You might have noticed that I wasn’t around here yesterday. Or maybe not. Anyway, I’ve gotten a little distracted, as I was informed yesterday a little before lunch time that my building has eleventy-six violations that the owner has been derelict in attending to, and so, to show him, the City has decided to issue a Vacate Order.
Which means I can no longer live in my apartment. Which means that the Dude and I are couch-surfing (coming soon to Becky Sharper’s floor: the semi-homeless!). We stayed with another friend last night, and are trying to consider this a tour of the outer boroughs. Our stuff can stay in the apartment, but the latest word (meaning I just found out about this at 11:32) is that we are locked OUT as of noon today. Until further notice.
ETA @ 2:31: Further notice! We can hang out today until… something o’clock. And it seems that we can still occasionally access the building during the day (to feed cats, etc.), as long as the super is here. This is good, because I’m leery of taking Bubby the Barfing Wonder anywhere.
Aaaaaaanyway, while right now this is profoundly sucktastic, if we’re able to find a new place without too much crap, at some point in the future it will make for a good story. I ain’t laughin’ yet, but I could use a little levity.
So, today’s FFT is your chance to share your own clusterfuck-tastrophe that is now far enough in the past that you can spin a good story out of it and smile. The more absurd, the better. If you can include standing on a street corner and getting your beautiful new outfit splashed with gutter gravy: excellent.
I have to go pack. Lay ‘em on me.
Ooo ooo!! I have one!
Me and the BF went to NYC for a trip a few years ago. We were staying at a family friend’s apartment in the Upper West Side. The instructions given to my boyfriend were “Third floor, apartment 3F” or some such.
We get in, and walk up the stairs dragging our heavy-ass suitcases. We try the first door (there aren’t any numbers on any of the doors) but the key doesn’t work. We must have stood there trying every key that was given to us in different ways of shoving it through the lock for a good ten minutes.
Panic sets in. We are on vacation in a city where we know no one, and we have no resources. I suggest we go upstairs to try the door up there. In his frustration and helplessness, my BF refuses and we proceed to call for help to the family friend. (Who is a doctor and it takes us awhile to actually get ahold of him).
Well we end up calling a locksmith. He comes in and takes the doorknob off, the door swings open, AND IT’S NOT OUR APARTMENT. There’s some Birkenstocks and a dirty dish on the table that we can see and it doesn’t look like any of the pictures we’ve seen of his place. D’oh!!!
The locksmith starts freaking out and leaves after some calming down.
Long story short, our accomodations *were* upstairs and my silly BF got the floors mixed up when we were given directions. He should have listened to me!!!
We had to give the new key to the downstairs dude whose place we pretty much broke into. Fortunately, he was understanding and cool about it.
It makes for a great disaster vacation story every time.
Also, ever since our breaking and entering fiasco, they’ve since labelled all the doors in the building with the proper apartment number!
Here is my “look back and laugh” story, but I’m warning you, this is a long one!
A couple years ago, I was getting ready to study abroad in Japan. The Japanese government is very into immigration bureaucracy, so getting a student visa is a long and involved process, beginning with waiting two months for your “certificate of authenticity” (ok, I can’t remember the real name) before you can even submit your application.
I sent off my visa application + passport to the nearest Japanese consulate (Chicago) within hours of getting the certificate in the mail. I decided to go with UPS, because hey, they deliver packages! It’s their job!
First mistake.
After a week, I started getting worried. I had gotten my confirmation email from the consulate saying they had sent back my visa, but the UPS web page still said “IN TRANSIT.” And I only live 5 hours from Chicago. I could have made the round trip in one day. So I started calling around. The UPS Store placed a tracker on it. A day later, I get a status update that says “PACKAGE MISPLACED IN FACILITY.” After a frantic hour of calling all over the country, I realized that my passport had been lost.
Did I mention that this all happened three weeks before I was supposed to get on a plane to Tokyo?
