The Perils of a Cleaning Staff-in-Training

It's clear that I've been too long in this country. After a few weeks of a goofy keyboard, I now try to type the letter 'i' altogether wrongly.

I was treated to a delightful lunch out today, which meant that I didn't feel another restaurant meal was in order for the night. Around 7, I felt a bit peckish and thought I would slice up some fresh tomato to put on some bread with cheese. Sounds good, right? Well it did to me as well... until I discovered my knife had gone AWOL. For those of you hardcore followers of my blog, you might remember how proud I was about the acquisition of the lovely all-in-one camping cutlery set from MEC. (Robin can also attest to how long I stood before the camping cutlery rack, pondering my options carefully, before excitedly deciding on that particular set.) The knife even had a built-in can opener! What more could you ask for? Well, the very presence of the cursed knife would be a start.

A frenzied search of my hotel room confirms that it really is missing. And judging by the surprising lack of items sitting upon the desk in the room, I suspect that the poor knife fell victim to an overzealous cleaning rampage by the young student hotel employees. I trust that they have good intentions, but their cleaning style is plain weird and a bit passive-aggressive, if you ask me. Sometimes they just kind of move my garbage around ever so slightly, and other times they take matters into their own hands and make decisions about what I intended to throw out. Unfortunately, they tend to guess wrong on the latter issue. Hence, I suspect, the untimely disappearance of my tomato slicing device, along with some cute food packaging that I'd purposely hung onto so that I could cut out bits for my journal. Grr!

I suspect I'm being irrationally upset by matters, but these things tend to get to a person. Especially when the only reassuring comfort place for me is the 'home' that I've carved out in my small hotel room. Is even that not sacred?

I maintain hope, though, that the knife situation will get better. Turkey has an abundance of peculiar streetside sellers, who sell everything from bandages to roasted corn on their tiny trays. As I made my way to the cafe this evening, still seething over the loss of my knife, I noticed that one of my neighbourhood's vendors sells forks (along with hair clips and underwear, of course). Thus, there is hope.

RIP handy 2-in-one knife! I'll miss you!!