After the MUOSS Night Market...

As nice as the Night Market was, I don't think I'll remember the market itself as much as the little mis-adventure that happened afterwards. I should provide some background information. The night market started around 6pm, and I went there with Tommy, who I met from Melbourne Welcome, and some of his friends. Tommy lives in Trinity College, one of the residential colleges on campus. Before we all headed over to the market, he let me leave my backpack in his room. I didn't want to carry my big backpack around the market since I expected it to be very crowded.

And the market was indeed very crowded. We went around checking all the stalls together, but during one of the times that I was being silly and taking a picture, the others disappeared! Luckily, I ran into them some time later around the Indonesian booth. But then we decided to split off to buy different things.

After I finished eating the two things that I bought, it was already 7:30. I started to look for the others. Not only did I want to find them, I had to, since my backpack was in Tommy's room. I went around the booths once. No sign. I went around again. Still nothing. So I went around and around and in different directions. After the sun went down, it became extremely hard to identify people, even those that were right next to me. But I kept on searching. After 30 minutes or so, I started to become really worried. This was not looking good!

If you're wondering why I didn't just call them, it's because... well, I left my phone in my backpack, which I left in Tommy's room! Argh!! I felt so so so stupid for doing that. Why couldn't I just carry my phone around with me like most people?

As time passed, I felt less and less likely to find them at the market. But eventually I gave up. I thought of two things I could do: I could try to contact Tommy through the internet, or I could go look for Tommy at Trinity.

So I ran (literally!) to the library to try to contact Tommy through the internet. That was unsuccessful. I was tired from running, so I walked over to Trinity. Once I was inside, I started looking for people, so I could ask them "Do you know a Tommy?". Normally, I would not feel comfortable going around doing something like this, but I was super desperate! It was late and there weren't many people outside. The first person I asked didn't know Tommy, but he was nice and took me into the building to his room. Tommy wasn't inside.

There was no one else around outside. I walked around the area, looking inside buildings for people to ask. Then I ran into two girls on their way to the library in Trinity.

"Excuse me, do you know a Tommy?"
"Tommy Chiu?"
"YES!!!!! Would you happen to have his number?"
"Yeah."

Wow! I could not believe how lucky I was! During this time, they seemed pretty amused, and they explained to me why: When they first saw me approaching them, they thought I was Tommy! (Apparently, we look alike?) But when I started talking, it became obvious that I wasn't Tommy. But I asked about Tommy!

Anyways, we called Tommy. I had been worried that he had also been looking for me all this time. (If he had been looking for me, I would have felt that I was wasting his time.) But it turned out that he had been watching the performances. (I had gone over and checked the audience so many times! How did I miss him?) He came over to Trinity, and everything was good again!

That was a tiring night, so after picking up my backpack, and apologizing over and over again, I went straight home and showered and went to bed.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures during that time. Not surprisingly, I wasn't quite in the mood for pictures when I was panicking at the market. In the future, if something similar happens, I need to tell myself "Don't worry! You'll get through this! And you should take some pictures right now in case this ends up being worth writing about!"

Well, here's a picture. It's of me and Tommy at the formal dinner at Melbourne Welcome. Do we really look the same?