a comfortable couch it seems

Wongeloid left on Friday, heading to Rome then back to Malaysia. He slept on our sofa bed for close to 8 weeks, and now the house feels very weird and empty without him. Some would feel relief, enjoy the quiet, or revel in the personal space after a guest leaves after such a period of time. Not us. Wong was too tops of a house guest and instead he will be missed. A different kind of missing too. One that is coupled with knowing you may not see them for a fucking long time. Sigh.

Some of the things Wong left behind to make room for the 25 books he ordered on amazon:

1. a huge bath towel
2. a huge yellow bath robe
3. 6 packets of envelopes
4. 10 tins of snuff
5. books he read and gave to us (including The Young Stalin)
6. 2 notebooks
7. 350 zloty to send his sea-mail stash of books he didn’t manage to finish reading (the stash includes 6 volumes of Proust and Italian vocab textbooks)
8. about 7 bottles of grog, including a 15 year old Balvenie whiskey
9. Czech money
10. a nice load of boxers left in the bin (he claimed the Malaysian sizes were too restrictive)

To fill the gaping wound created by his departure, we will be having a new guest to stay with us as of tomorrow. For 6 days. Her name is Sarah, and she is the girlfriend of a guy who is the son of my mum’s neighbour friend from the 70s who lives in the States. Sarah is from Texas and is doing a thesis on Polish poster art. She is not Polish. I wonder what she will leave behind…

Wong - the man of many cakes