A Series of Unfortunate Events

It has been ages since I watched the movie, “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and I have forgotten most of it. It is funny how my brain works; it picks and chooses between events in my life by ranking them in order of importance. For example, out of thousands of movies that I watch (and I say thousand because I watch at least one movie per week) I only remember names of hundreds ad among those hundreds I only remember storylines of half of them. I believe it’s a good thing because that allows my brain to allocate more space for other important things like friends and family.

Although thankfully my events were not nearly unfortunate as the movie, it was a series of events. It was a regular working day and I needed to send some money home because my sister had just finished her final exams and she needed to buy a train ticket to go home. Since she has to travel all the way from South India to North India and beyond, it is a three day long journey and hence equally expensive. So I headed out to the bank around 3 PM and realized, after a block of walk, that I had forgotten my bank passbook, which is a must for almost any bank transactions here in Thailand. I went back to the office with reluctance to fetch it. After I arrived at the bank, I realized that I was not carrying my passport with me which is needed for transfer of money outside of Thailand. But I managed to persuade the bank official with a nervous smile and my UN ID. She started filling out the forms of the procedure and asked for the address of the head office for my parent’s bank account. I had no idea as I had only cared to get their account numbers and swift code so I made up an address in Kathmandu. I came back to the office feeling satisfied and thankful to god that despite the hurdles, I had done what was needed to be done.

I had movie plan with a friend after work and it started raining just when we would leave so she called me hurriedly as she had managed to get a ride to the Train station. I packed my things quickly and left. Once I got out of the station, I could not find my umbrella and my wallet. That was a bummer since I had my apartment keys and pretty much everything that I needed for the rest of the day in that wallet. To add to the misery, I got drenched by the rain and my shoes started sticking to my feet since they were cotton. The Shopping Mall was chilly, which made my wet feet very cold. So I went to find one of the hand dryers in the restrooms; alas, there were only hand towels (of course). Since I did not want to get sick, I took off my shoes and walked all around the mall bare feet. Then I borrowed some money from my friend to watch the movie and went home. I had given an extra pair of keys to my neighbor who also lives in the same apartment building as I do so at least I went home to my sweet bed. The next day I wanted to pay back my friend and I fished through my wallet to get a thousand baht note that I had taken out of the ATM machine that morning. But I only had a hundred baht bill, meaning I had given my thousand baht bill to the taxi driver instead of the hundred dollar bill when he dropped me off at work. Both the bills look pretty different to each other and so I could not get my head around to how I could have made such a mistake. Even if I did, any taxi driver would have given back the change; . I was exhausted from all the events that were happening to me but I hoped and prayed that the taxi driver was equally confused and took the thousand baht bill to be a hundred bill. I want to believe that people are genuinely good and more than that I would not want the poor taxi driver to have bad karma.

Living the Subconscious!!!

As someone of young age, I am expected to remember things without having to be reminded. Alas, this is not true for me, I tend to forget things very easily, for which, I used to get good scolding from my mother. But even my mom lives far away to nag me anymore. When in boarding school, I came up with a solution to my forgetful mind, which was keeping a diary. I kept a dated dairy throughout my high school and college so that I could note down things with deadlines, which helped me submit assignments on time and attend meetings and activities when and where they were required. I made a very good use of the diary keeping habit and lived a very active life in college, making best of various opportunities given to me.

Last May, I graduated from college and entered work life. Coming out of the protective shell of college was a shock, if not bigger (than when I left home at an age of nine to go to a boarding school), but definitely similar. I no longer had access to free dining services, free cleaning, cheap laundry and walking distance classrooms (my work which is 40 minutes in a taxi). Most of all, I missed my diary, as I was not entitled to one at my work place (with a consultant position). This logic did not seem logical because although I am just a consultant, I believe that I do need to balance my personal and work life and stay organized in order to be productive at work. Instead, I opted to use sticky notes. The only problem with sticky notes is that you can’t really organize them by date and so you need to clutter all to do lists in bullet points, which makes it almost easy to miss deadlines.

I imagine that my brain was having a hard time as well to organize the information and store them using those sticky notes and I started experiencing sub conscious note keeping instead. For example, I was supposed to call the Air Con guy to come fix my AC but I often forgot as I was at work all day and came back home pretty late. So I started dreaming about my AC dripping water all over my apartment and flooding my wooden floor. I called the AC guy right away and got it fixed. Next thing was when I was trying to send some money home to pay for my sisters’ living expenses in Kathmandu because they just finished high school and they are preparing for some entrance examinations for college. I forgot to transfer money for couple days and I dreamt about my mother not telling me the exact amount that I needed to transfer. So I called my mom the next day to get her account details and sent the money right away. Once in office, we were discussing on fixing date for a meeting to be fixed for the upcoming year and everyone was pretty tensed up. The following night, I dreamt about having a hard time to meet the deadline for preparation of the meeting and facing others hurdles at the office.

Having these kinds of dreams has been an out of ordinary experience, and at the same time, it has definitely proved to me that subconscious mind is stronger than we think they are. At times, they are not hesitant to show their presence.

Money Karma

Since I finally found the apartment that I wanted to move in, it was time for logistics, transferring money to the owner and signing the lease. I did not have enough Thai Baht with me, so I went to the nearest bank, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). This was only my third visit to the bank in three days! The first time was when I wanted to open a bank account only to find out that they did not allow consultants to open an account at their branch and that I would have to go to the UN branch to do it. The second time was when I wanted to cash my check for reimbursement of the visa fees from my office and now, the third time, to exchange some dollars into Thai Baht to pay my landlord.

Since the message about the money transfer was given to me only before lunch, I went to the bank to find a big crowd of people waiting for different services. The bank had been closed for three consecutive days due to some public holiday, hence, everyone seemed to be anxious to get their transactions done. After inquiring at the counter, I was given a card with no. 7 written on it, meaning I was the 7th person in the line to be given the service. So I sat by a Thai looking woman who had a similar colored name tag as I did, assuming that she worked for the UN. I found out that she was working for the ADB, which is our neighboring office building. In a moment, it was her turn and she went to the counter. Then a man came from the back row and sat by my side. Noticing that he had already submitted his document, I asked him if it always takes so long to get money exchange service at the bank. He replied that he needed to send some money back home so his transaction was taking longer. I asked him where he was from and he replied Nepal. So I laughed and introduced myself to him. We talked for a while and he left after his work was done, leaving me with his contact details so that I could contact him in case I needed any help.

After waiting for about another ten minutes, the bank announced that it has run out of American dollars and hence many people waiting in front of me left the bank to come back the next day. So it was finally my turn and I went to the counter with $700. Since they probably did not have enough money at the counter, the middle man went downstairs to get Thai Baht and came back with 21,000 Baht.

The middleman gave me the money which I took with my right hand and I had the American dollars on my left hand that I tried to give him but he insisted that I count the money first. I checked and the money was 21,000 Bhat. Then he called over a younger looking guy to assist me with depositing the money to the apartment owner’s account. So the young man took me to the ATM, which was outside the bank. After helping me with the deposit, he said that I was done and started walking back into the bank. To my surprise, even he didn't take the $700 from me. I was free to leave but I followed the younger guy inside the bank.

After waiting for about 5 minutes, the older guy finally showed up and I told that he had forgotten to take my money. He was greatly relieved and he mentioned that he has been looking for the money all over the counter and could not remember where he had misplaced it. Feeling satisfied at his relief, I handed the money to him and thanked him for helping me with my transaction.

I am not sure if Nature was trying to test my honesty this way but it was surely an amusing morning for me and I left the bank with a grin on my face.