Itsara

Here’s a couple dozen pictures for you. Isaac and Nathan feature heavily in them. They’re just… around more, and love the camera. Click here to see them all.

Nearly all of us were sick this week. Cindy had it the worst, bed-ridden with a fever for nearly 24 hours, while I tried to fight mine off to keep our children clean and fed. We’re mostly better now. All the kids are fine, and Cindy and I are just trying to catch up on rest. Meanwhile, we’ve gotten almost nothing done.

We’re still working on the adoption process for Pancake. Not surprisingly, they need like a hundred embassy-certified documents so they can make a decision on whether or not we are fit parents. It’s like the process I go through to extend my visa every year, but much, much worse.

I’m also trying to track down Nathan’s parents so we can adopt him. Fortunately, Finland keeps very good track of its citizens. See? Invasion of privacy can be a good thing sometimes! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Also, I’ve been trying to get an official birth certificate for Lutiya. She doesn’t have one — a common problem for children from the tribal villages — and it will cause her problems later in life if we can’t get one. Unfortunately, government laws and corruption have been making it difficult, but thanks to the Coast team I got in touch with some folks who specialize in this sort of thing.

So that’s where things are, except they’re not because we didn’t do anything but recover this week. Hopefully next week will be better.

I had Thursday all planned out. Leave at 8:30 am, arrive at the Finnish consulate when they open at 9,* grab a big brunch at Burger King, then meet some friends at 10 to play some Left 4 Dead.

Everything was going great. I didn’t get lost anywhere and my timing was perfect. Until I walked back to my car after Burger King and found a lock on the wheel.

“The police came by twice already looking for you,” said the owner of the nearest shop. “We didn’t know whose car it was, so they locked it.”

“What?!” It was ten minutes until 10. My friends would be at the game shop soon. “What am I supposed to do?”

Ever-helpful, the Thai man pointed at the sign on my car and said, “Take it to the police. Or maybe there’s a phone number. Here.” (There was no phone number).

“Where are the police?”

He pointed down the street. I didn’t see anything. At this point, I was remembering my experiences with Thai bureaucracy and thinking I wasn’t going to make it to the game shop. Maybe when I was done some 2 hours later, I could pick my friends up and take them home, like we agreed.

Even more frustrating: there were no signs on the street. I made sure of it when I parked there. There was not a single parking sign anywhere, yet everyone was parked on the left side of the street and none on the right. I thought it was because the left side was shaded in the morning. Apparently I didn’t get the memo.

I told the shop owner this, though not very calmly. I was mad. Again, in true helpful Thai fashion, he tried to say something about signs, but soon stopped when he realized I was right. There weren’t any. Not knowing what else to do, he left. Maybe he went to look for the cop who locked my car, maybe he just wanted to get away from the angry farang. I don’t know.

Two other shop owners watched this exchange. They watched as I carefully read the ticket and the notice taped to my car. No phone number. No instructions other than to take the ticket to the police station. How was I supposed to do that without a car?

I asked one of the other shop owners what I should do. I was still very angry, but I realized I had to do something. He pointed down the street. From an earlier parking ticket, I knew there was a police station in that direction, maybe a mile or two down the road. He couldn’t mean there, could he?

He suggested I take a songthaew, but I was in no mood, and my raging brain couldn’t be bothered to find the words for police station anyway. I walked, half hoping I’d run into the cop who locked my car and could take care of it right there.

It was a long, angry walk. I swore a lot (I do that when I’m alone sometimes). I looked for No Parking signs, but didn’t find any. By the time I realized the owner had meant the police station, I was more than halfway there and saw no reason to stop.

The last time I had to pay a parking ticket, there were 30 or 40 people at the police station, and it took me an hour. There was nobody there that morning so I walked right up to the desk and handed them my ticket. They were perfectly nice about it, even when I complained about the signs and how I had no way of knowing I couldn’t park there — realizing, even as the words came out of my mouth, that they wouldn’t care. Why should they?

I went to another desk to pay the fine, and was about to ask about the wheel lock, when the man said, “The policeman has already taken it off.”

Really? I asked him to repeat it. Had they contacted him? I hadn’t seen them do so. Did he do it when he’d seen the ticket gone? I wondered if I couldn’t have just walked back after removing the ticket and found the lock gone, without having to go all the way to the police station.

And yet, for all my anger and swearing and frustration, I got to my car at 10:15 and the game shop at 10:30. My friends were a little late anyway, and I only missed 15 minutes of zombie-killing. Had all that really only taken half an hour? What was I so mad about? And what did I expect to accomplish with my anger?

I was still mad at the injustice of it, but in the end, who cares? Not the shop owners. Not the police. Not the hundred other people who had parked on the correct side of the street. Just me, and my trouble was over.

There’s no point to this story except that anger is stupid. I’m ashamed at how angry I got. What makes it worse is the only reason I knew where the police station was, and what to do there, was because of a parking ticket I’d gotten previously — which I was also unreasonably angry about at the time. At least I didn’t do anything stupider, I guess.

* Trying to find Nathan’s legal father so we can adopt him. Turns out we’ll have to try the Finnish Embassy in Bangkok instead. Also, I don’t think the consulate in Chiang Mai employs a single Finnish person.

Question Time produced two questions: What should we name our baby? and Is it a boy or a girl?

The answer to the latter is we don’t know. We’ll tell you when we see it.

The answer to the former is we don’t know. I’m pushing for Serenity or Morpheus. I’ll let you know if I’m successful.

There’s another post coming later this evening.

There’s no news on Pancake or Nathan or the Young Apprentice. Consequently I’m blanking on post ideas. Fortunately it’s been a few months since I did this one.

Ask us any questions you like in the comments, and we’ll answer them in upcoming posts (well, I’ll answer them, but I’ll call others in as needed). Some topic ideas to get you started: our kids, Thai food/language/politics, games, killing live chickens, terminal velocity and how long it takes to reach it.

Also, we miss you guys. That’s kind of a given though.