Wherein I confront craziness

In the interest of getting everything on the record, we decided to confront the crazy bitch, at her request, at the police station last Thursday, dependant on a couple of things. We first called in a favor and asked about the officer in charge and got back the answer that he had a reputation for being straight, and a good cop. That was a good sign, because a chance you take when going to the cops here in an unclear case like this one is that the cops are either sided with your opponents for whatever reason, or the cops themselves want something. So I wired myself with a cellphone transmitting to my PC at home.
That accomplished, we brought along Nam’s little sister to help watch Max and went to the station. The entire meeting lasted 30 minutes, because everybody except the crazy bitch wanted it to end quickly. She brought along a female teacher from Nam’s university for whatever reason and even she seemingly wanted it to end quickly. Why? Because in those thirty minutes, the crazy bitch never indicated what she wanted until the very end but did manage to tell everyone how she nearly caused an accident in the middle of an intersection when she pulled alongside me, in the lane for oncoming traffic, and expected me to sideswipe some kids on motorbikes to make room for her… And then got so angry because I didn’t accommodate her that she followed me for a kilometer, pulled in front of my car, and slammed on her brakes to cause an accident – WITH KIDS IN THE CAR!!! (and from what I saw, they weren’t even wearing seatbelts, because both of them were thrown forward, hard.)
By the time the cop heard this, he’d pretty much had enough of her so he kept repeating the same question, namely asking just what it was that she wanted. Because she wouldn’t say what she wanted, I got the strange feeling she was waiting for an apology from me but was somehow too embarrassed to ask for it. You’d never guess it, but… Just for the hell of it, I apologized. And guess what? That was that. Rather, that was it. The whole time, she wanted an apology from me for somehow causing her to almost (intentionally) cause two accidents in two minutes. When everybody realized that, it was like light bulbs went on above their heads. Nam, me, the cop, the crazy bitch’s friend. I mean road rage is one thing, but trying to cause accidents and then admitting it to a cop in a police station because you think it’ll get someone else in trouble, all because you want an apology is… fucking crazy, or as the Chinese exchange students at the good ol’ U of T used to say, C-R-A-Z-I-O-U-S.
So, the situation is resolved. I actually felt good about making the crazy bitch feel good, too (by apologizing). I could’ve really pissed her off by letting it get to the “demanding an apology” stage and then refusing to do so – I had every right to – but even though I intensely disliked her, I felt sorry for her at the same time. Someday, when I get to Buddhist anti-purgatory, I expect some fucking deity to remember the time I was nice to a crazy person, and perhaps just temporarily put out the fire burning my ass off.
That is all.

Papa Piggy

Almost a month ago, a big storm came and blew my ceramic boo-chan (pig-shaped mosquito coil holder) over. As you can see, he did a Humpy-dumpty which made me really sad because I bought him for half off at Jusco in Sumoto a few years back and will probably never buy a 7,000 yen ceramic pig ever again.

Luckily, it was nothing two and a half tubes of super glue (the most popular brand in Thailand is called Power Glue) couldn’t fix:
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Actually, if you look closely, you can see that mommy pig’s been put together again, too.

No work accomplished today

I wanted to get some midterm grading done the past five hours, but I ended up entertaining Max instead. He wouldn’t go to sleep and Nam was busy putting together slides for a presentation in Bangkok at some lexicographical conference in ten days – it takes precedence over my work so I had to watch the baby (of course, pretty soon he will be the toddler and there will be a new baby).
I really need to get as much grading done as I can in chunks because with 11 classes (7 different courses; 3 which I’ve done before but am improving and 4 new ones), a few hundred students, and 35 hours in the classroom a week, it’s impossible to finish all at once or very quickly.
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Something else also popped up this evening: A couple cops came by the house and asked us to call another cop about a traffic accident or something. It turns out that some crazy bitch who tried to make me rear-end her because I wouldn’t let her cut me off while making a dangerous turn into a signal-less intersection (whew!) reported my license number to the police… I remember it very well because it happened on my birthday last week and I was really pissed off, but refrained from cussing her out because I felt bad for the kids in the car… I couldn’t believe that she cut in front of me, waited for my car to get close, and then stomped on the brakes to try and cause an accident with kids in the car. Of course, there’s really nothing she can do unless she makes a bullshit claim, so we’ll see what happens. Basically the cop who Nam called asked us to work it out because this woman came and complained about me “teasing” her… That would be the part where I told her she was a horrible driver and should be more careful with kids in the car…
I feel the cops really have no business asking us about anything or to do anything since nothing happened (apparently by her account as well as mine), but maybe she has a brother on the force or something. If it comes to a “who has bigger friends” contest, though, I will be prepared and show no mercy…