I called the Japanese consulate, where the non-so-helpful worker actually scolded me for sending it through UPS. They said there was nothing they could do, because I absolutely HAD to have a “certificate of authenticity” in order to get a visa, and they couldn’t just print out a new one because that’s not how Japan works. And I couldn’t start the application process for a new certificate without a new passport.
I called in sick to work (by “called” I mean “sobbed hysterically into the phone” and by “sick” I mean “hysterically sobbing”) and started the expedited passport process, and got my passport just in time to leave the country.
Once I get there, I have to start the process all over again. I apply for my certificate, wait two months, make 3 separate cross-town visits to the immigration office, and once I get my visa I have to take a trip to my local registration office to sign up for my immigration card, which was another 3 week wait. I got my card one week before I left the country, and had to surrender it to immigration at the airport.
And when I got home, I found a package that had arrived a few weeks before. It contained my original passport, with my student visa.
Back in March I was in Colombia with my college roommate, Nicole. We were supposed to get on a little van to take us from Cartagena to Barranquilla, 2 hours away. In Barranquilla we were to meet up with a dude called Hans who would drive us the rest of the way to our final destination, Rio Piedras (where our awesome beach house was located). All this was arranged by a reputable travel agent.
Problem was, the van driver had no idea where we were going. And he didn’t TELL us that until we were about 3/4 the way there. “Where do you want me to drop you off?” he asked. I looked at him blankly. “You mean you don’t know?” I asked him. He gave me a “Jesus give me patience with this dumb gringa” look and said, “No. Where in Barranquilla do you want me to drop you off?” We began to bicker back and forth in a Colombian version of “Who’s on First?” but it became clear the dude had no idea where he was supposed to take us to meet Hans.
Now, Barranquilla is not Fallujah or anything, but it’s a big, gritty, industrial port city. I didn’t know jack shit about it other than that a) the singer Shakira grew up there and b) it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be randomly dropped off.
The nice young woman sitting next to me–who I’d been chatting with about the Spanish copy of “Twilight” she was reading–saw my distress. She pulled out her phone–I didn’t have one–called our travel agent and proceeded to ream him out, snapping, “Two of your customers are in this van and the driver doesn’t know where to drop them off. You’d better talk to him right now or these girls are going to be stuck in Barranquilla.”
The phone was handed up to the driver and everything was sorted out. It was then handed to me, where I reamed the travel agent out myself in my best “be a bitch” fashion.
We did meet up with Hans, who turned out to be the nicest guy in Colombia, which is saying something, because it is a land of seriously lovely people (including the Twilight-reader, who I thanked profusely). It’s a great story now, and confirmation of what generous, helpful people Colombians are, but GODDAMN, I was on the verge of a major panic attack at the time.
July 2006: I was living in a basement studio flat. The weather had been very hot and very dry for several weeks. Then, one afternoon, there was an immense rain storm….. and I got home from work to discover that the drains have flooded and the floor of MY ENTIRE FLAT was covered with raw sewage.
The happy ending is that the whole flat was redecorated by the landlord and I had sufficient insurance for my own possessions. I’m only glad it didn’t happen in the night – I would not want to wake up to find my toilet volcanising.
(Too far? Sorry dears!)
@Cait: my bf want through a remarkably similar ordeal. At the time, he was here in the US on a visiting scholar visa. He had to go to Germany for a conference and some research-related business, and because he’s a citizen of a not-too-popular Eastern European country, he needs travel visas to get into pretty much every other country out there, and an additional visa to get back into the US. The nearest German Consulate was in Chicago, so he dutifully sent his visa and all his paperwork there via FedEx. FedEx lost it. And they were epically unhelpful and unrepentant about it.
I’d scheduled vacation time and had made arrangements to meet him in Germany, but cancelled all my plans since there was no way he was going anywhere without a passport and visa. Then, two days before he was scheduled to leave, he found a humble manila envelope in his mailbox with a postmark from Canada. His visa and paperwork were inside. Apparently his package had somehow ended up being delivered to a Canadian citizen who had kindly mailed it back to him.
