Where in the world is Magdalena Lusa?
Damn. My brother just called me from a train in Wisconsin. I couldn't find the phone because it was buried under some couch cushions, so the answering machine got it first. My outgoing message says, "Don't hang up. I have your Polish passport!" and when he heard that he just goes, "Whoa."
I called the only Lusas in Chicago, but they weren't home. I finally got in touch with the Polish embassy, and they told me to bring the purse downtown, saying, "It would appreciate."
Yeah, I just bet it would.
Magdalena, seriously, stop messing around. I know you're reading this, just laughing at me tryin' to do you a favor... so why don't you email? Here's my address: cowwitness@yahoo.com. I looked at your visa and I know you gotta go back to Poland next month. You're gonna get in trouble without that passport when you try to leave.
It's like that time I tried to leave India without a proper entry stamp on my passport. They were such dicks about it, and they made me stay there. At first, I was hella' pissed, because I wanted to get the hell out of that crazy country. I was so pissed I started crying like a little baby-baby right there in the Calcutta airport. I tried to give the immigration official $50 American, and he wouldn't take it. That's how crazy India is, even the officials who are supposed to be legendary for shaking people down won't even take a bribe from you.
Then this old man in a cardigan sweater and round wire glasses came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Enjoy Calcutta," or "Enjoy India." I don't know, it was one of those. Maybe he worked for the tourism industry or something, because "enjoy Calcutta" sounds like some kind of weak-ass tourism slogan. (Just out of curiosity, I googled the phrase "enjoy Calcutta" and found this article which claims, "Rich or poor all enjoy Calcutta." You know, I may be crazy, but isn't Calcutta most famous for having really miserable poor people? The guy in the accompanying picture looks like he's having a blast crouching under his rickshaw in the rain).
When I first got to Calcutta I wanted nothing more than to get out of that country. I got there the night before my flight was supposed to leave from there for Yangon (mmm... crab Yangon) and holed up in my hotel room. I was super irritated. On the way from the train station to the touristy hotel district I was walking across some bridge and was apparently not going fast enough for the guy walking behind, so he pushed me! I turned around and was like, "What the fuck, buddy?" and he was all, "What?" It sounds really whack, but that's kind of the cool thing about India; people there have a lot of these hostile blow-ups at each other that in the US would result in someone dead, but they're so quick to forgive and forget that even after someone shoves you and you confront them, they're like, "Why you bringin' up old stuff?"
So I spent the whole damn night in my hotel room, and in the morning set off for the airport where I wasn't allowed to board the plane because of a missing entry stamp. I got to India via bus from Pokhara, Nepal. It was a 100-mile trip that took 13 hours. Almost the whole thing was in the mountains, but the last few miles were on flat land. "Finally, this goddamn trip is over!" I remember thinking, right before the bus hit a bump and sent everyone in the back flying up to the ceiling. This British woman sitting next to me actually split her head open on the ceiling of the bus, and was gushing blood everywhere.
We got off the bus, and I realized I had five minutes to cross the border and catch my connecting bus that was like a half mile away, so I ran across the border like a goddamn maniac and jumped on it. They smashed us all in the back where this Indian guy put his arm around me and snuggled up. He was big, and strong. This Russian dude who ran across the border with me was like, "Oh, no! We forgot to get our passports stamped," and even though this was ten months before I met Zack, I said, "Don't trip, fool."
The whole time I was in India this missing stamp seriously messed with me. Right after getting there I met these college students in Lucknow and went back to their place to sit on the floor and eat peanuts. I said to them, "Hey, check it out: I don't have a stamp on my passport. Do you think that's a problem?" and they got super freaked out. It was almost as if I said, "Hey, I have a gaping sore on my penis. Do you think that's a problem?" Like, I could see the fear in their eyes. "You have to get that taken care of right away. You could get in a lot of trouble!" they said, and I was thought, "Man, these people need to learn to live a little bit."
