My Days at the Hostel

Desasiswa AD is the hostel where I stayed for the first year I did my Bachelor's degree. This is the place where wonderful memories are knitted from different yarns of happenings. There were ups and downs, laughter and horror, yes, you name it, we have most of them...

Fast forward from year 1998 to year 2010... here I am, in a different hostel, or it is known as a Guest House. It is called Rumah Tetamu KAB. I will spend about nine days here working on the daily bulletin for the 2nd ASEAN Schools Games 2010, most of the time doing editing and proofreading the reporters' drafts. The is the view from the guest house I'm staying for these days.

I guess most of the public universities' hostels look quite alike. That's why when I reached here, seeing the buildings brought me back to the time when I had the opportunity to stay at a place where I use to called it my second 'home'. At my hostel lat time, they have a few rooms in the building, common bathrooms and toilets, and the place where we can dry our laundry. At least, the basic necessities are there. As for the basic facilities, we have an activity room, a TV room and a cafe.

Hmmm... no, we don't have washing machines where we can just slot in our coins and let the gizmo do our laundry. We were the machines washing our clothes ourselves. So, we usually felt the heartache whenever we saw the sky was getting dark or cloudy. Our hearts would shout out loud, "there goes our laundry!" if it rained.

The room... It is a basic room with a single bed, a cupboard, a study table and a chair. Since three students share one room, there would be enough furniture for all three of us. All except for the bed -- as there will be one bunk bed and one single bed. I could still remember my roommate who slept on the upper part of the bunk bed. You could find her things on the floor next morning when you wake up. I guess she must have done some pushing and kicking through the night that had caused all her stuff to fall. Thank God, she did not fall...

The room could be small, but being at your own corner, sitting at the study table, the comfort is still there. We could study and do our assignments till late at night. We would use our study light and switch off the common light if anyone of us would like to sleep earlier. We would decorate our mini notice board with stuff and reminders and timetables and quotes. Did I mention a MINI notice board?

One of the best moments besides sleeping and studying in the room is non other than friends/coursemates who come to visit you. For this, it all depends on your roommates. If they know them well, they would be as happy as you seeing them. If they don't know them at all and when noise is made, you could feel that their looks from their eyes could pierce through your body. We could be chatting and laughing hilariously or whispering and gossiping, well, it's laughing most of the time.

Have I missed any other stuff to share here? Spooky encounters at the hostel, you may ask... Let me know if you want to read about it... I might just blog about it here...