Dear Anonymous Canadian Citizen: You’re awesome, thank you!!
The next day he hopped on plane to Chicago in the a.m., the Germans expedited the visa process so he had it a few hours later, he got on another plane and was home by late afternoon, and on a plane to Germany the next morning. I, however, having cancelled all my reservations, did not end up going to Germany.
@Plum Pie: Gross, but sounds like you actually wound up with a better apartment because of that…uh…shit.
@ Cait: UPS sucks, and I hate them forever.
My story is kind of fun and silly. I left my keys at a friend’s loft during a pre-party last Hallowe’en. When we arrived at the bar, I realized this, and we decided that either we would leave together so I could retrieve my keys, or she would give me her keys when I left. She had just gotten out of a miserable relationship, and was looking to go home with a hot, sympathetic guy.
Cut to about 2:00 a.m. I am tired, all our other friends have left, so I decide to ask about the key. My friend is canoodling with Flaky Boy, who is hot and seems sympathetic. I’m happy for her, but just want to leave. She tries to give me her keys, but has lost them (she unwisely decided to forgo a purse with her Hallowe’en costume, opting instead for cash, lip gloss, and keys stuffed into her strapless bra). All three floors of the place were still hopping; there was no way we were finding those keys.
Fortunately, Flaky Boy was all to happy to let us “crash at his place.” This was a more appealing option to me than using my credit card on a hotel room for us (that area of the city is reedonkulously expensive). When we got to his filthy bachelor pad, he proceeded to hint at his threesome ambitions. My friend was determined to get laid, and I was sober enough to realize that she really wanted this. So I ignored him, made myself a bed on his couch (shoving the food wrappers and drink cans off it), and laid down. The two of them made for his bedroom, separated from the living room where I was by the world’s thinnest wall.
Needless to say, I heard everything. EVERYTHING. And you know what? My friend needed this, and wanted it, so I kept quiet. Even as I lay there, cold and unsleeping, I was thinking the following: “I am the world’s BEST girlfriend right now,” and “This is going to make an awesome story on day.” And it went on for HOURS. The sky was light when they finally wrapped thing up and I could get a small amount of shut-eye.
The next morning, we did the walk of shame, on a chilly Sunday morning in our Hallowe’en costumes. (Awesome, right?) Miraculously, the bar had found my friend’s keys. We took a cab to her place, I changed back into my street clothes, and we got ourselves presentable in time to join the other girls for dim sum brunch! So it ended happily.
Except that Flaky Guy turned out to be a bit of a douche, as it turns out, but at least it sounded like he had some skillz in bed.
I was in India last year, and was flying out of Bangalore, to Paris, at 2:30 AM. The cab arrived at the hotel around 12:00, and we sped off toward the airport. The airport used to be close to downtown Bangalore, but in early 2008 (or maybe late 2007) a new, fancy airport opened a few miles out of town, down a new stretch of highway.
There’s no traffic, so we’re cruising along. I made a couple of calls (since it was a decent hour in the States) and then sat back to relax. Then, all of a sudden, we whizz right past the exit for the airport. I immediately sit up and look around, but the driver seems totally confident, so I, of course, assume that he knows some shortcut.
About a mile and half later, I realize: there’s no shortcut. This guy missed the exit. I point this out, and he pulls over to the shoulder. Then, all of a sudden, he throws the car into reverse and starts speeding, backward, down the highway.
Now, there’s not a lot of traffic or anything, but there are enough cars on the road that they are swerving to miss us. Meanwhile, I am sitting in the backseat, clutching my bag, thinking, “I’m going to die, and no one will know for four days.” I was headed to Paris for a solo vacation, you see. This continues for a mile or so, all the way back to the original exit, at which point we pop off of the highway and into the airport traffic amid the sounds of honking horns and squealing tires.
We get to the terminal and I get out of the car. I sign the little piece of paper saying the ride was completed, and then the driver asks me for a tip.
