The Boston Chapters: Black Tuesday

29th July 2008

The familiar jingle played repeatedly, stretching my already too thin patience. Still suffering in shock and anxiety of discovering the loss from my wallet, I was trying my best to calm my nerves while preparing for the worst.

I saw the scene play back in my mind's eye. Standing in front of the ATM, typing in the amount "$200.00" on the number pad. A flick of the wrist, a glance at my watch; an awful reminder that I was already much later than I should have been.

The all-too-familiar hobo sitting at the side was caught in my peripheral vision, as my central vision caught a message on the screen.

"A 2 dollar charge will be made for your transaction. Do you still wish to proceed?"

Jamming the button hurriedly produced no results, only to later find out that it was the misaligned button below it.

Snatching the money out of the jaws of the teller in a hurry, I impatiently answered the "Do you need a receipt?" question on screen with repeated button presses. Snatching the receipt the moment it was dispensed, I turned around and left for my meeting... not realizing that I had forgotten something; something too costly to have been forgotten.

"Hello. Mr. Kang?" a man's voice came on the line, through a relatively thick and familiar Filipino accent.

"Hi, I lost my debit card yesterday and I am calling to enquire if there were any transactions made after 5.45 a.m. Singapore time?" I asked, wary and yet trying my best to be preparatory.

"Yes sir, there have been a number of transactions made," the voice replied.

"Could you list down all the transactions made after the withdrawal of $200 USD at 5.45 a.m. Singapore time?" I asked further, still trying to hold myself together.

"Well sir, they are at 6.10 a.m., a $20.13 transaction; at 6.22 a.m. a $35.46 transaction.... at 6.50.... at 12.05 p.m., a $65.34 transaction, at 12.20 a.m. a..." my heart sinking deeper with each line the voice read off.

"You know what, could you just total the total amount that I lost?" I cut the voice off impatiently.

"Please hold on for a second sir, I will compute it manually," the voice said, as he subjected me to the artificially-happy jingle all over again. Well, for what it was supposed to be musically, it sure didn't help me feel any better, as I bit my nails and took deep breaths waiting for the final tally.

"Ok sir," the voice returned, "the total amount of your transactions made amount to $981 SGD," he said calmly.

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I sat in silence for a few seconds; probably the longest few seconds in the last 2 months, before I managed to utter out the words in a shaky tone, "is there anything I can do about these transactions?"

"I'm sorry sir, these transactions are still pending... file a dispute claim..." the voice continued to explain as I felt my heart wrenching in pain and disappointment while my mind tried to focus on the instructions detailing what I had to do next.

"But again sir, I stress that there are no guarantees that filing a dispute claim will be able to get you your money back," the phone call ended as I sat in my chair, stunned in silence, in an entirely emotionally confused state.

Feelings of disappointment, anger, at both myself and my carelessness and the motherfucker involved, resignation, resentment, shock, self-pity, enlightened all compressed into an extremely long and painful 5 minutes; maybe longer, maybe shorter, but it didn't matter.

I took a deep breath as I thought about the things that the money could have been; the opportunity costs involved. It could have easily been a PS3, an Ipod Touch, a trip to Taiwan, money to get me by till the next job, a shopping spree; and yet, all it ended up was a pile of dust to be squandered off by someone else. All the hard-earned funds from the previous low-paying job burned in the hands of another.

I let out a deep sigh as I thought about my fate. Questioning the lesson to be learnt behind this. Prudence perhaps? And in a way, I was every bit deserving to have someone squander of some of my money. But to the point that it escalated into almost my entire remains, to have to pay close to a thousand just to learn said prudence; that was just bad luck, or just another cruel twist of fate.

Indeed, blind optimism somehow always lead me to believe that things happen for a reason. And oftentimes, I convinced myself that God is simply moulding me with each experiencing to make me into a bigger and better person, so much so that as and when he were to thrust my almost-deserving Greatness onto me, I would be ready to accept and hold it.

Yet, in recent years, with each new cruel twist of Fate, I only find myself seemingly growing decrementally less, and question the cause and purpose of such experiences incrementally more; always convincing myself that "the light at the end of the tunnel is just around the bend", or "its always darkest before the dawn" psycho-babble. But yet, with each new mishap, my patience for the answers grow thinner and my bitterness and resentment towards my Fate, luck, chance, karma, purpose, or whatever one might call it grows cancerously.

Indeed, it never rains but pours. Just another cruel twist of Fate in my already bitter life, perhaps?

So, despite and against all warnings from the company around me, I still have to ask: "So, what else could go wrong?"

................ Fuck.