Uppers!

Packing the mini-packets of Alpen and the jar of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference coffee was about the smartest thing I've done in recent memory, because who needs drugs when you've got breakfast-for-dinner to restore your hormonal balance?

I'm in a peppier mood because I stopped trying to explore the city and resigned myself to sorting out my life, and I think I've found an apartment to check out tomorrow, finished Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being,' read an essay by Richard Rorty which was ostensibly about education policy but actually explained why one of my long-term relationships was destined to fail (it's a long story, but it feels very vindicating to have a famous theorist in your corner), and then called Bank of America, where I stopped asking what to do and just told them to fix everything, AND THEY DID. It's amazing how directive you can be when you're actually terrified and have approximately twenty dollars on your person, but apparently, you can't smell fear across thirteen time zones.

So the short version of the story is that I had called to activate a new card a couple of weeks ago, only to find out that you have to do it from a) your home phone or b) a Bank of America ATM, which are both in short supply on this side of the Atlantic (to say nothing of this side of the Pacific). They told me to keep the old card - okay, fair enough - but then decided to shut it off and not tell me, which was decidedly unhelpful as I tried every PIN I could think of and panicked at the airport this afternoon. Luckily, I brought both cards with to Manila, so when I called back and they told me that my card was cancelled, I was like, um, I really do need one of these cards. Unhelpfully, the woman just reminded me that I needed to call from the US to activate a card. And I was like, "unfortunately, I can't, but I bet you could make this happen if you wanted to" AND SHE DID. Yay! Tomorrow, I will either have funds so I can get a cell phone and stop eating muesli from my suitcase, or this will all still be fucked up somehow and I'll have a nervous breakdown. Either way, I'm sleeping better tonight!