Things Not to Tell a Robbery Victim

Some guy, a coworker of mine, managed to give me every bad piece of advice in the book within about 2.5 minutes.  I need to vent it here.

1. "I hope you learned a valuable lesson."  Needless to say, looking at someone notably dispossessed and bruised and impressing a moral lesson upon them is ... not helpful, to say the least.  You are not the teacher, and I am not a child who acted badly.  No "lesson" needed to be learned.  I made an error in judgement, which will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life.  You have *NO RIGHT* to treat me--or any robbery victim--as if this is a minor classroom lesson to be inculcated upon the benighted.  I will not stand for such treatment.  End of story.

2. "They always pick on the weakest ones."  I'm not weak, and you are my instant enemy for perceiving me that way.  Being a 116-pound female doesn't make me a total wimp; express sympathy if you want, but learn to do it without insulting me.

3.  "It's just a material possession.  Be grateful you didn't get hurt."  Um, NO.  The laptop was not a material possession.  It was my entire inner world, all my stories, all my creativity, all my secrets, and my entire last 5 years in a convenient, 3 pound carrying case.  It was my sole source of entertainment, beauty, and joy in a crumbling world.  It was my only convenient means of accessing the outer world, and it was taken from me.  It feels like I've lost a limb.

And see, the thing is, God gave me this remarkable capacity ... it's called "healing".  I'd have sooner taken hits and still have my laptop in my possession than the reality.  Don't dictate me what I should be grateful for.  I've lost my soul child, make no mistake.

4. "I always buy a can of mace.  You might want to invest in one, too."  It seems like sound advice till you consider that the damage is already done, that the mace would have been in the bag if I'd remembered it at all, and that I likely wouldn't have thought to use it even if I were holding it in my right hand.  I was holding keys in my right hand (between my fingers!) and I didn't even think to use those.  I was also holding an umbrella with a sharp point, and I didn't use that to my advantage either.

Let's face the reality: Mace is useless crap.

5.  ....
The elipsis represents silence.  Most people just try to change the subject or say, "Too Bad, here's a hug".  Most don't really share my sense of outrage.  If you don't care about my being robbed, don't ask me to tell my tale of it.  Please and thank you.

AT LEAST ACT LIKE YOU CARE.

Rant over.  

Loose Ends

I've spent the last several days trying to clean up the mess that those motherfuckers created for me.

Anger
On Sunday, I asked my tuk-tuk driver to take me to get my sim card replaced (I had to call him from a guesthouse since I didn't have a phone anymore, nor did I possess his phone number).  There was $40 on that card, and I needed to get it transferred to a new account before the jackasses used it themselves.

The problem was that I was still too angry in the morning to function as anything other than a sociopath.  I chewed out random strangers I passed on the streets, I ragged on my tuk tuk driver, and I threw a pen at the salesperson's head when she gave me the run around regarding my sim card.  (Yes, really.)  Then I stormed out.

I couldn't function like a normal human being, which was fine because no one else seemed to be fully functional either.  I couldn't call anyone, do anything, contact the police, whatever.  I drifted around town in a state of rage and confusion.

Finally, at the end of the day, I approached a cell phone kiosk and bought an old cell phone for $15, along with a new SIM card.  At least that problem was solved.

Business
The next day was when the fun started. I was somewhat emotionally recovered by then--enough not to be on the brink of criminal insanity anyway.

- I went back to the phone company (I took a number and waited half an hour in penance for my outburst the prior day) and got a new SIM card, my old number, and all my credit back.  The thieves hadn't thought to place any calls on it, thank God.  And now they can't get anything for it, seeing that my phone was a beat up worthless piece of shit IN ARABIC.
- I went to the bank and ascertained that a) my money was OK and that b) the account is not accessible without ID.
- I went to the embassy and scheduled an appointment to report the robbery (useless though that may be)
- I went to the police.  That's the interesting part of this tale:

The local  police station is located right behind my house pretty much.  They don't really speak English, so I had to go with a translator (not possessing the language skills to report a robbery).  Like most things I've done in Cambodia, it was like an episode of absurdity and confusion based on Being John Malkovich. (Floor 7 1/2 and all.)

First of all, there were no police on duty.  We finally found the local commander sitting in a darkened room on a yellow plastic interrogation chair, shirtless.  No fan running, no A/C unit.  I don't know why, either (but this sort of thing is a commonplace occurrence round these parts).  He was way too young and hot to be a real policeman, let alone anyone's commander.  I refrained from pointing this out at the time.

Instead, I filed my report--in this case, it involved tearing a used piece of computer paper in half and filling out the particulars on the unused part.  I also included a graphic illustration of the computer in question, as if it would be remotely helpful.  Not in English, anyway.

Then I promised him a few hundred dollars if the computer was returned to me (thus, effectively eliminating any chances I will have at entering the foreign service).

Then I paid five dollars as a gesture of good faith and left.

