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.

My non Thai Accent and the Taxi Driver

It’s a Saturday and I don’t know what to do with myself. I woke up this morning and went swimming for a while. Then came back, took a shower and went to have lunch and then slept again for 3 straight hours. Although BKK survives on tourism, people hardly speak English here, which makes life much more difficult for me. If I had planned to stay in BKK longer then I would have certainly considered taking some Thai language classes. Although I hardly converse with local people (besides buying fruits and groceries), it seems that everyone understands the money language but not other things. For instance, I take a cab to work every morning but it is extremely challenging to make the driver understand where I want to go with my non Thai accent. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work straight by a cab. Another alternative is to take a cab to the nearest pier and then take a boat to work, which also takes about 40 minutes to get to work but it’s cheaper than the first option.

My first day at the new apartment, I took a cab straight to work just because it was my first day and I wanted to be extra careful. I got to work an hour earlier than my usual time, which was good, not to mention I woke up way earlier than I used to. The guard at the first floor was a female and she completely understood where I wanted to go, which made it easier since the cab drivers never seem to know what I say. So my second day, I wanted to try the other route through the Kiak Kai pier. This time it was a male guard calling cabs for us residents. I told him I wanted to go to Kiak Kai and he just stared at me. The female guard came to my rescue and told the cab driver where I wanted to go. Although I have only been to that place once from this direction, I knew after a while that something was wrong. To my shock, the cab driver was taking me in totally different direction and stopped at a BTS (sky train) station. He did not speak any English so I had no idea what was going on. I had already lost more than half an hour and I was nowhere near work.

I had a strange feeling that he did not know where we were supposed to go and so I asked him to take me straight to work instead. He recognized the place but said he could not go. At this, I called a Thai friend and asked her to talk to the cab driver. She told me that the cab driver could not take me to either the pier or to my work directly because he had to be somewhere in ten minutes. This made me so angry and although the driver did not understand any English I complained that he should not have taken me in his cab if he was not willing to take me where I wanted to go. This meant that either I would have to take a cab back to my apartment and then to the pier or take the train for the next half an hour and then take a boat for another half hour to work. Since it was traffic time, I could not rely on cabs, so I took the train. I was so mad that I did not pay the cab driver. However, once my anger was gone, I felt guilty for not paying him, as he would have to pay to the cab company from his pocket. I called a friend and cried on the phone explaining what had just happened. He consoled me telling that if the driver deserved his payment then he would have asked me for it. Although this made me feel a little better, I could not help thinking about it for the next half an hour on the boat to work.

I am not sure if I would pay the full amount if the same thing happened to me again with another cab driver. But I think I would at least pay half the sum. I do realize that the more cabs I ride, the more probability of me rounding up in situations like this so I just got to be patient and try not to lose my temper from next time.