Can I punch the wall now?

Most days, I'm really glad that I live in Thailand and that things are adventurous.  But in every cultural transition, there are moments where you hit a wall, where some teeny tiny thing happens and you just want to punch the wall that has suddenly landed in front of you.  Today was just such a day.

It all started by my trying to be good and responsible and pay my electric/water bill to the school early.  It's not due until Friday, but I had a few minutes so I figured I'd get it done.  I was just about out of cash anyway, so it wouldn't be an extra ATM trip to get cash for the school finance department (I pay them since I live on campus).  Well, I've only had my Thai ATM card for about 3 months, which for any math minded person ought to be enough time to memorize your PIN.  Except for whatever reason this PIN has been giving me trouble and I always end up more or less guessing my gut instinct.  And every single time, I have been right. Until today. When I was wrong, three times in a row.  At which point the ATM locked me out and ate my card.  I should mention that I never changed the PIN number to something I could actually remember because I simply didn't know how.  Welcome to cultural transition

So now I'm down a PIN number and an ATM card, and I have about $20 in my wallet.  Good thing that electric bill isn't due till Saturday.  So, I head into the office to find out what to do with my predicament and lo and behold, one of my dear friends is on her way to the bank to get a new ATM card because she lost hers- score!  I won't have to find and brave the bank alone!  So right as I am regaining my spirits and we're about to leave they tell me I need my "bank book". I look at my friend's bank book, and I've never really seen anything like it before.

I do, however, remember receiving something from the bank when I got my account.  It didn't look the same as hers, but I'm thinking maybe there is a newer version.  So I sprint up the 4 flights of stairs to my apartment to get mine (we're short on time because we need to get there and back before the next class starts, seeing as the bank closes at 3:30 so we need to go during work hours and we just had the one prep period).  About 6 weeks ago I had a lady start coming to clean my apartment, and I remember right before she started I saw this little bank book thing and thought, maybe I should hide that important financial document. So I put it in the back of my make up drawer.  Now, for some reason, a few weeks later, I decided that wasn't a good spot. So I moved it.  To somewhere safer.  So safe, in fact, that even I cannot remember it.

I arrive in my apartment, panting and sweating, and start searching drawers and tearing apart the room looking for this book so I could go to the bank and get a new ATM card so I could get some money to pay my bills... but alas, it could not be found. Hot, sweaty, and now very much frustrated and mad at myself, I told my friend to go ahead without me and walked back to school to pout and drink tea in my other friend's office.  Cause nothing helps a bad attitude like pouting and tea.  After a bit of cheering up I got back to work, but the reality is this.  Without that booklet, I have to go to the police station to get a piece of paper to take to the bank to get the ATM card to get the new PIN to get the cash to pay the bills...  Epic fail.

This becomes a cultural nightmare when one doesn't know where any of these place are.  Or how their systems work. Or which line you are supposed to stand in. Or what the official name is for the thing that you need.  People can tell me where to go, or what to ask for, but at this point in the process, all you really want is for it to go away, to snap your fingers and have the problem solved, for me to not have to spend my next few days sorting out the mess.   And all the while you feel like a BIG DUMB IDIOT because you forgot your PIN number and lost your booklet and can't speak the language and know that you're going to make mistakes in your attempts to fix everything and get it straightened out.  Bam, the wall drops.  And bam, I want to punch it.  But I don't.

Instead, I return home and calmly (or maybe not so calmly) comb my tiny apartment for the booklet, which, I have yet to find.  It hasn't got legs, so it must be here somewhere.  If I think about it too long I just want to sit down and cry, which of course, does absolutely no good in finding the blasted thing.

Mom says some days are like that, even in Australia.  - Alexander

Two side notes: 1) It's not that I don't trust the woman who cleans my house, it's just that the bank book had been in a main drawer where there are lots of items she may need and I figured why leave it "out" like that.  2) What once was lost has now been found: I put it in the ziplock bag where I keep all the CD's and manuals that came with my laptop. And I only keep those because I eventually ditched the ones to my old laptop and my cousin who helped me try to fix the old one told me to hang on to that stuff.  So I wedged the bank book in between random computer documents.  Lovely.