People Person

I can safely say that I am not much of a people person.

I love my tiny cave where I can spend hours and hours without moving an inch (except for toilet times and when I'm hungry). The fact that I love spending my time alone in my room does not mean that I do not like to see the world outside.

I do love going out but I just prefer doing it alone or with someone I'm really really comfortable with. I appreciate my alone time so much and that explains why I do not like it when people come and take away my 'me' time for so long. I have dates with myself that I want to fulfill: binging on my food, watching tv series, shopping on my own, lazing around in my room.

It's not a sad thing! Being alone and being a loner are two different things. I am perfectly fine being with myself and I enjoy it.

I am not fond of crowds and I try to avoid them as much as possible, though I do not mind crowds of babies. HEHE. Whenever there's a gathering and babies are involved, you can find me wherever the babies are instead of wherever the adults are. There's this saying:

"Natrah and babies." :P

Travelog: Montreal Botanical Garden

My worst nightmare while traveling: rain.

Don't get me wrong, I love rain. It's just that when I travel, I prefer if it's not raining because it would be easier for me to get around town in my plain clothes and no umbrella or raincoat. My photos would be more awesome too! Blue skies, white clouds in the background is definitely my favourite kind as my photography skill is not awesome enough to turn a gloomy day, beautiful.

When I went to Montreal last summer, the weatherman told me that it was going to rain the day I was there for one whole day. I was pretty disappointed with that news and tried to plan my adventure around that. My friend and I decided to do outdoor sightseeing on the day we arrived and left Montreal because it would be sunny during the day and raining by night.

Therefore, after we checked in that day, we went straight to the Jardin Botanique de Montréal or Montreal Botanical Garden. I am not quite a fan of trees, flowers and stuff like that but I thought it was something nice to see for a change, so why not? I guess I was in a luck for they were having an exhibition called Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal where sculptures were made out of different kind of plants and I thought they were awesome! If not for the exhibition, I would have dozed off at the entrance...

Entrance to Jardin Botanique de Montreal. A trowel and a watering can.

One of my favorites: Mother Nature.

I love the bright pink colour on this one.

My bias vote.

Feeling kind of proud when I saw this. :D

Self-Improvements

I am such a lazy bum...

To be honest, I have been thinking a lot lately. There are so many things on my mind and most of them are in the category of self-improvement. I am so not content with myself. I feel that I am lacking in so many aspects...

It's not I-suck-I-hate-myself kind of thing, but more to like I-can-do-so-much-better-than-this.

Well, I think it's good. I'm trying to take care of myself better. Hopefully, it's not just a phase that I'm going through. I sincerely want to be a better version of myself, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.

I have these goals in my head that I want to achieve. I think I should write them down and see what and how I can achieve them one by one. Slowly, but progressively.

Hey, I'm taking my baby steps. One step at a time. :)

Travelog: YWCA Hostel, Montreal

For my short trip to Montreal, I stayed at YWCA. It is a budget hotel and thus, it was just a nice place to sleep in at night. It is clean and all but knowing me, I didn't take any picture of the room...

I took one of the lobby though!

The room I stayed in has two single beds, two closets, two sets of towels and a sink. The floor itself has a internet room and a kitchen for people who wants to cook during their stay. They have microwaves too (I think) but I never went in the kitchen to see what else are in there anyway.

Since I booked a room with shared bathroom, there's none in the room. However, they have separate bathrooms for men and women, which is good enough for me. I live on the opposite end of the floor so I have to walk all the way to the other side to use the women's toilet and shower room. Luckily, I've never really bumped into anyone using the toilet nor the bathroom. I don't really see anyone in the hallways either.

I'm pretty glad that I did not have to have unnecessary and awkward human interaction in that hotel...

Travelog: Montreal Incident II

We arrived in Montreal around 9:30 and off we went to search for the place I booked.

In that moment, I managed to turn at the wrong direction and made the journey longer than it was supposed to be. However, we managed to find the place and dun dun dunnn, the place was closed.

We waited, and waited, and waited.

A woman was also waiting for the management to come. She was looking for a place to stay before settling down at a proper place as she just came to Montreal to continue her Masters program. We tried conversing and I failed miserably because a) I don't really understand verbal French, b) I can't speak French. She tried to speak in English but when she couldn't find the right word, she just blurted out the word in French instead. Oh well...

While waiting, I managed to get hold of the person hosting the place I booked and found out that we were moved to another place to stay. Uh, so yeah. That didn't go well. Somehow, the management came and boo, we got scolded because Aadila was mad and apparently, the guy was annoyed that this happened way too often (angry customers) and he was not the one to be blamed. I guess I don't entirely blame him for throwing a fit and attitude but he could've been nicer though...

So, Aadila was furious that the host did that and (we) decided not to stay at the other place he provided after all. I had to go through the painstaking process of cancelling the booking and thankfully, I got full refund!

If it were up to me, I would have gone to the place and check it out but yeah, that's not quite the right way to handle things so I went with the flow. As we cancelled the booking, we were left with no place to stay and so, I tried google-ing for cheap hotels by 'borrowing' a restaurant's free wifi. I sat on the sidewalk and surfed the net like nobody's business.

Luckily, Aadila has searched for a place before too and I, (unwillingly, because of the long distance charge) let her use my phone to call the place to see if there's any availability. Alhamdulillah, there's one but we booked a room with shared bathroom (because it's cheaper and I wanted to stay in my budget).

The hotel is YWCA which stands for Young Women's Christian Association, I think. Since it has women in it's name, I thought it would be a place for just women to stay but boy, was I wrong...

*insert dramatic drum roll*

To be continued...