Freedom

I'm walking through the park in the late afternoon with tentative hopes that I'll find something at post office. The twenty-four hours since yesterday is enough time for something to have happened. But nothing has.

Next stop is the bank to pick up the money CJ has wired. I can get my money, and take off for the jungle tomorrow morning. But, I can't get the money. The bank has no trace of the transfer. I know it was transferred yesterday, but they don't, and there's nothing I can do. This is getting inconvenient, but not horrifically so - yet. Nothing has changed. I can pick it up early tomorrow and get of here, as planned.

I've been meaning to get myself over to the English pub & microbrewery nearby the hostel. This is very definitely the time for that. It's times like these that I miss Dug. I have a scrap of paper, kept with my passport, with my emergency telephone numbers. Dug is listed behind only my mother and uncle. His reliability, sheer ability, and dedication to the enjoyment of fine ales renders him the most useful person I know. He also agrees with me on Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. They're both deeply homo-erotic films. Uncomfortably so.

In the evening, I return to the hostel, managing to evade machete wielding muggers, and sit down to my ever reliable Two-and-a-Half Men re-runs. Jacqueline, from the hostels front desk, asks me to come into the corridor and close my eyes with my hands out. When something is placed in my hands, I open my eyes and feign surprise because that unimaginative method very much gave away the surprise itself. I don't have to fake it for long as I'm quite awash with relief.

Having learnt the art of surprise from my father over many Christmas mornings, I'd have come up with something better. On Princess' birthday, back in the old office, I stealthily picked up the birthday card from the last of the folks to sign it. Rather than simply hand it to her, which would have been unimaginative and lazy, I left it in her in-tray. She would never see it coming. But, despite the envelope clearly having her name on it, sitting alone in the tray, no more than one-and-a-half feet away from her, and in clear sight, I had to watch her ignore it for over three hours. All the while, the rest of the team are incessantly hassling me at whispering volume: "do you have the card?"; "where's the card?"; "why haven't you given her the card?" I don't have the damned card. If she'd do her damned job, she'd have the damned card. I never forgave her for that. Maybe Jacqueline's method is better.

Finally, I'm free. I can get out of here. I'm almost as pleased for my father, and his "twin." That said, I'm now going to be on the recieving end of an insufferably smug bastard after Christmas dinner.