Dear overly
correct Nederlands
politie officer,
thank you for going by the letter and showing no common sense at all.
I am sure you had no better things to do, like, uh, stopping real
crime.
Instead, you chose to harass me while I was unpacking heavy boxes and
furniture from my car, and hence had it parked directly in front of the
door of our new home. Yes, on the sidewalk. At 23:30 hours, when
there is virtually no other traffic. Anyway, my car was in no way on
the street, thus not obstructing even potential traffic. Neither was
it on the bike lane, thus not impeding bikers. And the sidewalk in
front of our new apartment is wide enough that my (small) car fits
there, plus there is enough space left for, e.g., moms with oversized
twin buggies. And I was running around there, carrying stuff, so I
could have put the car away, if there would have been urgent need.
I was really almost finished with unpacking. Yet you still insisted
on me leaving RIGHT NOW
and my asking for five more minutes to
unload at least the heaviest boxes (you unload the heavy stuff last
because it is below everything else, right?) fell on deaf ears.
It was particularly hilarious that while I was standing there,
listening to your speech how poor pedestrians (I haven't seen any)
would not be able to pass due to my car blocking the sidewalk, a biker
came riding along there, between my car and the wall of the
house. On the sidewalk (did I mention the huge bike lane
which I left completely free?). With no lights. Against the
traffic direction. Through the too-narrow-for-pedestrians gap,
huh? (Yet all this was ignored.)
So, nevertheless you made me leave and bring the car to a parking
lot. Which costs outrageous sums per hour even at night, yet recently
the only sane way of paying
(Chipknip
electronic cash terminal) was removed, leaving only coins as payment
method. Good luck trying to find somebody at this time of day who can
change you a bank note. (Did I mention that I did not see any
pedestrians?) And I had just not enough coins so that the next
morning they will probably come and put a clamp on my car, while
I am waiting for de monteur
. Which we know from experience
is always dependable and on time...
But I digress. Now, for some more fun, my car recently acquired an
odd little quirk: it does not start well the first time after I drove
on the highway... After the first successful try, everything is well
again. Anybody wants to guess where I was driving before unloading
the car? Yes, 250 km highway. So, I tried to start the car and the
first N times it did not work, of course. I could already see in
their faces how police thought I was doing it on purpose... Only
instants before they would have left their car (surely to give my car
a push, right?), I managed to start it and drove to the parking lot,
under supervision.
Where were you then?
Dear officer, with your precision, I wished you would have worked
instead at my local municipality, which gave me wrong information and
sent me through half the city for nought; or maybe you could have
helped out at Immigratie- en
Naturalisatiedienst (IND), which were unable to find my computer
record for weeks with lame excuses, and only after I called there a
hojillion times on expensive 0900 numbers with hours in the waiting
loop and tracked myself who could have potentially lost the record,
they suddenly found it between two calls on the same day, which surely
had nothing to do with me homing in on the culprit.
Or perhaps at KPN who misplaced
my ADSL order, so that my seamless internet connectivity transition
during the move remains a pipe dream, because it takes them 14+ days
to flip some switches?! (Time for that starts running after the second
try of ordering, of course).
Or, you could have worked at IKEA
Amsterdam, preventing them from being twerps who were lying to me
about the availability of their furniture. Only recently they
admitted that it eventually might take five instead of the promised
two weeks until the bed arrives, leaving me sleeping on the floor for
15 days. THE REASON WHY I ASKED ABOUT AVAILABILITY WAS THAT I WOULD
HAVE ORDERED SOMETHING OR SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THAT CASE!
Or you could have helped out at LTU
International, who were apparently unable to handle my zipcode for
credit card validation, causing my return flight not to be booked (the
outward flight and another flight was booked fine with exactly the
same data on the same day with LTU
Germany, just as every other flight I ever booked with any other
airline). And while other airlines call their customers to recheck if
something goes wonky (after all they request phone numbers when
booking), LTU International feels no need for that, and instead relies
on sheer luck that I called there preemptively. And then I
needed to call another couple of times for a confirmation email
because they first managed to scramble my email address in their
database, and then finally sent an email message looking exactly like
the spam which funnily passed
my spam filter more
often than not during the last couple of days. This time it did not,
being 0.2 over the threshold. I was of course suspecting something
like this, so I grepped for "ltu" in the mail server logs, but
helpfully, LTU sends their confirmation emails from pop3.amadeus.net,
I as now know. Yeah sure, go ahead and tell me it is my fault that I
use a spam filter...
I guess, my story with the health insurance which lost my
application as well and as compensation taking extra long to
process the reapplication is already too old so I won't ask you there,
but...
Where were you overly correct nitpickers instead of doing your job
properly during the last three weeks when all the other shit
happened?
Well, I did not get a ticket at least, and hey, it could be worse,
I could live in a war zone or something...
The judges are still out on
whether Telekom
and freenet processed my
cancellations. (It is not looking good for freenet, but I still have
high hopes for Telekom after going there twice.)
