Got woken up this morning by my ringing phone. What was worse is it rang some 20 minutes before my alarm would have gone off. That to me is the worst time to be disturbed by a phone call.
Phone me in the middle of the night. Sure, I won’t be happy, but at least I still have half the night to sleep, but 20 minutes before the alarm?
Usually this would have upset me, but when I put the phone to my ear it was my boy chattering on the other end. “I love you, Daddy”, he said.
Enough to instantly bring tears to my eyes. I haven’t seen him since September last year, and I haven’t spoken to him for the 3 weeks or so (technical problems with moving my money to where I can use it). And when I do speak to him over the phone, he’s usually distracted by something else.
But this morning we had a full 2 minute conversation. As in I say something, he says something. It was was beautiful and precious.
Of course, after that, the remaining 18 minutes didn’t matter, because I was just lying there in bliss, excited and not wanting to sleep.
I got up, because I had to complete a mission. Today I need to send a fax to South Africa to get rid of an account that is costing nothing but service fees. Oh, send a fax, that’s easy, right? Yes, you would think so, wouldn’t you?
Our school doesn’t have a fax. Or it does, but the only fax around is in the Big Kahuna’s office, who really only has an office as a symbol of his existence. The only time you actually see him around is at opening and closing ceremonies of the school, the odd sports day and for a meeting every quarter or so.
So for all practical reasons his office is the tomb of Tutankhamen an is not allowed to be opened under any circumstances. Unless you’re a grave robber, but then it’s illegal anyway.
There is a wee copy shop down the road where I had made a copy or so before, when the school’s machine was on the fritz (often). They had a fax machine. They make something stupid like 5 miao off a copy, so you would imagine they would jump at the chance to send a foreign fax and over charge for the call and the service fee. I saw myself paying a good 10-15 yuan for a two-page fax, and was perfectly willing to do so.
After I made some copies and wanted to fax, they said, sorry, can’t, the fax line is also their connection to the Internet. God help us all. They’re copying and going mad, doing nothing on the computer itself. What are they doing? Downloading the latest pirate offerings from the US for their side business?
The fax had a dustcover on, covered in a thick layer of dust. If I was observant and thinking quickly, I would have gathered that that fax hasn’t been used since the late 1970′s. It was probably a 320bps model anyway, and would have taken half and hour to transmit two pages. But then again, if you leave your newborn baby unattended for 2 minutes, they will be covered with dust when you get back, so it’s not really a fair assumption.
Needless to say, I left, faxless. I asked at the Post Office, the stationary shop, the graphic design shop, the noodle shop (you never know!), but nobody either had a fax or knew where too fax. It’s just so damn hard to find a good place to fax. Anyway, eventually I came back to school and asked. At first the lady in the copy room said I can’t fax at school. Then I asked the not-so-knowledgeable-but-oh-so-keen-to-find-out Hong May, who then asked the Laywer Guy and he explained the Headmaster’s Tomb was indeed the place to fax.
Eventually I tracked down the Head Master’s Right Hand and she explained they’d have a rare meeting later the day, and she would hopefully be able to gain access to his office then. As South Africa is 6 hours behind, I guess I have some time to wait.
In the meantime, two students have come into the office, and now the Sadist is slapping and kicking the shit out of them, so I need to leave before I can’t contain myself and beat the shit out of him.