But they were right. People wouldn't let me stay in their hotels, people wouldn't cash my travellers checks -- and there was no way to get the stamp. I went to the US embassy in Delhi, and the woman I talked to there, even though she has yet, as of this writing, to meet Zack, said, "Don't trip, fool. Talk to my man Mr. So-and-So at this office, and tell him you know me, and he'll take care of you." So I went down there, and the dude was all, "Who gave you my name?! Who sent you?!" Then he gave me a form to fill out, which I filled out and then realized it was a form for a visa extension, which didn't help at all. I had to wait in line to tell him he gave me the wrong form, and he was all, "Oh, OK. Sorry 'bout that. Go to room 117, and they'll take care of you." Well, it took me a while, but I found room 117, which turned out to be a closet with a copy machine in it.
Then I went back to the room where the paranoid dude was and explained my situation to someone else, who reached into a glass bowl with a bunch of little slips of paper in it, pulled one of the slips out, handed it to me, and said, "Go to this address. They'll help you." So I got in a rickshaw, had a huge screaming fight with the driver over something inconsequential, and went to the address on the paper, which turned out to be a building closed for renovations or something, but I remember standing outside and reading the sign over the door which identified to building as an agricultural college, so it wouldn't have helped anyway. It went on like that for a few days and I went somewhere else, and never got the situation taken care of.
So I went from the airport in Calcutta back to the touristy district and checked into the Starvation Army hostel. And you know what? From that moment on I had a really good time. The five days I spent in Calcutta were better than the previous three months I spent in India. I met this really nice French girl Albane and had a little mini-romance with her, and made friends with this guy T. Ryan who it turned out worked at the Richardson Library at DePaul with my ladyfriend, jlw, who I wouldn't meet for another year, but it's still cool. This one morning, T. and I went to mass at that church where Mother Theresa did her thing at (she was there, in a box). Then we went to this Kali temple and... that was awesome. Oh yeah, and I was walking down the street and saw a parade featuring a five-legged cow. The only bad thing was I saw that really sucky movie The Insider.
So, maybe not having your passport won't be so bad, Magdalena. I don't know. Forget it.
Sincerely,
A Witness to the Holstein Cow Experiments
I called the only Lusas in Chicago, but they weren't home. I finally got in touch with the Polish embassy, and they told me to bring the purse downtown, saying, "It would appreciate."
Yeah, I just bet it would.
Magdalena, seriously, stop messing around. I know you're reading this, just laughing at me tryin' to do you a favor... so why don't you email? Here's my address: cowwitness@yahoo.com. I looked at your visa and I know you gotta go back to Poland next month. You're gonna get in trouble without that passport when you try to leave.
It's like that time I tried to leave India without a proper entry stamp on my passport. They were such dicks about it, and they made me stay there. At first, I was hella' pissed, because I wanted to get the hell out of that crazy country. I was so pissed I started crying like a little baby-baby right there in the Calcutta airport. I tried to give the immigration official $50 American, and he wouldn't take it. That's how crazy India is, even the officials who are supposed to be legendary for shaking people down won't even take a bribe from you.
Then this old man in a cardigan sweater and round wire glasses came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Enjoy Calcutta," or "Enjoy India." I don't know, it was one of those. Maybe he worked for the tourism industry or something, because "enjoy Calcutta" sounds like some kind of weak-ass tourism slogan. (Just out of curiosity, I googled the phrase "enjoy Calcutta" and found this article which claims, "Rich or poor all enjoy Calcutta." You know, I may be crazy, but isn't Calcutta most famous for having really miserable poor people? The guy in the accompanying picture looks like he's having a blast crouching under his rickshaw in the rain).
When I first got to Calcutta I wanted nothing more than to get out of that country. I got there the night before my flight was supposed to leave from there for Yangon (mmm... crab Yangon) and holed up in my hotel room. I was super irritated. On the way from the train station to the touristy hotel district I was walking across some bridge and was apparently not going fast enough for the guy walking behind, so he pushed me! I turned around and was like, "What the fuck, buddy?" and he was all, "What?" It sounds really whack, but that's kind of the cool thing about India; people there have a lot of these hostile blow-ups at each other that in the US would result in someone dead, but they're so quick to forgive and forget that even after someone shoves you and you confront them, they're like, "Why you bringin' up old stuff?"
