Saturday, April 13th in Perth and I didn’t want to do a damn thing – no writing, no blogging, no sightseeing. I slept in wonderfully late after a restless night. My knee still ached a bit but I was decreasing my consumption of naproxen and ibuprofen, relying on glucosamine tablets for inflammation relief to see if NSAIDs are the cause of the excessive sweating which I experienced in Singapore and Malaysia. I am limping but my knee seems to be getting better with rest. The hotel is quiet and the bed comfortable; and the breakfast buffet here is tasty and much more familiar than the one at Naumi! I plan to do little other than read, rest and listen to music. For the next two days, I’ll go downstairs for breakfast in the morning and a meal with a cocktail or two in the evening.

After breakfast on Saturday, I told the front desk that I had a bag of laundry to wash. It was after the 9 am pick-up cutoff cited on the laundry form, so I assumed that the bag would be picked up Sunday. Instead, a young woman came by for my bag of dirty clothes soon after I returned to my room on Saturday. I’d been worried about using the service. The front desk had explained that the service cost $25 AUD for up to 3 kg of laundry (6.6 lbs) and then a charge by item ensued. The bag did not feel as heavy as a 5 lb bag of sugar but then that’s just how it felt – I had no scale. And when I looked at the charge list, I thought that the charges were ridiculously high for laundering: $8 for a handkerchief, $11 for a t-shirt, $8 for underwear, for example. Still, I’d decided to gamble on my weight estimate. The contents of the bag were washed and dried for $25 AUD and I got my laundry back in the afternoon – folded not ironed. I was surprised by the turn around time since that was not what the laundry form indicated but then this is the shoulder season and there are not a lot of people using the service. While I waited for my clothes, I surfed Australian TV – it’s a lot like US TV with more DIY, sports and reality TV shows – and read for several hours; my clean laundry arrived in time for me to dress in clean clothes and have a late lunch in the downstairs cafe. I thought that I might have dinner in my room after writing for a while, but I returned to my room and alternated between reading and watching TV. Dinner turned out to be a little minibar food with had two minibar canned gin cocktails. After that, I just read. A day of sloth but then I did and do need days off to just enjoy this experience… Think I’ll do this again Sunday and maybe even Monday.