I took a look through my diary/day planner thing, after actually writing a post of course, because I’m clever, and came up with a few other thoughts.

I witnessed the greatest hitchhiking technique I’ve ever seen, demonstrated by Eben, who was probably from Israel.

I had a conversation with Eben about his travel plans (pretty vague) and mine; Happily, he agreed with my notion of trying out the hostel thing before I went overseas, and shared a pet peeve about hostel dorms, being that one guy who leaves stupidly early, and spends seventy billion hours making noise at 5am because he didn’t get organised the night before.
Eben’s thoughts boiled down to “get your stuff together the night before, and if you have to make noise, do it in the hallway”.

Of the other folk in the hostel I met, and there were many, there was the aforementioned Eben,

• a lady from Kyoto who was doing the working holiday thing,
• another lady from Estonia who’d worked the distribution & marketing side of the alcohol business, and now wanted to learn about the production side, so was WWOOFing to make that happen,
• a guy from Hiroshima who was also doing the working holiday thing, working at both the hostel and a local restaurant.
  He had … extensive travel plans. Back to Japan to check in with family, then Canada on a working holiday visa, then Europe as a tourist, then Australia as a working holidayer, then Central & South America, with an eye to not settling in Japan.
• The probably German hostel manager, or maybe evening manager, and the probably English but sounds German when she speaks the language day manager, who both extolled the virtues of Rotorua as a place to live.
  Given that they’d been here for years, if not decades, that’s kind of understandable.

The day manager also gave me some advice on the BBH Hostel listings, which was ‘stay above an 80% rating’.
Have taken this to heart.

I also bravely evicted a cockroach from the solarium/sunroom thingy one night, through the expert use of my coffee cup and a brochure.
It was a big-ass bush roach, and thus fairly friendly – It had wandered out from under the couch and was watching a German family play cards.