So I spent the whole damn night in my hotel room, and in the morning set off for the airport where I wasn't allowed to board the plane because of a missing entry stamp. I got to India via bus from Pokhara, Nepal. It was a 100-mile trip that took 13 hours. Almost the whole thing was in the mountains, but the last few miles were on flat land. "Finally, this goddamn trip is over!" I remember thinking, right before the bus hit a bump and sent everyone in the back flying up to the ceiling. This British woman sitting next to me actually split her head open on the ceiling of the bus, and was gushing blood everywhere.
We got off the bus, and I realized I had five minutes to cross the border and catch my connecting bus that was like a half mile away, so I ran across the border like a goddamn maniac and jumped on it. They smashed us all in the back where this Indian guy put his arm around me and snuggled up. He was big, and strong. This Russian dude who ran across the border with me was like, "Oh, no! We forgot to get our passports stamped," and even though this was ten months before I met Zack, I said, "Don't trip, fool."
The whole time I was in India this missing stamp seriously messed with me. Right after getting there I met these college students in Lucknow and went back to their place to sit on the floor and eat peanuts. I said to them, "Hey, check it out: I don't have a stamp on my passport. Do you think that's a problem?" and they got super freaked out. It was almost as if I said, "Hey, I have a gaping sore on my penis. Do you think that's a problem?" Like, I could see the fear in their eyes. "You have to get that taken care of right away. You could get in a lot of trouble!" they said, and I was thought, "Man, these people need to learn to live a little bit."
But they were right. People wouldn't let me stay in their hotels, people wouldn't cash my travellers checks -- and there was no way to get the stamp. I went to the US embassy in Delhi, and the woman I talked to there, even though she has yet, as of this writing, to meet Zack, said, "Don't trip, fool. Talk to my man Mr. So-and-So at this office, and tell him you know me, and he'll take care of you." So I went down there, and the dude was all, "Who gave you my name?! Who sent you?!" Then he gave me a form to fill out, which I filled out and then realized it was a form for a visa extension, which didn't help at all. I had to wait in line to tell him he gave me the wrong form, and he was all, "Oh, OK. Sorry 'bout that. Go to room 117, and they'll take care of you." Well, it took me a while, but I found room 117, which turned out to be a closet with a copy machine in it.
Then I went back to the room where the paranoid dude was and explained my situation to someone else, who reached into a glass bowl with a bunch of little slips of paper in it, pulled one of the slips out, handed it to me, and said, "Go to this address. They'll help you." So I got in a rickshaw, had a huge screaming fight with the driver over something inconsequential, and went to the address on the paper, which turned out to be a building closed for renovations or something, but I remember standing outside and reading the sign over the door which identified to building as an agricultural college, so it wouldn't have helped anyway. It went on like that for a few days and I went somewhere else, and never got the situation taken care of.
So I went from the airport in Calcutta back to the touristy district and checked into the Starvation Army hostel. And you know what? From that moment on I had a really good time. The five days I spent in Calcutta were better than the previous three months I spent in India. I met this really nice French girl Albane and had a little mini-romance with her, and made friends with this guy T. Ryan who it turned out worked at the Richardson Library at DePaul with my ladyfriend, jlw, who I wouldn't meet for another year, but it's still cool. This one morning, T. and I went to mass at that church where Mother Theresa did her thing at (she was there, in a box). Then we went to this Kali temple and... that was awesome. Oh yeah, and I was walking down the street and saw a parade featuring a five-legged cow. The only bad thing was I saw that really sucky movie The Insider.
So, maybe not having your passport won't be so bad, Magdalena. I don't know. Forget it.
Sincerely,
A Witness to the Holstein Cow Experiments

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