I did not comply.
i’ve had my fair share and more of this kind of disaster, but here’s the one that makes me laugh the hardest in retrospect.
i was traveling in england with my then-boyfriend and his family and had to return to the US earlier than planned. we were in manchester at the time, so i was going to go to london by train and then fly home. they were going to rent a car and drive through ireland with no particular itinerary or planned stop-overs.
i got on the very early morning commuter train to london and waved as they drove away from the train station. about 20 minutes into the 2 hour ride, i remember that i’d given my plane ticket (back in the day of physical tickets) to my bf’s mom for safekeeping – and had neglected to get it back. so i have no plane ticket and absolutely no way to reach the person with my plane ticket and i am alone and 15 and in england.
i promptly burst into tears, to the extreme consternation and discomfort of all the commuting businessmen on the train, with their suits and ties and british stiff upper lips. as i grew increasingly hysterical, the businessman sitting next to me offered me a cup of tea. somehow that was so hilariously british that it snapped me out of hysteria and made me calm down.
at heathrow, the combination of being a young american girl and my willingness to sob piteously without stopping got the ticket counter to reissue my ticket for my new flight – for cheaper than i would have had to pay to change the return flight if i’d had the physical ticket. but i’ll never forget the terror of being totally alone in a country and how hilarious the offer of tea was.
@Cait: Ugh. I hate UPS. They lost all of my photos from college. Bastards.
In 2001 I was a mere tourist in the US and not the resident I am today. I was visiting my then boyfriend at his new grad school. On Christmas Eve I had my credit card stolen at a bar in Boston. I flipped the fuck out. I was actually too young to have my own card and this was my mum’s and I had very little other money. I was cashless and a bad daughter. It was already Christmas Day in Australia by the time I discovered the theft and started calling the credit card company (using a long distance phone card with very poor connection). The 26th is also a holiday in Australia so it was actually two days before I could get the card canceled. They company said they would ship me a new one via (guess who!?) UPS and would call me to sign for it. They shipped it and it got there a couple days later, HOWEVER the one days (possibly one hour) I stepped away from my BFs dorm room phone (we only had a land line) they called and this ensued: Let’s say I have a name that’s not common in the US and always mispronounced. Let’s say it’s like, Johanna or something and Americans always call me JOE-HANNAH.
Credit card company: Hello we are calling with an urgent message for JOE-HANNAH
Ridiculous silly BF: Nope, no one here by the name Joe or Hannah.
Credit card company: Okey doke then. Buh-bye.
I arrived home, BF relates odd phone call. I explode with fury at the fact that he has just denied me a credit card and has been so stupid as to NOT RECOGNIZE MY OWN NAME.
Credit card was shipped back to Australia. On the 29th of Dec. So I wait for another round of overlapping holidays to elapse before a new card is shipped back to me.
In the meantime, the little fuckers who stole my card spent the holidays at a fancy downtown hotel eating food from the The Cheesecake Factory and playing on PlayStations from Toys R Us that they stashed in their new luggage, all of which I bought for them. $6,000 worth of shit. Fortch, the credit card company covered it all.
Ok, now I laugh at that story.
Got another one:
Me and the BF’s first apartment was a cozy 600sq feet, so we inquired at the leasing office what a 2 bedroom would be. We got the info and told her we’d think about it.
We decided we would stay where we were, cause moving’s a bitch and we wanted to save money for all sorts of trips, car repairs, etc.
Alluvasudden I get a call at work about a month later saying, “Hello, it’s Kathy from the leasing office, I was calling to see when you were going to move in today and get your keys?”
Um….
What?
Seems that the person we inquired about the 2 bedroom in the first place just took it upon herself to transfer us to it without us even SIGNING ANY PAPERS.
We couldn’t stay in our cozy old apartment since IT WAS ALREADY RENTED OUT to someone new.
WTF!!!
So we decided to be cool about it and take the 2 bedroom. We had to move all of our crap in 2 days. We weren’t planning on doing this, so of course nothing was packed. It did make it easier that the new place was in the same apartment complex, but still.
It all worked out in the end, but boy were those 2 days stressful!
