clo_again

Last night, around this time, I made twelve coffee cupcakes.

There are now no cupcakes remaining (there are three of us in the house; I ate five) but my mother has left me money to go forth tomorrow and buy more cupcake ingredients to make strawberry ones for the weekend. In theory, because we're going back to Wales to see my grandparents and my granny likes cupcakes (my grandad is gluten intolerent; I'm already hitting Google to look for gluten-free recipes because we need more cupcakes, really).

On which note, no I refuse to use ground almonds as a substitute for flour on the basis that whoever decided combining nuts with cake should've been shot, immediately. I cannot find a good coffee cake around here with having to pick the walnuts out. I mean, WALNUTS. Small concentrations of non-taste that break with that rubbery, bitty texture just when you're enjoying a good sugar rush. It should be against the laws of cake. When I rule the world it will be.

But. The point of this was to say that yes, cupcakes have been consumed for much of the last twenty-four hours and cupcake consumption is imminent tomorrow, after I've called the woman about working next week (please, please let me get some money) and called my employment agency to yell at them for not sending me any sort of P45 even after I called over a week ago to yell already. So I'll pretty much have spent two days making and eating cupcakes.

Yet all I want to do right now is... make more cupcakes. Argh. I SHOULD'VE HIDDEN ONE IN CASE OF CRAVINGS. DAMMIT.

Instead (there's no butter and the new Tesco closes at 11pm dammit), going to go watch Tim Minchin and glower at my last two packs of TimTams which I've banned myself from opening until I do something TimTam worthy, like actually get a job or write more than a few paragraphs at a time. I want to try and make TimTam cupcakes but a. can't work out how (there will be a way) and b. don't want to lose the TimTams I would inevitably waste in the attempt. Damn you Australia for giving me these ridiculous food obssessions (I'm craving a sausage-on-a-stick-dipped-in-batter like you wouldn't believe, although I'm inclined to blame that on New Zealand. And kangaroo steak. And the venison burgers in Queenstown. Lamington fingers, oh god. I meant to buy a pack to bring home and ran out of time. Which is good, because I suspect they'd have lasted less time than the TimTams.)

Have to stop thinking about Food That Is Bad For Me. Backpacking was so utterly wonderful; the bad food was cheap so you didn't care. I miss eating TimTams for breakfast. *wistful* And knowing that most days, in New Zealand anyway, I'd have walked them off by lunchtime. That was nice.

~

Before I go, I've been meaning to check if mayakitten is around? She's gone AWOL as far as I can tell and I didn't realise until a few days ago when the commentary on the DAAS DVD mentioned there being a plaque in Petrie Plaza reading the Doug Anthony Allstars Lived and Died Here and I wanted to flail. So you know, if you're around mayakitten, say hi or post or send me Paul McDermott tied up with purple ribbon as a sign (I will totally send you cupcakes in return for that last one ;) )?


Okay, I'm done rambling. Except, has Mirka had the damn baby yet? Anyone? Bueller?

So I made it to Sydney without mishap or misadventure or misagetting-eaten-by-backpackers. I did end up pissed at Googlemaps for the first time ever though, because 477 Kent Street is most definitely not the same at 235 Sussex Street, yet that's where it directed me to head for and since the streets were adjoining I figured maybe the hostel had entrances on both and Googlemaps magically knew this.

There was actually a Base sign at 235 Sussex Street; however, it was a travel office. I was kindly directed to walk up the next crossroads and walk back down Kent Street, which was my original plan until I thought I'd Googlemap it to be sure and foolishly followed that instead of my own common sense. Usually I wouldn't care but my backpack is rather heavy and Sydney is rather warmer than Canberra for some unexplicable Australian reason and I was sagging somewhat by the time I stepped over a backpacker to get into reception. Fail Googlemaps. Not total fail because you did get me here but at least partway fail.

Then I paid for the seven days of unlimited wireless (I have a timer counting down in the taskbar from 6 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes... it's creepy) and after a second, unhelpful trip down to reception to try to work out just why the hell my laptop wasn't picking it up, I figured I'd try sitting in the lounge with it. What a surprise, the hostel wireless pops up on my list of networks. -_- So no in-room internet after all (it was too good to be true) but unlimited access in the lounge and not only have I already spied a guy with a cup of coffee but there's a plug point right next to where I'm sitting now so I could happily sit here for a couple of hours while stuff like Primeval downloads. Not that I've found the kettle in the kitchen yet, mostly because I've been in twice to refill my water bottle, couldn't spot a kettle on first glance and didn't want to hang around looking lost like a noob.

On the plus side? There're only four beds in my all-girls room and only one of them looks slept in. My cunning deduction is that it belongs to a Japanese girl (there's a guidebook to Oz in Japanese on the bed) and she's a longterm resident (there's posters on the wall beside her bed). These are all Good Signs because I've found Japanese to extremely polite, helpful and if she's longterm then she'll know where everything is. Like the kettle.

So so far I've found my hostel (eventually), worked out the internet, approved very much of my room, found the kitchen, been daunted by the kitchen, found the laundry mostly by accident (I got lost. There is a lot of hostel here) and decided that actually, this might not be as bad as my initial "the internet won't work. >:-/ Maybe I should leave and book into a hotel!" reaction.

Now I'm starving and want to go in search of food...

...except someone just handed me a glass of wine and some cheese cubes. Clearly sitting here for hours on my laptop is an excellent policy (it's actually wine I can drink too which is shocking. Possibly it's mostly water. But still free!) Hostelling is decidedly bizarre.