Tuesday, 10/26/04 - 9:43 pm.
Part of this morning was spent running around town trying to get the replacemnts of the documents I lost when I lost my wallet (a week ago now). I went to get the first one, Y document. The guy at the window said "you need the X document in order to get the replacemnt of the Y document". But I also needed the Y document to get the replacement of the X document. It seemed like a dead end.
My father was in the same place where I was going to get the Y document. He was to there to pay a fine he got (which he didn't pay, because the departament hadn't been notified of the fine...Lord). In the end we walked out of the building with empty hands, after wasting almost an hour trying to explain people who worked there that I didn't have the X document to Y document (and in fact, I needed the Y document ONLY because it's necessary to get the X document). Gosh, isn't in their bureaucratic minds the possibility that someone lost BOTH documents at the same time?!
So we went downtown (HORRIBLE place) to try to get my X document without the Y document. I freaked out when I saw the line outside the building. Half a block of people, lining up. And inside it was PACKED, there was barely any room to breathe. My dad had the name of someone who could help us speed up the process, so he walked in the building, while I lined up, in case we didn't find the person.
He did find the person, so he called me over to go inside, while all the other people showed their discontent about me skipping the line. I was embarrased, but I wasn't going to say "no, thanks, I'll line up for three hours and wait for my turn". So I just went into a certain office, a very kind man helped me out and in less that 20 minutes my dad and I were walking out of the building, with the X document (the ID) in my hand ("yay, I'm somebody again" *cough*). I was sorry to see that the man behind me in the line was, by that time, only walking into the building, about to make the first step of the process. He still had two hours to go.
While I was at step four, the last step, a nice old lady sat next to me. We both were waiting for our document to be issued. We started to have a small conversation, and I thought she was very cute. She didn't know about fingerprints: this must be different for every person, musn't it? (it may sound exaggerated, but this country has a serious deficiency in education). I explained to her. I don't really know what we talked about....stuff, I guess. How we lost our document and so.
She showed me her thumb, it had blisters. They're from my job, she said humbly. "What's your job?" I asked. I, well...I just retired. But I used to make pens.
That hit me, even thought I only said "oh". She was this tiny, wrinkled old woman...what kind of job is "making pens"? I know somebody has to make them, but aren't there machines for that?
I'd have loved to chat some more with her, because she was really nice and sweet. I was curious, and I'd also realized that I could actually pull off this thing of being a psychologist (you know, if you're a psychologist you have to talk to people). Usually I dread social interactions with strangers, but she had me very interested. I wanted to ask her about her family, if she had any, but maybe that wouldn't have been appropiate (by the pattern of this country, I bet she didn't have a husband and all her children had abandoned her, some just left and some went to the USA to send her money once in a while).
I didn't even ask her her name. There was no need to ask. But I thought that she's the kind of people I want to work with when I become a psychologist.
God, making pens. Some job that is. I bet she gets paid less than the minimal wage.
On an unrelated note, Joseph and I are back to our normal relationship (he came to see me), and today's Ern 5th anniversary. I always see his picture in a billboard outside my brother's office (in the university). It still kind of hurts.