Ok, still not able to laugh about this one but I’m hoping one day…
So when I was signing up for the bar I of course waited until the last minute to get my shit in (as is my wont, unfortunately, I’m working on it)and then 2 weeks after the deadline the state bar returned all my stuff to me and my money order fell out, I had ACCIDENTALLY made it out for the wrong amount. I seriously vomited. Literally. Even thinking about it is all slo-mo like a gruesome horror movie. Just writing about it I can feel my face getting red and my body tensing up. Luckily, it worked out. LUCKILY. They just “wait-listed” me but assured me that everyone on the wait-list sits. Lets just say it didn’t help my stress level. Ug. I need a drink now.
Sorry for your apt. troubles PHD! If you didn’t live hundreds of miles away I’d offer my spare room and air mattress.
Okay, picture it, summer after I graduated college, just found out my boyfriend of over a year had cheated on me with his “i-swear-she’s-a-lesbian-best-friend”. My best friend in NYC where I lived at the time decides to take me out. I got to her place, straight from work, where he called to tell me, since I wouldn’t dare yell at him at work, and she gets stuff for me to get ready. I go to take a shower and MASSIVE COCKROACH in shower. Panic ensues, she finds the raid, spray half the can, as MASSIVE COCKROACH is flying around, thing dies a spectacular death. Laugh about it, go out, get some sushi, then hit the bars. End up sobbing, drunk out of my mind, to two young guys outside the diner at 3 AM about my love life.
Best friend takes me home to her place, we pass out.
5AM, wake up to knocking and banging on door, get off couch and realize floor is covered in water. A pipe had burst in her bathroom (possibly from banging around trying to kill MASSIVE cockroach) and was flooding the downstairs neighbors apartment. We apologize, call plumber, mop up, and pass out again. I am still drunk.
Wake up around 11, feel queasy, chalk it up to drinking WAY too much. Best friend gives me tums, toast, and vitamin water. I consume all three, then run two steps to the bathroom, don’t make it, and start projectile vomiting all over her lovely apartment. Do this for two hours. Best friend calls ambulance, since I can’t get in cab. EMT’s are same guys I cried to last night, they recognize me, and promptly tell me, no, I am not alcohol poisoned, I am food poisoned. One EMT gives me his number in the ambulance on the way to the way to ER.
I am now in a bed, 24 hours exactly after the bf confessed, and a large nurse demands she catheterize me because they need a urine sample. I have nothing left in me, but they want it. Best friend steps up, and becomes my best friend for life with these words:
“YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS. She has been through enough and if you even try to touch her, you have to go through me first”. Best friend is 4’11 and 90 pounds soaking wet. The nurse backs down, they eventually release me, and 48 hours later, I am home, in bed wondering, what the hell just happened?
This is my best friend and I’s favorite story to tell, we now die laughing about it, especially the vomiting bc instead of being grossed out or embarrassing me she just said “wow, three feet, must be a record”.
And yes, this is all true, and yes, it took me three years to go near sushi again.
@betterfish: BEST FRIEND EVER.
I don’t have a story to contribute (although i enjoyed all of the ones here-in a sympathetic way, of course).
I just wanted to say to Ph.Dork and the dude: man, that’s awful. Is this a temporary dislocation or a permanent one? Will your landlord be waiving the rent for the time you are unable to live in the apartment?
If you need a place to crash in Pittsburgh…
I was an RA last semester. The third or fourth week, one of the boys was playing soccer in the hallway (totally not allowed, btw), and accidentally kicked the ball into a pipe. It burst, spilling 300 gallons of water onto the floor. We had to evacuate for several hours, and the boys (since it was an all-male floor) couldn’t go back to their rooms for a few days. I was freaking out. Now, lulz are had.
PhDork and the Dude: that is beyond awful, hope it works out soon. Surely they must give you some compensation, or something?
