1/17/16
(I am on an overnight bus from Hoi An to Nha Trang, so short update. Sorry!)
I am not the most careful person, and tend to lose items frequently (yet my travel backpack is growing at an alarming rate…). Usually, I am ok with losing small unimportant things (well, I have learned to accept it anyway). However, on more important items, I tend to get strangely emotional.
I was all happy after moving to a hotel yesterday, and made a terrible error. It was pouring rain, I was tired from all the cycling, and I was just not paying attention to. When I started to pack my bag for today’s overnight bus, I realized: I have forgotten to get the security wallet from the hostel. Usually, I put my passport in it and always carry it around. In Vietnam, the hostel and hotel always want to keep the passport, which resulted in me separating these items. In the last hostel, I finally decided to just leave it with the front desk. In my hurry, I completely forgot to get that wallet. Horrors of losing my green card and my HK ID card swarmed my head and I could barely sleep. I kept cursing myself and hope the hostel would not claim to not have seen it. In the morning, I immediately took a cab back to the hostel; only for the driver to get lost and drove an additional 20 minutes in a different neighborhood. He never apologized, and still charged me much more than a simple ride ahould. Too worried to argue, I just ran to the hostel and thankfully, they immediately produced the security wallet. I checked everything, thanked them profusely, and headed for breakfast.
You may ask: why so much drama? It is just another ID and can be teplaced. While that is true (and I did look it up on how to replace those IDs), I also realized I have a weird emotional attach enemy to these two things. Born in Hong Kong but have not spent too much adult life there, I am always happy to call myself a HongKonger: but I am really not a native. I know more about America than Hong Kong nowadays, and it always create an identity problem. As for the greencard, it is even more complicated. I chose to stay in the US, but the US is a tough place to migrate to. My immigration process was a decade in the naking, and I am still just a permanent resident (as the immigration officers love to remind me). I have somehow let these papers to represent who I am, and in the court of law, they do. Yet, I am also just a person: who likes to travel, make lots of mistakes and tend those things. How do I reconcile these? And what makes me “me”?
(No idea. I am too tired from all the continence planning and worrying to think about such deep penetrating thought. I need some coffee to lubricate my system first.)
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