musing

FALSE IDENTITY

One woman's ordeal of stolen credit cards and cash, and her realisation of misguided morals

The year of the pig hasn't exactly been kind to this pig girl. Oink Oink, Ouch Ouch! Too many failed plans, disappointments, heartaches, lost belongings, ailments and freak accidents to count. Only last Friday, slightly spaced-out, I banged my head against a hard, cold beam at the Bang Gang party. The Australian deejays were banging and so was I. After a long line of bad luck, I now have a pulsating bump on my head and possibly a computed axial tomography (CAT) scan on my hands.

Are you feeling sorry for me yet? If so, feel free to email the Muse editor and get my banking information. Be kind, donate. If not, let me convince and entertain you at the same time with one more "Hallmark" tragedy.

After the debauched Guns 'N' Bombs deejay night (and yes, I go out a lot, but it's all because of, ahem, work), I rifled through my wallet to only find out someone had stolen 7,000 baht in cash, credit cards and debit cards. With the help of my lovely friends we cancelled each card, but as it turned out my only platinum credit card - which I obtained by simply acting snooty - had been swiped approximately 16,000 baht at a super posh bar.

To make a long, complicated story fit for a Hercule Poirot series, really short, the culprit was identified. She turned out to be an acquaintance's girlfriend. Let's call the thick-faced thief "Ms Waste of Space (WOS)". Before I found out who did it, I reported the incident to the police to record and keep. No thanks to the men in brown, my friends and I confronted Ms WOS who used up three excruciating hours to confess even with all the overwhelming evidence: Credit card slips she had faked my signature to buy Moet (wrong move, my dear, since it's a known fact that I can only afford Sangsom, a Thai rum), among others. After denying vehemently, Ms WOS then claimed she suffered "amnesia", so we went on to settle this personally as I didn't want to press any charges and put her in jail.

But the next day, WOS called and challenged me, saying that I may not have been carrying 7,000 baht in my wallet, and that she would only admit to using my credit card. Do I have to point out the obvious stupidity here? Ms WOS went on to invite me to the police station, which I gladly obliged. The police station was very much a circus with all kinds of freaks. The bureaucracy was plain crazy. Since my court date hasn't been set yet, I'll just say a lot of phone calls from bigger loons were made to get my case in motion. I must confess I was flabbergasted by how I, the victim, needed to flaunt my connections for a smooth ride. This is not how justice is supposed to work.

Enough with the red tape, since what bothered me the most was how WOS displayed no remorse, shame or regret. Before confronting her for the first time, I painted a picture of a crying girl saying sorry profusely while returning my money back and I daydreamed myself descending down from heaven wearing an oversized toga and angelic smile, granting her forgiveness. But the reality was harsher than Korean series. She never said sorry. She continued to lie. She flirted with the police (I tried but it didn't work). She never once cried. Her eyes were soulless. In her mind she probably thought the world was for her to exploit and an opportunity to seize easy money for those who had the guts to steal. I gave Ms WOS a chance to redeem herself but she just threw it back in my face. I'm not so much saddened by not receiving some of the money back, but my heart aches for a lost moral compass ... for her heartlessness. I don't know how this very pretty girl came to be a stone-faced thief, but life must not have been easy for her because I refuse to believe that people are born bad.

Out of all the unfortunate incidents that have occurred this past year, having my cash and credit cards stolen ranks number one. It's not about losing money and possessions. It's not even about wasting time and dealing with imbecile authority figures. It's how I now believe that even if you're in the right, you still need to have strings to pull the system into your favour. It's about losing faith. It's about how we are exposed to evilness through sheer natural forces and dumb luck, and how we must encounter unbelievably warped minds, which simply cannot tell right from wrong. It's about how I felt depressed while Ms WOS felt nothing.I ran through a gamut of emotions through this episode. I seethed at the system's flaws. I laughed at the police station's tomfoolery. I felt touched and loved by my friends who congregated at the police station day after day after day. I encountered an urge of physical violence. Then as I drove home from the police station one night, I saw a severely crippled man selling garlands on the street, limping along proudly. I wept.

I wept for humanity ... and for my lumpy head.

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