Fire in the Hostel

My usual bedtime has been hovering around the 5-6am territory. It's not because I belong in Asia, I sleep at the same time there as well. Anyway, I went to bed at 5am last night, setting my alarm to 12pm. 

My mind was still racing with thoughts. I guess that's why I'm a night owl, I can't stop thinking of things and end up having insomnia. In Singapore, I usually solve this by drinking an entire carton of milk. I feel drowsy right away, like how I usually do after a filling lunch, and doze off immediately.

So I was tossing and turning in bed, until I finally began to transit into my dream (I always dream), and I was in some Inception world when suddenly a painfully loud sound rang, followed by a foul smell of cinder.

I brushed it off as my alarm, and ignored it as I usually did with my alarm(s). However, after 5 minutes it didn't go off, and remained extremely loud and annoying. So I got up, and realized it was the fire alarm. 

I jumped out of bed, fueled only my adrenaline and survival instincts. Ran to my dorm room's door, opened it. BAM! Grey smoke smushed into my face. The source came from the kitchen 2 feet from my room. 

My first thought was, "Cool! That's the first time my building's been on fire, but WHY did it have to happen at this time??"

Everyone else was getting out of their rooms, like ants being smoked out of their tunnels. Slowly, we got out of the building, all tired and groggy and disregarding the potential danger. I was wearing a t-shirt and then I realized how cold it was outside, but it was too late to get back into the building. So I shivered in the cold while the firefighters arrived and went into the building.

There was a bright side though, the first sunrise I've seen in America - it was pretty awesome - so much so that I remembered to take a photo. I didn't bother taking anything else, because I felt like a zombie - having only had 1 hour of sleep.

Sunrise during a fire emergency - looked AMAZING in real life, not so much over here

At the end of it, apparently someone microwaved something and threw the hot stuff into the garbage, which caught fire. I didn't really think much of it and went back to sleep.