My Worst Day Here Yet..

Monday March 26, 2012

We all have bad things that happen, today just happened to be one of those days when everything kept spiraling downwards.
It all started with my travler's checks. When I was getting ready to go, my parents bought my some travler's checks to cash once I arrive and got settled thinking it would be easy to cash them since any bank should accept them. Not so. It is nearly impossible to cash them! The casinos will but they give you Hong Kong dollars instead of MOP. Anyway, I was in contact with the principals daughter who is a diretor at one of the casinos and is helping us sort our finicial issues out. She advised me to take my checks to the bank across the street and I shouldn't have any trouble. At lunch I went to the bank and they told me to sign all three lines on my checks so I did and then the teller examined them and decided that they couldn't cash them because I signed on all three lines. Um, what? Didn't you just tell me to do exactly that? The manager came out and told me they had to contact another department and determine if anyone in their bank would be able to cash my checks and that I should come back at 3:30pm. Ok, fine. While I was back at school I had another problem: my thumbdrive crashed.

Now, those of you who know me know that I have the worst luck with technology. I'm not really sure how I manage this, but I do. About a half hour before I was told I was going to be teaching a class alone and had to prepare something, my thumbdrive crashed. When I plugged it in it was imply not being read by the computer yet it still showed that there was some data taking up space. Since I didn't have time to try and figure it out, I just came up with something and emailed it to myself to use in class. Still, not what I was hoping would happen during my student teaching experience.

After school, I went back to the bank to find out that they indeed cannot cash my checks because I signed on all three lines. You can imagine I was furious since I was directly told to sign on all three lines. I tried to take them to the bank across the street but they wouldn't cash them either. How weird it is that cashing travler's checks is this difficult?

Finally time to go home! Such a long day. As I'm walking upstairs after getting groceries, I realized I left my keys in my apartment. Instead of knocking super loud on the door, I wanted to ask the manager if he had a spare I could use since I knew my roommate was sick and still in bed. Well when I went down the tweleve floors to the main desk and asked conveyed the message I was locked out, he proceeded to call a locksmith instead of give my a key. When I realized what he was doing I told him I would just go up and try to knock on the door again-I didn't want to have to pay to get into my apartment! Thankfully at that time the two male student teachers came down stairs and I told them what was going on and they said they'd go upstairs and bang on the door while I kept talking to the manager. I was trying to get him to understand that my roommate was sleeping and I will go knock loudly, he did not need to call a locksmith but he did not understand. When I was about to give up, a resident who spoke both English and Catonese came by and translated for me but said that he called the locksmith and he's already on his way. She said it would be fine and I shouldn't worry about it since the two male student teachers were able to get my roommate to open the door. Relieved I went upstairs, but accidentally went fourteen floors more than I needed to, and proceeded to but this day behind me. By the time I had finally started to relax, someone banged on my door. I thought it was just the two guys, but it  was the locksmith demanding to be paid since he drove all the way here. I was furious! I fought him for a while saying I don't owe you anything, I'm in my apartment, you didn't help me, I don't need to pay you, but he was stil demanding $200 MOP. He would not leave! I was starting to get scared because he was getting close to the door and no one else was around. I finally agreed but told him I was only going to pay him $100 MOP. He didn't like it but he accepted it.

What a long day!! Good thing that's over with. Always something to learn from.