It's not much, and it will never work, but it's about the only thing I can do at this point.  At least it stops me from raging and foaming and threatening physical violence at service personnel.

Again I Have Survived; Again I Have Lost

All the self-defense classes I kept forgetting to take did not come in handy Saturday night when I was forcibly divested of my laptop and phone in the Vietnamese Memorial park as I walked home late.

I make it a general rule not to carry my laptop around at night, but unfortunately, late hours on a laptop are my only means of chatting with people in other countries.  I digress.

In case you want to know what it actually feels like to get robbed, read my blow by blow account below:

I was walking home, minding my own business, feeling perfectly calm, when a giant arm suddenly grabbed my head from behind.  This didn't alarm me so much as it utterly confused me.  It was not violent or unfriendly, it almost felt like someone was playing a joke on me.  Lacking samurai training, I did not have the intelligence or common sense to duck, to punch the guy who was doing it, to knife him with my key, or to turn on him and scream something catchy, like, "That's my purse!  I DON'T KNOW YOU!".  I was just utterly WTF??

Then a second guy grabbed my bag from behind.  Him, I did fight with, but only so much as was possible with the first guy bear hugging me into submission.  I somehow wound up face-down on the ground, holding my bag like my life depended on it.  I honestly don't remember if they forced me down, or if I fell in the struggle.  I also can't remember what stopped me from grabbing my bag with both arms--if the first guy was holding me down, or if I was just that fucking stupid.  I may have frozen up.

The man grabbing my bag proceeded to pull it off my arm so hard that the strap broke, leaving me with pretty much the bloodiest, ooziest rug burn you've seen in your life, all over my arm and underarm.  He then punched me in the side, which, given that he was a coward and utter wimp, didn't even hurt (or even leave a bruise).

Picking myself up off the ground, I proceeded to chase them, enraged to a barbaric degree.  I was going to kill them, I really was.  I mean physically beat the shit out of them...somehow.  I'd have gouged their eyes out with the metal point of my umbrella, anyway.  Or something.  OK, being a five-seven, 110 pound female with health issues, I probably would have come off the worst in that fight--but I am prone delusions of invincibility and fully intended to unleash my wrath on them.

But, my thyroid-wracked legs weren't really any match for those of hardened criminals, and they got away with my laptop and cell phone.  A tuk tuk driver found me, and not understanding my pleas for help, took me to the nearest bar, where a random expat met me and tried to calm me down (which wasn't possible at that point).

She gave me $20 and gave me a lift home, and recommended I contact my embassy.  At home, I promptly destroyed everything made of glass in my house with my unbloody umbrella, such was my unchanneled rage.  Then I proceed to go on a 6 hour rant off my balcony, at the top of my lungs, about the evils of Cambodian society.  I sounded like Moammar fucking Qaddafi--challenging the powers that be like a lunatic.  Now all the neighbors hate me, which is fine, because I hate all of them.

But let me recount why I was so angry.  Not just the violation--I've lost everything I valued in life.  My ENTIRE LIFE was on my computer.  If they'd burned down my house and everything I physically owned, it wouldn't have been half as devastating to me.  That's not an exaggeration.

Here's why it sucks:
My cellphone--
- was from Dubai and could write in multiple languages, including Farsi and Arabic
- had my photo of me with Sheikh Mohammed
- had all the contacts I've accrued since 2007
- had an ornament that a student of mine gave me
- had recorded music

It's a beat-up piece of shit, complete with holes where you can see into the internal components, and it had no value to anyone except me.

My computer contained--
- photographs dating back to 2008, including personal ones and detailed photos of all my world travels
- everything I've ever downloaded
- my music
- all my Chinese lessons
- all my Khmer lessons
- my copies of passport photos
- my resume
- all my created artwork
- all the blog entries I was going to post (like the one I was illustrating about dengue fever that now you will never read)
- my private journal
- my stories I was going to publish
- all my personality theory work (some of which was expensively gotten)
- several online books
- my collection of awesome images I'd found online
- the passwords to all my accounts
- lots of embarrassing personal details
- my internet access
- my access to everything in the world, including my ability to easily apply for a job in Japan (my projected next move)
- my local bank account

What I was most depressed about is that no one else seemed to care about this.  To me, my life is over.  I am ruined.  I've lost my family, my health, my wealth, my country, my place of residence, my future, and now the only object that I vested anything in and had anything I remotely cared about.  It's as though they robbed me of my very soul.

Worse, it's going to be sold for $50, memory wiped clean, and be sold at a huge markup to some spoiled brat.  My entire life, all my memories, my hopes and dreams, everything I valued and cared for in this world--worth a beating and $50.

I can only be grateful of two things--
- I didn't get raped
- I didn't get killed
-I can't even be grateful that I wasn't hurt, cause I'd honestly rather still be in possession of my computer even if I had some cuts, bruises, and a few cracked ribs.