Cats are cute.

Objecting to the baseball talk in the chill of winter?

Balance in all things.

Balance in all things.

To everything, turn turn turn....

Cats are cute.

Even when they have head mice

Even when they have head mice

Oh, that is the saddest kitty evah!

Am wearing the red dress, headed to the holiday party. Of course, today we got news of drastic crazy budget cuts, so I'm not sure how much we'll be partying, and how much we'll be gossiping and drinking, but...

The red dress we know? Should be a good party.

So, having talked to a colleague and been reassured by her splutter of "...but, that's [Admin Guy]'s responsibility," and checking back over my emails to confirm that, yes, I did reply to the following November 13th email:

Dear all,

If you have a plan to leave Thailand for the Christmas holiday, you must have a re-entry permit. (especially new teachers this year) Please let me know then I can arrange for all of you. Thank you.

With kind regards,

Admin Guy

on the same day with

Yes please!

Thank you!

I think that it's reasonable of me to argue that it was indeed the school's job to ensure that my visa was sorted out, and that they should refund me at least some of the 300 dollars I need to pay out of my wages this afternoon.

If it were a small sum, I wouldn't be thinking about being arsey, because, yes, when I didn't hear anything else from Admin Guy I should have gone and followed up on it. Because clearly he did sort out everyone else's visas and mine got forgotten about - which is probably because he had already got everyone else's passports, whereas I'd been to Singapore and still had mine in my flat.

It would have behoved me to go and ask him about it, when he didn't ask for my passport - but to be honest I totally forgot about the whole thing and just concentrated on all the my-job stuff - reports-writing, assessment week, school production, blah blah blah. On previous occasions when he's needed my passport he's sent me a message and I've duly brought it in, but this time around no message ever came, and it was only when I was starting to think about the whole going-home thing this week that it struck me that I still didn't have a re-entry visa, so on Thursday I went into the office and asked about getting it sorted.

He's a very nice bloke, and generally very efficient and very very busy - I don't feel good about implying that he screwed up - particularly since I do feel culpable myself. But I also don't feel good about having to shell out thousands of baht in order to leave the country, and it would be very nice if my employers would reimburse me.

I may be biased, because I'm in a similar situation, but this "you should have kept on me if you expected me to do what I said I would do" thing is bs.

Well fuckity. GF may be losing her job. We'll be alright financially if so, but with her dad and all, it just sucks. Plus she went through this last year this time. Lay off, universe!!