I’m having a bit of a block on the look-back-on-this-and-laugh thing, most of the things I can think about are not long stories, but relatively short experiences (like a 30 hour train ride to Kiev on a Ukrainian train, complete with oriental carpets in the bathrooms that were soaking.wet. by the end–great to tell about afterwards but not so fun when you are trying not to drink to space out your bathroom trips…).
Addendum: no offense intended to Ukrainians or Ukrainian trains. It got us there nice and safe and Kiev was great–but it was oooold, and those carpets were unbelievably gross.
@ abby jean As a Brit I can safely say that a cup of tea cures everything. That man knew what he was doing.
@ Cait Japanese immigration are dreadful aren’t they?
There are huge numbers of people working illegally mostly in the nightclub/adult entertainment industries but try and get on with some legitimate studying and you’re gonna have to jump through more hoops than a showdog.
My own experience is not awful but quite funny. I went to Japan a few years ago to spend three months living in a 9msq concrete cell, working in a bar and writing.
On the way into Japan with my request for a tourist visa (no application necessary just turn up) I was stopped. I was taken to one side and asked lots of questions by a little uniformed man with a moustache and a slightly careworn look. I blatantly was about to break visa regs and work but I calmly lied that I had enough money saved in the bank to support myself and that I was here to research my book. No no, I wouldn’t be working, not I.
The fella scratched his head and thought about it then he asked me to wait while he went and got a woman. That’s right. Because I was young and female he didn’t think he could make the judgement call. He didn’t trust his male weakness for young women not to cut me too much slack. So he went and got a woman to interview me on the grounds that she wouldn’t be fooled. This was apparently acceptable procedure.
The woman gave me a scary look then asked me the same questions as the man and swallowed the same pile of horse shit. I got my visa.
My husband decided to prepare a mexican banquet… and part of doing so involved marinating the meat overnight, with a large amount of chilli and garlic and other things.
So he cuts that all to marinate overnight washes his hands. Bed time rolls around and we wander off to bed, and things get amorous.
He slid his “clean” hands between my legs and at first I think, “ooh that’s warm” and then a few seconds later “Oh my god I’m burning”. I jump out of bed and run to the shower to put cold cold water on my now burning girl bits.
My husband is traumatised and crying because he’s hurt me and is terrified that he may have done some damage. I’m laughing because I know how funny this is going to be later.
While crying my husband runs his chilli soaked “clean” hands over his nose and his eyes and now they’re burning too. Eventually with application of bi-carb and much cold water, the burning eases.
He never believed he’d find it funny ever. Now we laugh about it every time we cook with chilli.
Another (long) one about Japan!
I’d just finished three weeks exchange program in Japan, and me and the Japanese girl were checking in for our three weeks in Holland. Everything’s fine, we have plenty of time, it all goes smoothly, until we get to customs. Suddenly, she realises she doesn’t have her passport.
She panics and I try to get some help but I don’t speak much Japanese. We manage to get everything explained and people start searching, with no luck. By this time the plane leaves in half an hour so they tell me to just go on ahead and they’ll keep looking. If they don’t find the passport, well… She’d have to come on a later flight.
So I sit in the plane, nervous, because she was so upset and she’s a year younger than me and all this is just stressful. Just before the thing takes off, literally, everyone’s in there with their seatbelts on and they’re starting get ready to go to the runway, in comes my Japanese friend! They’d managed to find her passport just in time. Everyone is happy.
Then we get to the airport in Germany where my mother would pick us up and we wait an hour or so until I call her. She though we’d arrive the day after and she’s at some party. It’s getting a little late and we’re a little jetlagged so I try to get a hotel room. I’m not 18 yet so I can’t.
Eventually my dad raced over (miraculously without speeding tickets) and brings us home. Not as disastrous as some upthread, but it was still a long day. There are a lot of passport troubles in here, huh?
Also, unrelated, I think I commented here before, and then forgot about it. My memory’s rotten but I’ll try to keep an eye on it this time.
@betterfish AWESOME story.
PhDork – if you ever decide to venture south I can offer up an air mattress, too.
