Couch Hosting: First Time

a few months ago i signed up with CouchSurfing with the intention of getting familiar with this whole crashing-in-with-a-stranger situation. i met up with a few people in the past weeks or so, just over coffee or a beer to get acquainted and hear their travel stories. and then last week, i finally had the nerve to actually lend my couch to someone!

i had been receiving quite an impressive number of couch requests and while i want to be absolutely cautious about hosting a complete stranger, there was a specific request that came in that i accepted almost instantly. this guy was unable to get a slot in the hostel for the weekend and would be homeless and almost opted to find a bar to stay at til early morning before leaving singapore. i was under the impression that he had not done anything here at all (and i was right) and it seemed a great injustice for him not to have a good experience with the hospitable country that had been home to me for so long now. and so, i accepted the couch request.

i was committed to seeing a friend so we just tagged him along. it turned out to be a fabulous excuse to suddenly have chili crab and cereal prawns in Jumbo at the Riverwalk outlet. also, since he's Irish, that called for another good excuse for having beer. and lastly, my friend and i haven't visited our beloved China One for a while now, and it happened to be showing the Bayern-Chelsea game (much to our regret later on..)

and so as it turned out we managed to do the things we wanted to do for ourselves while showing the mister what a tourist ought to do in singapore. seemed to me, everybody went home pretty happy. well, almost, until he realized that there was no way he could make his 10am flight to KL. luckily, there are buses that leave from Golden Mile every hour. problem solved.

all in all, i suppose i did a good job looking after my guest as he intends to come back to singapore soon. he won't get away with not eating squid this time though.