Another week gone by

I came back into town Friday night ready to bite someone's head off.

It wasn't a particularly bad week, I was just tired.

When you are tired, you notice all the million tiny things going wrong with the world and they get under your skin.

For example:

1) Someone took the bungee cord I strap my bad onto the back of my bike with off of my bike. I look around the office parking space. It is nowhere to be seen. Bungee cords cost a measly 5 baht, but now I have two backpacks and a shoulder bag to carry on the bike ride home.

2) I have to stop at an internet cafe to check and see if anyone has emailed me about job interviews this weekend. I get the snootiest one-line email imaginable from someone I have never heard from. "I am quite surprised you have not contacted me regarding teaching at Umphium Mai refugee camp."

3) I get home and find out that my keys have fallen out of my pocket somewhere along the road. Turn around and go back, bags and all, looking for them.

4) Get home. Notice the mould growing all over my bamboo chair. It's rainy season. Everything is wet all the time, even when it's dry. Therefor, everything must be cleaned all the time. Throw a bunch of clothes that haven't even been worn into the bag to go to the laundry. Covered in mould.

5) See my computer on the desk. It is not covered in mould but it is equally useless. I have used it for all of three weeks. The battery is dead (cost to replace: $300 approximately). And recently, I have come to realize that the hard drive is also dead (cost to replace: several hundred dollars). The whole thing is a total loss and I have used it for about three weeks. All the information I have compiled on it over this time, however, including funding proposals and reports, is lost.

So I shower, sit down in my hammock and listen to jazz for awhile, starting to feel human again. The rain starts coming down. I watch a rather large lizard on the other side of a dripping window pane as it sneaks up behind an incredibly large moth and devours it.

And that's Friday night in Mae Sot.