A few years ago I attended my cousin’s wedding in a small town in SC. I had just started a new job and did not want to do a whole lotta driving in one weekend. So I opted for the flying into a small town airport route.
It’s time for me to leave to go home on Sunday and misc. family members drop me off at said small town airport where I promptly discover that they’ve canceled my first of two flights to Atlanta and there won’t be another one until the next day. They give all of us the option of either waiting until the next day or them paying for us to take a taxi two hours to Atlanta. About six of us opt for the taxi. The taxi van shows up, we pile in, and get on the road. But this taxi van is making HORRIBLE noises. Like I’m really frightened to be on the highway in something that sounds so bad kind of noises. And finally it breaks down on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere Georgia with smoke coming out of it.
So we’re stranded and it’s nearing the time of all of our connecting flights and we’re panicking. The four dudes in the group decide to hop in the car with a random guy who offers them a ride to the Atlanta airport at the rest stop we all walk to. I don’t think this is such a good idea. I call my bro, who happens to also live in the middle of nowhere Georgia, who drives 45 min to pick me and the other woman from the taxi up and drive us to the airport in Atlanta. We arrive just as my flight home (the last one of the evening) departs.
Well, now I have to fly standby. The people at Delta book me for an 11AM flight and inform me that I should come back to the counter at 5AM to see if I can get on the 7AM flight. Bro has gone home and now the only prospect is spending the night on the floor of the airport. At about 3AM I decide to call my boss and email the people I work with most directly to tell them that because I am stuck in Atlanta I will not be in on Monday. I am back at the Delta counter at 5AM when they open up and in fact they do get me on the first morning flight. In first class. Which I didn’t really get to fully appreciate as I was passed out cold for the duration of the flight home.
PhDork, sorry to hear about your troubles – I hope you get to move back in soon. I’m enjoying all the rest of the stories!
I’ve had a bunch of crazy experiences that are funny in retrospect (heck, most were even humorous at the time), but here’s my best:
Last year, I spent 3 months at a remote site in Nicaragua doing my dissertation field research. Think no electricity (except a couple hours a day by generator), 4 hours from the nearest town by boat, no regular transportation, poor phone reception (and no internet), etc. The work I did at this site is absolutely critical and central to my dissertation research, and couldn’t be done anywhere else.
A month into my stint, we’re running low on food, drinking water, and gas for the generator, so the owner of the place takes off for the weekend to stock up. Because my bank transfer to cover the fees for my 3-month stay there (of >$5000, as I had a crew of up to 4 assistants with me at any given time) wasn’t going to go through until later in the week, she borrows a couple hundred bucks from me to “buy groceries”.
Needless to say, she takes off and promptly disappears from the face of the earth – doesn’t come back when she said she would, doesn’t call, doesn’t answer her cell, her son doesn’t answer his cell, doesn’t send food or water… So, here I am, in the middle-of-nowhere-Nicaragua, speaking really crappy Spanish, waiting for the arrival of 2 new assistants, with no food, water, or electricity, and with staff who haven’t been paid in >1 month and are ready to bail. I also had been alone (previous assistants had to leave early), but thank Maude I had met a cute local guy in the nearest town who dropped everything to come out and work as my assistant. He ended up saving the day, keeping me up-to-date on what was going on and what the staff were saying, and convincing them to stay on until we could figure something out.
We ended up abandoning my research (which, btw, required that someone be onsite every single day) to go to the nearest town and get money, groceries, water, and gas – and being the remote site it is, these errands took 3 days! Meanwhile, CuteGuy and I played private eye, running around town quizzing all his friends and acquaintances about what had happened to the AWOL hotel owner. We come to find out she was, as I’d figured, off partying it up in Managua with my money. Thanks to a mutual friend of CuteGuy and AWOLWoman, we ended up sending a Colonel in the Nicaraguan army (yes, really!) to her house in Managua to order her back to the hotel to fulfill her obligations! She stalled, of course, but sent food and finally came back a couple weeks later…along with this very same Colonel – which really made for some crunchy socializing, as you might imagine.
