Engineer Andy's Journal: Day four in Cairns (Wednesday) and dramas of laundry

Day four had a good result at work in terms of solving a problem which had been bugging me for a couple of days.

In terms of notable events, it came in the most mundane form after work. I decided that i was going to do some laundry, as the bag was getting a little full. having packed the better part of my wardrobe, it wasn't getting critical in terms of running out of clothes for a while yet though.

There was a guest laundry on the ground floor, and i figured on a dollar or two to operate the washing machine and about the same for the drier. It ended up being $3 for each machine. $6 to get a load of clothes clean and dry rankled with me, and in a classic moment (family members in particular take note) I thought to myself "I'm not paying that much for that". It was partly not having that much coinage with me at the time, and partly what i thought was the motel ripping me off for a pretty basic service.

In the end, in a small personal form of defiance, i washed about a load of clothes in the handbasin in my room, and left it to hang in a small forest of rails around the bathroom. In retrospect it was petty of me, and mostly borne out of frustration at having to change almost every basic living arrangement, and pay usary rates for these living arrangements. the firm pays for the room i'm in, but pretty much everything else is meant to be covered in the linving away from home allowance.

I've yet to figure out what to do, but it was an interesting reference point, in that we all have things which we will readily pay for, and other things where we are very price sensitive.

drying laundry

[the boat rocker]

The trouble with hand washing is that you can never get it quite as dry as the spin cycle on the washing machine and therefore always drips. Hope it didn't take too long to dry.