Chami Cool and the hostel vibe...

        This morning I still had 5 guests what isn´t many and wasn´t very satisfying but during the day 2 new people came separately, from Pakistan and Mexico. 7 is already a better number. It´s about half of the hostel capacity. it´s not too bad.
         Hopefully some new people will come tomorrow. But this ones are coming through Hospitality Club so they wouldn´t even be supposed to pay. I offer them the first night, it's the least i can do, and then I just have to hope they would stay as long as possible although they told me "they want to meet new people".
        I never thought about taking advantage of Hospitality club or couchsurfing for my little business and I even was mad at people doing it but now strangely I´m much more opened to it. I think that at the end, in a city like Barcelona it´s good for everybody:
       For the other CS members that don't have to feel bad to have once again let some guests sleep outside, even if they don't care anyway, for the guests as their only other option would have been to sleep in a more expensive, ex-centred and lame place and obviously for the host, for me. And one free night is quite something already.

      Later on today Chami came over to the house after Laurent had probably told him about my uprising little business. He is a cool fellow. French, chubby, smiling and joyful and Morocco blooded. He´s been living here for about 7 years playing reggae in a couple of bands and surviving not only with music but with some little extra jobs too.
     He really wanted to know how the hostel was doing and it was a real satisfaction to see him, which has been in the business for years, just amazed by the shape it was finally taking!
     He congratulated me and offered me some kind of partnership. Actually the same kind I have been working on lately: He finds me people and gets a commission on them. Since he has contacts for some years now it's definitely something he can provide...
     He actually has said to a group of 6 that they could stay at his but he then proposed me to host them myself instead as he doesn't really have the capacities right now.
     His commission is 2E per person per night. He´s a businessman. Not the best one on the top of the scale but at it's level he is.
     Normally my rate would be 5E or 8E per pers. if the guest stays longer than 2 nights and that´s it... Later he also helped him and me out by buying a single bed for 25E. It was there beneath one of my bunk bed and I had to put it to sell and get rid of it anyway...
     It was good for him too as I helped him to take it to his place. He carried the bed and I the matress and we arrived at his place in Robadors street in the Raval also know as the prostitutes street. we started evaluating the possibilities of turning his own place into a guesthouse too.
     I thought he was already into it but when i saw his place I knew he actually wasn't. It was quite a mess. The only bunk bed he has is a super old one, blue, barely holding on.
     I thought I would get advices from him but he was the one telling me that I was in a different league and asking me advices himself about how many beds to put, of what kind, and how to organize them. I think that even though he's intelligent he is too much of an hedonist to have made it right a long time ago already.
    He lives day by day, in the present. I din't know you had to think to be able to create and organize a place as I´m starting to do. I never think that i think too much anyway. That most people aren't torturing themselves by thinking so much as I do most of the time. But i realize that sometimes it's useful. I hadn't seen Chami for a long time and it was pretty cool to spend some simple but quality time with him...