The Blog

Musings on going away...

Some things seem easy. Getting on a train, meeting new people, going away from home. But they're not.

Getting on the train today was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. Saying good-bye to my mum nearly made me cry. But then I saw her, on the platform, walking up and down the length of the carriage, unable to see me through the mostly-reflective glass, and I had to laugh as she couldn't see me waving until the train moved off several minutes later. That's how it works. I laughed, I felt better. Being on the train didn't seem so bad.

It was pretty awful though. The kid behind me was hyperactive, and the woman next to me was a compulsive SMS sender who didn't know or didn't want to know how to turn off the key tones on her phone. When she wasn't sending or receiving messages (how is that possible when my phone had no reception most of the trip?) she was watching home movies on her camera. With sound. Fortunately, I had my laptop (have I talked about this here?) and a hard-disk full of backed-up Buffy episodes. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems.

Ooh, and I discovered something useful: While a cup of hot water and a tea bag will set you back $2 on the train, if you have your own tea-bag it's only 60c for the cup of water. You also apparently can't reuse styrofoam cups, as they melt (I was told this by an employee of countrylink who had it happen to him last week). But it was good, and both I and my luggage made it safe and sound to Canberra.

So here I am, in our nation's capital, and the train station is no bigger than in many small towns. That kind of freaked me out, but it says a lot about this place. Ten minutes by bus later, I was in the city centre, which is essentially one block. I got off the bus a stop earlier than I was meant to (see above about the size of the city: of course I thought the first stop by a three story building was the city centre), but by deductive reasoning I decided that if I walked two thirds of the way around the pentagon that is the main square I'd be close to where the proper bus interchange was. I wandered through the mostly-empty mall (it was 5pm and the shops were shut) and found the bus stop where I thought it would be. Hooray for logic and a good sense of direction!

The next bus to the uni was an hour away, and I couldn't be bothered waiting, so I picked up my bag and headed west. Now, keep in mind that my bag was 20+kg, and I had a backpack too. Also, I didn't have a map, but I knew the uni was west from the city centre, not too far away.

Then the handle on my bag broke. Aiya! I fashioned a new one out of the old handle and a strip of material that I've been using to mark my bag for about ten years now and carried on. And less than an hour later I was checking into my room to dump my bags before heading down to dinner.

My room reminds me of how I'd always imagined a minimum-security prison would be like. A bed with a peach blanket, a desk with lamp, a chair next to a shelf and meshes and grill over the windows. Oh, and a small sink. One side wall and the outside wall are white brick, the other two white plaster. There's not enough lighting. The cupboards and shelf are plain brown wood, and the person in the room next to me runs windows xp (with default noises still playing). There's a pin-board too, which wasn't expected from my prison scenario.

Things are looking slightly more healthy now. I've put a blanket on the bed, nice and colourful, and my books on the shelf. My computer is here on the desk, and my toiletries and tea supplies are next to the sink. I don't have to walk very fair to get hot water, and the toilets (although shared) don't smell as badly as they could. And I don't have to share my room. Maybe if I get time tomorrow I'll draw something to put up on my very blank walls. And maybe I'll get my net connection set up.

At dinner, I met a nice mathematician named James who was here for the companion conference to the one I'm at. I hope I see him at breakfast tomorrow, it would be good to have a familiar face to sit with. The food was acceptable for standard buffet roast, and it wasn't too lonely coming back to my room afterwards. Maybe tomorrow night I'll visit the common room and bar. Oh, and I need to find out what the deal is about friends visiting me. But for now, it's time for good little Catherines to go to bed. And the bad ones too.

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