A few days later, she screamed at CuteGuy and I for hours then proceeded to kick CuteGuy off-site for “ruining her reputation” – this from a woman known as “La Bruja” for her temper and mistreatment of employees, and our “crime” was telling people in town the simple truth: we had been left at this remote site without food, water, or gasoline, after I’d paid for accommodations. But I ended up finishing all my research, and got back all the money she owed me. She thought she was pulling one over on the dumb gringa, but she ended up getting quite a surprise!
It was crazy stressful at the time – if it hadn’t been for CuteGuy, I certainly would have had to leave, and I don’t know what would have come of my PhD work – but now it makes for one heck of a story!
These are really good, y’all. It gives me hope that this, too, shall pass.
Thanks for the stories and good wishes. We can certainly use them. We’re able to access the kitties for food and medicine(hyperthyroid tonkinese means meds morning and night), and I managed to catch a little nap in my own bed this afternoon. Bliss.
We understand there are a flurry of meetings with the super, the owner, some architechts, the Dept of Buildings people, and probably your mama going on this weekend, and maybe we’ll know our fate Monday. We’ve had our September rent refunded, and we’re looking at apartments, but being sorely disappointed, because our current (?) place is seriously huge and well-located and we were paying below-market. …and I guess that ultimately you get what you pay for.
We’ve had lots of offers of places to crash, and we’re looking for a hotel that accepts cats (and isn’t a quazillion dollars). Not sure what’s going to happen–if we can get back in a month, we might ride it out. If we find an awesome new place, maybe we’ll be moving next week. If, maybe, might. If, maybe, might.
*applies cold cloth to forehead, breathes into paper bag*
Glad to hear things MIGHT work out PhDork! I have a story to share too, although nothing NOTHING can beat viajera’s.
When I got married I lived in South Carolina and my husband lived in San Diego, but was due to report to Virginia Beach on new orders a week later. So after returning from our honeymoon cruise we were at the Tampa airport trying to catch our flights back to SC so we could turn around and get on ANOTHER flight to CA to meet the movers coming to pack his apartment and then we would drive cross-country to VA (where, I might add, we had no place to live – we figured we’d just “figure it out when we got there”).
Due to some complete fucking fuckery on the part of Delta airlines, our return flights from Florida had been canceled (they accused us of not checking into our original flight as I screamed at them THEN HOW DID I GET HERE???) and we had to wait 18 hours for available seats to the tiny Charleston airport.
It then occurred to me that if a return ticket gets canceled for not checking into the first leg of a flight, I was NOT going to be getting on our flight the next day to CA, as my husband had purchased two round trip tickets instead of one round trip and one one-way (we honestly thought that was a good idea at the time).
So hubby takes off to CA figuring I’ll just catch the next flight we can afford. Luckily my landlord let me stay in my already packed and vacant apartment overnight while I tracked down four different flights that would eventually get me to CA, where my husband was supposed to pick me up at the San Diego airport.
Unluckily, the baggage handlers had stolen half his stuff out of his checked bag including the keys to his apartment and car. So I sat at the airport for four hours waiting for him to get a locksmith to make new keys so he could get into his house and get his spare car key…which turned out to be just a valet key for the trunk…so I waited some more until another locksmith could make him a car key.
I sort of figure if we could survive all that in our first two weeks of marriage, we’re gonna make it.
Sorry that was so long but I swear it felt like the most endless horrible nightmare ever at the time – and now it’s just funny.
My old roommate and I once had to move on foot. We couldn’t afford a moving van and our new apartment was only a few blocks away, so we decided to give it a go by ourselves and just carry everything from one place to the other.
While carrying my mattress over the top of our heads down on of the busiest streets in the Montreal village, my roommate who was carrying the front part tripped and as he tripped the mattress spun in the air and flew over his head. Somehow and I’m still not sure exactly how this happened, but my roommate feel unto the mattress. Funniest thing I had ever seen, although at the time it was more of a I’m going to laugh until my laugh turns into crying out of desperation.