Sleeping Around (41 page)

Miguel hasn't changed at all. He is still cooking, riding, skiing, fighting off pumas and sleeping later from time to time.

Jose will be designing new vortex flanges for Nestlé for many more years to come. Last time I heard from him he was couch surfing, and comparing pipes, with another engineer in El Segundo, California.

Juan achieved the maximum score for his thesis and created ‘a little revolution inside the university'. ‘People stopped me just to say how wonderful and incredible was my project,' Juan told me in an email. It was so good that he won the ‘Thesis of the Year' prize, then married Katya in Moscow and is now living there. They've started up a website promoting the Spanish language (
www.spanishclass.ru
) for Russians. Juan told me that he is the ‘webmaster, designer, editor, redactor, moderator, journalist, philologist and translator'.

I get no response from my emails to Mariano, so I can only assume that he's been eaten by one of the roaming packs of dogs in Valparaíso.

Pedro finally finished recording his band's CD, and his dad did the cover illustration. I told him that I'd look out for it in the charts. Pedro and Nathalia are coming to surf on my couch in Australia in 2009.

I was Mariana's somewhat nervous first couch-surfing guest, but since then she has embraced the couch surfing concept (and one lucky Portuguese couch surfer). Mariana has had 31 people from 23 different countries stay with her, and they all say that is she the coolest
carioca
in Rio.

A few months after I left Bob he put an ad on Craigslist asking for budget travellers who wanted to see North America:

I will be touring the US, Mexico, and Central America for the next year. I have a 15 passenger van loaded with quality camping and cooking gear, 4 bicycles, a kayak, a computer with WiFi, a DVD player and movies, a radio, music for any situation, books on tape, a National Parks Pass, a frisbee, binoculars, field guides and anything else you can think of bringing on a prolonged road trip.

The last I heard from Bob he was in Nebraska with seven passengers. What surprised me the most was that with all the stuff he was taking there was any room left for people.

Jeremy emailed me recently and wrote: ‘I am still employed at the same place despite my best efforts to slack off and get canned. In fact I was promoted a few months ago and am now a Tactical Development Systems Analyst.' He explained the job to me, but I still have no idea what he does. Jeremy has also been very busy dating a couple of women who live in his apartment building plus a woman he works with. ‘It keeps me on my toes,' he said. ‘I had a close call the other night when one of my romantically inclined neighbours dropped by while I was entertaining my romantically inclined work colleague.'

Smári moved into a bigger place with a friend (more room for empty Pepsi bottles) and is still studying and writing complicated mathematical equations. Smári has a blog that he regularly updates, although mostly I have no idea what he is talking about:

Ah, yes. The good news is that The Random Number has been found out to be 4. All other random numbers are actually less random than 4, irrespective of the distribution they are taken from. This can be seen by calculating the respective entropy of 4 on the one hand, and the respective entropy of all other integers on the other.

Let's remember that information entropy is defined as:

The rest is obvious.

Joris emailed me recently to see if I was interested in buying Belgium. The entire country was up for auction on eBay. The initial bid was one euro ($A1.67). I put in a bid for ten euros then there were 26 subsequent bids culminating in a 10 million-euro offer before the auction was halted by eBay. The last time I heard from Joris he was in Mali doing research for a thesis. He'd gone back to university to do a Masters degree in Conflict and Development. When he has resolved the conflict he still plans to finish his Grand Bicycle Tour of Africa.

Cecile is still living in Luxembourg and still doesn't have any Luxembourgish friends.

On the day that James and Aylin got married it snowed. It was the first time in more than 30 years that snow had fallen in Istanbul in October. At least it made a perfect prelude to their icy honeymoon in Iceland. ‘We couldn't afford to drink or eat much,' James told me. ‘And my credit card was on fire.'

Mutisya has turned his ‘couch surfing bedroom' over to volunteers working for the ‘African Child Initiative & Community Development Forum'. Mutisya set up the organisation to help a local orphanage, but has since expanded the initiative to help those affected by the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya that displaced over half a million people. In partnership with local community groups Mutisya started the project ‘YOU CAN SAVE, YOU CAN HELP'. Mutisya is no longer a member of couch surfing as he wants to ‘reserve his couch' for volunteers.

Walindah is still nursing and she even managed to get Elijah a job at the hospital. The last I heard from Walindah she was waiting for a response to an application to be a ‘house member' on South African
Big Brother
.

Penelope and Sarah finished their call centre contract and travelled around India for a month before coming home to Australia to ‘get a real job'. Sarah tells me that she now likes curry. Her belated conversion occurred within one week of their departure from India.

Vikram is no longer on couch surfing. I think he may have just pushed his Marble Emporium a bit too much and was politely asked to leave the site.

Jude is now the editor of two magazines. The latest one is called
Expat Travel & Lifestyle
magazine. At least his Masters degree in Spanish is coming in handy—he's been to Spain twice since I stayed with him.

Elvie is still living in paradise. The lucky thing.

Finally, I'd just like to give a few thanks. First of all a big comfy couch gracias, obrigado, thanks, takk, Dank je, merci, sagol, enkosi, shukriya and salamat to my hosts Miguel, Jose, Juan, Mariano, Pedro, Mariana, Bob, Jeremy, Smári, Joris, Cecile, James and Aylin, Mutisya, Walindah, Penelope and Sarah, Vikram, Jude, Elvie, Leika and Zane. If it wasn't for you guys I wouldn't have a book! A beautiful chaise longue thanks to my wife Natalie who never rolls her eyes even once when I tell her about my new madcap travelling idea for a book. A large ottoman of thanks to James Richardson with his red pen and wordsmith wizardry. And lastly a big chesterfield of thanks to my agent Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown and Jo Paul at Allen & Unwin.

If you'd like to view photos of my couch-surfing hosts (and their couches) you can check out the photo album of my trip at
www.brianthacker.tv
. Or drop me a line—I'd love to hear from you.

Brian Thacker
East St Kilda, October 2008