that people think less of. And that's sad in a way. I felt a pang of guilt for some reason, and also a bit of respect for this guy. He's doing his best, and I hope it will help him get where ever he's going in life.

My god, has it been 7 days already? Well, stuff has been keeping me occupied what with moving and being sick and such. Yeah, I spent all my 5 days off from being in a varying degree of illness. Wasn't ever really sick, but not quite healthy either. Gotta love that.

But I managed to move my stuff... or most of it, with the help of mom. We took it fairly easy, and since I didn't have a lot of stuff really, at my little room, the whole deal was over with in no time at all. Only missing one box of wires, two chairs and the tv now. Will get that tomorrow after I've slept.

Different problems arose, of course, during the day of the moving, and these problems will have an effect on how fast I'll be living by myself. Technically I live in the apartment now, but my stepdad will stay there every other week as well, since he works two fulltime jobs every alternate week. But since he might have to move to a place of his own, I dunno if he'll depart the premises in a matter of weeks or, if he doesn't have to find his own place, matter of months. It's a little messy atm, but I guess it'll be ok. Just a matter of getting used to it, I suppose.

I'm settling in to my new, and so far, permanent abode now. It's good to be home, although I'll have to shake the feeling of being a visitor at mom's place. It's my place now, and I'll need to make the visitor feeling go away, and replace it with the "this is my home" feeling. It'll come around, eventually. I guess I just haven't really realized it yet. You know how you get something you've wanted for years, and then when you have it, the feeling you've imagined in  your head for so long doesn't magically appear until after a few weeks. I think that's how I feel now. In the not too distant future, I'll start realizing it's my new home, and I'll start feeling it more. Also, most of the interior isn't mine. I'll customize the place forthwith. But I'm happy with a fully furnished apartment, as I can't afford all new stuff in one go. But it'll be nice to fix that in the coming years.

It's a roomy place, and I like having elbowroom around me. Been living in small quarters for ages now, and I'm enjoying the space. High ceilings, large rooms. And a view. Also, I can open windows now, without people being able to just climb in. And I don't HAVE to have the curtains drawn. This is the second floor. Many things are improved from where I lived before. I'll be alone, which is good and bad. But it'll be ok. I'll  be just dandy.

I'm at work now, and it's boring as hell. Haven't managed to install much on this new laptop yet. I did get WinXP on there, and while it's nice to have something I'm familiar with, I do occassionally get the feeling that this box'd rather have vista installed. But I don't care. I'm off for the weekend, and I'll try to get stuff installed properly on here. 3Dsmax and photoshop and such. I'm liking the keyboard tho, which is nice. It's got some decent keys. Ok, right.. best be off. I'll catch you lot on the flippy side.

Well, I'm glad I didn't make aforementioned call. I had me some cups of tea at the hotel. Tried 5 different flavors (the vanilla one was my least favorite), and that, combined with a good meal, turned my situation upside down. I stopped feeling like cack, and started being in a better mood. By the time I left, I was feeling possitively spry. Also, I managed to make quite a bit of dough during the night, and who'd want to give up on that? I know I wouldn't. 

Now I'm at home, feeling a bit tired. I couldn't sleep when I got home, but of course now I'm exhausted. And I'm waiting to be picked up by mom. Gotta go help her, and myself, sort of the new phones. And I think I'll bring my new laptop as well, and see if I can kickstart it. I need to install XP on it asap, instead of that time and resource waster, Vista. And then Ubuntu. They are doing some fine things, the ubuntu crowd. I hope I'll be able to get a good install going, with wireless and what have we. We'll see.

Anyway, just feeling better and being possitive about it.