journal.wiredreflexes.com

About once a year I get ill and usually it’s not so bad that I don’t have the heart to go to work. Today, it’s the fourth day that I’m ill, and it’s the third day I’m not going to work because of it. I feel incredibly guilty even though I know that I shouldn’t, for fear of contaminating my colleagues with my cold.

My brother is ill, too. And my mother has just gotten over her cold. Aparently it’s going around and I’m not the only one. I keep wondering what a flu epidemic like this one would cost the country of the Netherlands in lost revenue.

I came back from my trip to India yesterday, and I have a lot of thoughts that I would like to type out. India has assaulted my senses and my sensibilities so much that these thoughts shoot in and out of my mind and I can never focus on one thing completely without being dragged off down a different thought, and even that is much like India. While you’re in traffic (the worst traffic I’ve ever been in, by the way) you zoom by some of the most amazing buildings I’ve ever witnessed, and some of the most heart-wrenching scenes of poverty you can imagine. But before you can focus on any of that, you’re already trying to make sure you don’t hit the scooter with three people on it riding in front of you, or making sure the bus full of people – with people on the roof, and hanging off the side – isn’t about to run you off the road. A land of incredible opportunity, as well as incredible limitations. And get this; all the while I was meeting my girlfriend’s parents, getting to know her family (and extended family, and friends, and servants, and friends…oh boy), so I really didn’t even have time to focus on that properly. But luckily, Moulsari’s father is very knowledgable about India, history as well as the different cultures that live and thrive within its borders, and is always willing to talk about it. So I feel I got a crash-course, and it’s slowly sinking in.

I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Jain, and all their brothers and sisters, Palash, Praachi, Mayank, Gautam, Pooja and Saleem, for making me feel very welcome in a country so far away from – and a family so different than – my own. More as I collect my thoughts.

I think I found hell. It’s right here.

About two weeks back I noticed that I could only get either hot or cold water in my apartment, but not both at the same time. I asked my uncle, who’s a very experienced plumber, to come and take a look at it. He was generous enough to do so but due to scheduling it was only done yesterday. He came to the conclusion that the water-heater was getting only enough water to run either warm or cold water, but not enough to run both. He explained it all to me, with water-passage per minute, and the pressure capacity of lead vs. copper piping, and the difficulty of over-pressure in the area of Amsterdam, but I’m not going to bore you with it unless you ask me to. It basically comes down to this; I will either have to get another water-heater installation – probably a boiler – which will give me warm and cold water at a lower water-pressure, or get an electric pump installed to artificially crank up the water pressure, enough so that the water-heater can both supply cold and hot water. I asked my landlord to look into it with all haste. I’ve done everything except register at that address, move my clothing and computers over because I can’t take a normal shower there, and I want to get all of it over with.

Lately, it seems that Sam has nearly completely given up on maintaining a friendship with me. She has proven to be very unreliable when it comes to promises, even when she knows how much I would appreciate them, and even when reminded, she seems to have forgotten, shrugs it off and goes on her merry way. Last week she heard about my discontentment through Eva, called me, and wanted to talk about it. My pride (silly, silly pride) refused to remind her of another promise she hadn’t made good on, but I was willing to discuss her reliability as a whole. She seemed upset that I thought of her as unreliable and felt truly sorry about any inconvience she had caused by me relying on her while she had forgotten her promise. As we parted she said; “See you on saturday.”

Saturday.

So, on Saturday, I moved most of my belongings to my apartment. Only my clothing and computers remain at my mother’s. I’m intending to rely on her hospitality for a few days longer as I get settled in the apartment, and have the last of the inconveniences taken care of – like a working water-heater.

The move went spectacularly well, with Dennis, Edwin, Eva, Frank, Mark and myself working in almost perfect unison in daisy-chaining my belongings up the four flights of stairs. Special thanks go out to Dennis and Frank, who Schwarzenegger’ed both my sofa and matress up those stairs. I had a truck and everything, it was hella-smoothly. Sam was supposed to be there, too, but wasn’t because – so she informed me by way of voicemail – she had only gone to sleep at 5am after having had a really good date. It was all Kool and the Gang because I had plenty of people so there wasn’t much extra she could’ve done and she would’ve wasted her time, which is teh suq after nearly no sleep at all. And besides, she had a good date, and if there’s anything worth being stood up for by a friend, it’s a good date. So all was fine.

I had planned a dinner for all the people involved, but that kind of went awry as most people had other plans. Edwin, his lovely girlfriend Esther, Eva and I did have dinner, however, at Palladio, and it was great. I had, however, wanted to mention to Sam at the dinner how it was all cool that she couldn’t show, still thinking she felt a little bad about it.

Queue monday afternoon; I was on my way to my apartment, wanting to put some of the furniture in order (read: assembling my desk and putting the sofa in place) and perhaps unpack a few things. I called Sam to see what she was up to, because I wanted some company that evening. She was up for it. Awesome.

We talked a bit about Saturday, and I thought I had made it clear that I was cool with her not being there. Sadly she felt he need to come up with really silly excuses. Things like “well, you had enough people anyway,” as if she knew that beforehand. That type of evasion was still Kool and the Gang, but after a couple I got a little agitated, which perhaps wasn’t the best idea.

Anyway, I thought, and I asked her if she wanted to meet me at my apartment since she was still at work.

Note: I meant that jokingly, though I’m not sure if she interpreted it as such.

That was just the straw that broke my back. The earlier excuses were mild and negligible, but this excuses had the density of a collapsed star and was plummeting towards the center of the earth. Perhaps I’m taking this a bit too seriously, but if you say you’ll be somewhere, right after a discussion about how unreliable you are when it comes to promises, then break your promise but feel enough commitment to call me to apologise, then don’t weasel your way out of it, especially when I’m already totally cool with you not having shown up.

Sam knows full-well how I regard friendships, but since she started maintaining a closer friendship with Richard, and now with Aden and Miguel, she has been less and less available, and more and more unreliable. She might think that friendships die and spring up all the time, but I don’t.

I need friends I can depend on, and if a person keeps going from friend to aquaintance in terms of reliability, then I can’t depend on them. What’s a friend who is unreliable but an aquaintance? It tears me up that this is where we’re heading after all these years. I look at Wai, or Marco, or Eva and I see the finest people that ever lived because of their staunch, dogged reliability. These people are continuity incarnate, and that’s why I call them friends.