My only real last minute guest in Sydney was Pierre Jean. He wrote to me about 5 hours prior to his arrival at my place. I told him not to write copy paste messages and to mention my name instead of just a hey. He apologised for this and we started a 2-hour mail contact which I found quite extensive. I could find out quite much about him and his journey. He has been travelling to the icy northern part of Mongolia, not a particular tourist destination, as well as the dangerous Timor Leste and East Indonesia. All his stories about a ferry ride in East Indonesia as well as staying with locals in Timor Leste caught my attention immediately. His photo at the ice lake in North Mongolia ignited my interest. He was French and could not speak English very well, so this was a great chance for me to practice my French language. I told him that CS or Couchsurfing was not a dating site and he assured me that we were both not cannibals......good analogy.
I was still at work as my mobile phone rang. An Australian girl was on the phone and told me that my "friend" was lost. Jeezz....I gave him such a detailed description and I could already expect some sort of messy catastrophic person. Anyway, as I arrived home he was already waiting for me. He looked like a playboy on his profile photo but in real life he looked older than his 26 years. A bit bald already, thin, shy and rather underfed. He looked sick and tired thus I did believe him as he told me that he didn't sleep for 2 days. Sydney was cold at that time of the year and he used to sleep outside in the park because he was too proud to ask for a couch..
Pierre Jean was extremely well-mannered and polite as a guest. He was clearly a disorganised person in his head; creative but catastrophic. He never liked working on a career, left school at the age of 16 despite his parents being well-off and educated. Pierre Jean was good at language learning and picked up foreign languages in quite a short time. He told me that he could play the piano, offered to play for me many times although he never studied it and never learnt to read music. His stories about Mongolia, Indonesia and Timor Leste were amazing, he met a lot of local people on ferries and surfed their couches without this website. I could believe this because that was what I did before the era of Couchsurfing and the internet. He was considerate and talked to his mother on the phone a few times a day. I also experienced that his mother sent him money immediately on the same day. The first thing what he did was to invite me to an Italian restaurant, something that I wouldn't expect from a backpacker.
The ways on Couchsurfing are strange because Pierre Jean was not the type of person I would make friends with under normal circumstances. It was the French language, his travels and his considerate attitude towards hosts where I was sure that he learnt it during his travels in poor countries. Pierre Jean stayed with me for 6 days and I helped him to contact Alain Funel in New Caledonia. He wanted to look for a job to finance his travels and did not have a working visa for Australia. As a Frenchman he could reside in New Caledonia without any problem and take up a job. Alain's wife was given training because her school background was not strong enough to find any type of work. I suggested these opportunities for Pierre Jean and he seemed interested.
Pierrre Jean was an immature and quite crazy guy but I thought he could succeed in New Caledonia. He has always been very polite, clean and tidy in my house, helped washing the dishes and showed a lot of respect. I just had some difficulties to get him under the shower and brush his teeth. He was grateful, gave me a wonderful reference in French and went off to New Caledonia......
