Tina Nguyen
That idiot younger brother of mine never arrived home last evening until possibly as late as 10:40 p.m., so we only had time to watch an episode each of Versailles and The Last O.G. My wife arrived home from her half day of work some while after my brother.
It was well past 1 a.m. by the time I was to bed; my wife was still up in 'her' bedroom enjoying at least a second drink while probably watching something on her tablet.
I am becoming most annoyed at my brother's determination to be out late beering as much as he can. The point may arrive where I will not bother watching T.V. with him any longer. It will be his loss, for he does not understand how to operate our Android TV Box; and I learned from my wife this afternoon that her youngest son ─ who was the Netflix subscriber in the house ─ cancelled his subscription.
My brother was able to access that Netflix account on our T.V., but apparently that will no longer be possible. This will translate into leaving my brother with only our T.V.'s basic cable package and whatever poor offerings he may find with it to watch.
I am also growing disenchanted watching with him the other fare that is our diet anywhere from mid-morning until 1 p.m. or so. I know that he is having to pick up his girlfriend Bev at 10 a.m. four days a week to drive her to work (she lives something over two miles away from us) ─ I have no problem with that break, for it usually allows me time to have some exercise out in our backyard toolshed while he is away.
But sometimes ─ like this morning ─ he is so damned eager to get away to commence his daily 'socializing' that we had to knock off our video entertainment just ahead of noon. As a result, we only had time to watch part of two videos.
First, we finished off watching (at TheHighwire.com) “THEN THEY CAME FOR THE CANADIANS” EVENT, a nearly 5¼-hour presentation that took us three days to get through. We had knocked off yesterday at something like the four-hour and 8-minute mark, so we continued from there this morning.
And then I tuned in EwarAnon's The Lost History of Flat Earth [2-3], not realizing that we were going to have to stop watching at approximately the 19-minute mark because of my brother's need to take off for the afternoon ─ the full video is a little over an hour long (64 minutes).
I am coming to feel that my Saturday mornings may be better spent seeing me get out on a decent walk, if I can bear being out there in the stressful public. I cannot conceive getting out during the week because the workday world is far, far too much for me to face.
I never rose this morning until after checking the time and being a little shocked to see that it was something like 9:32 a.m. So I rose and dressed, and exited my bedroom to note that my brother was just turning on the T.V. ─ he had already finished with the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun that I subscribe to.
When he later left for the afternoon, that afforded me an opportunity to sit out in the backyard sunshine for over 40 minutes, shirtless and unshod, and with my sweatpants' pant legs pulled up over my knees. I began that session at something like 12:16 p.m., and remained until 1 p.m. By that time, my wife had gotten up and was fussing about in the kitchen as she began preparing a couple dishes for the household.
The day was primarily sunny, and my time outside was entirely so.
I had thought that I would be going with my wife to Central City just over a mile from us to visit a DHL outlet there to get answers concerning a missing shipment that they had originally estimated would have an April 18 delivery date, but which instead met with three "Clearance Events" ─ April 14, 21, and 27 ─ and then all tracking details stopped.
The buggers' "customer care" section stopped acknowledging and responding to our enquiries approximate two or three days prior to May 11, which was the expiration of the 30-day financial liability period that they claim themselves to only be responsible for (they had originally taken custody of my wife's Thailand shipment on April 11 in Bangkok, Thailand).
The shipment cost us at least $1,500 ─ we cannot afford to have it disappear.
Originally DHL claimed that it was being held up at Canada Customs (Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA), and that some other government agency or department seemed to have gotten involved in the inspection.
Then when we next made enquiry, the excuse that time was that this specific Canada Customs facility is exceptionally backlogged, and to just keep monitoring the tracking page for updates ─ there was nothing DHL could do but request Canada Customs to see if they could expedite their inspection.
And then DHL just dropped us ─ or ghosted us. They had managed to lull us into not filing a claim before the expiration of the 30-day liability period they have in place for themselves.
So I thought that my wife and I would be paying them a visit at some point this afternoon, and I printed out three pages of her shipment's tracking history that extended from April 11 and ended on April 27.
But oddly the woman gradually got herself ready, between talking (mostly in Thai) to one or both of her adult sons; and then around 3 p.m., she just left without a word of explanation to me. For all I know, she will be gone for the remainder of the weekend ─ she typically spends the bulk of her weekends somewhere in Vancouver (such is our sorry marriage).
I don't bloody know what's going on! She at least did apparently take the three pages of tracking information that I had printed out.
I am feeling pretty damned impotent and useless in this old age of mine.
Tomorrow is supposed to be another sunny day overall, so I do intend to be out in the backyard soaking up a lot of that sunshine. However, early in the morning I have it planned to embark on one of my long (5.625-mile) round trip hikes to do some supermarket shopping. I will want to be leaving home no later than 6 a.m., so I will want to be up in the morning no later than 4:30 a.m. to have time to incentivize myself.
I do not drive, so walking is all that is left to me.
If my brother expects to be coming home late this evening and finding me still sitting up awaiting him, he is sorely mistaken. I will give him until 9:30 p.m. ─ no later. He can suffer through the basic cable programming our T.V. will have to offer.
Look, I am lacking the heart to blog any farther today, so I am calling it quits here. I am going to have a lie-down, and then a bath. And from there my evening will be well upon me, so I will see then what befalls.
Well, before I was able to publish, my wife returned ─ it was maybe 4:18 p.m. And she had excellent news after getting service from some truly decent young Asian chap named Gene at the Central City DHL outlet.
His investigation revealed that the shipment was indeed still languishing with CBSA in Richmond ─ my guess is at or nearby YVR (Vancouver International Airport).
He said that he would try to arrange for her to pick it up out there, but then he recognized that she lived here in Surrey. So he said that he would arrange to have the shipment delivered to his Central City DHL facility. I am supposing that it would probably go there anyway before being delivered here, but he told her that she could get it directly and not have to wait for one of their drivers to relay it to us.
This was uplifting news.
And then about an hour after my wife was back home, this Gene phoned her to confirm that ─ provided CBSA would release the large box (of health-related products from Thailand's The iCon Group) ─ it ought to be at his location sometime late next week. He would phone her again once it was, and she could come for it.
So the darned thing has evidently not been lost after all!
This is a huge release of weight from the shoulders of both my wife and I, and we both feel much, much lighter in spirit than we have been all day.
Anyway, she finally left for Vancouver just ahead of 5:40 p.m., and isn't likely to be back until at least Monday afternoon.
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