Resourcefulness.

Episode 1 – Honestly!

Hunting for accommodation, one of the young women who served at the bar had several times offered to show me a place, only to not show up each time. I vowed this one would be the last time, having begun to believe that the place didn’t actually exist. Maybe she’d been promising it in a kind of Melanesian way. If I thought that I had a chance at something, whether or not it was the case, then that would make me happier temporarily, which had to be a good thing. As per usual, she didn’t show. I gave up and went around the corner, near to where I normally have breakfast and waited in a department store for the owner who also let out properties.

Unbeknownst to me she had arrived a few minutes after I left, late but actually coming. She already knew where I had breakfast (had a waitress friend there) and rushed around the corner to see if I was there. She missed me by 2 perhaps minutes as I fruitlessly hung around the back of the nearby store, out of sight and view of the street, waiting for the owner. Eventually I got in a taxi and went to the department store owner’s property to look at it. The barmaid and I must have crossed paths quite a few times.

My work phone went off. I had owned it almost two days, just about no-one knew its number and I didn’t recognise the caller. It was her. She’d convinced the cleaner to let her come into my room while he was cleaning it – everyone knew about my househunting – saw the packaging of the phone and read the number on the side. Her phone had been stolen a week earlier so she borrowed the bar manager's phone and called me.

I gave her points for trying hard and went back to look at her house.

Episode 2 Dis-Honestly!

I was at a dance and someone asked to borrow my phone, as hers was out of charge. “Out of credit”, I thought, but lent her my phone. A day later I started getting missed calls from a number I didn’t know. It was the young lady from the dance, who had used my phone to call her own phone and discover and save my number. She’d ring once and then hang up, hoping that I would call back on my dime. Which I did, once. Surely I remembered her, and wanted to take her out?

Her calls have since gone unanswered. 10 points for cleverness, 5 points for humour in the situation, 0 for integrity and -10 for ever wanting to lay eyes on her again.