Failure to Respond

Nebula: NGC 1999
Mood: Pissed
Song: No Surprises * Radiohead

"A heart that's full up like a landfill,
a job that slowly kills you,
bruises that won't heal."

I was to go to Romania last week to see a concert.
Many people think that traveling to attend a concert is selfish to the point of being ridiculous.

I don't see it that way.
The whole world knows how a big fan of Tori Amos I am.
This new tour of hers proved to be extraordinary, and as I have never seen her with the band, I wanted to get a taste at that.

I convinced my boss to take a vacation for a couple of days to go to Bucharest, Romania, to see the gig. I chose this location since I've never been there, adding to the fact that I have always been intrigued to visit this place.

I had tons of work to do and wrap up before I leave Thursday evening. Needless to say, I had an extremely tiring week, going back and forth between the office and the movie theater in which I work, the travel agency, home…

The agency booked my flight but my hotel has only been confirmed at 9:00 PM, a couple of hours before my flight. I paid at that time, return to the theater to take some material back to the office, packed my luggage and left to the airport.

There, at the check in, they refused my Shenghen VISA, knowing that when I called the Romanian embassy, they said a simple working Shenghen VISA makes me enter. Obviously I have no idea whom I talked to at the embassy and was a total moron, could have been the gardener or the maid, how the hell would I know.

The stupid guys at the check in didn't allow me to talk to anyone, and they ended up getting mad at me, saying 'talk to the ambassador and wake him up' or something to that effect. I can't be that silly and not ask for VISA before engaging myself in a trip! That's ridiculous, I said. They refused to listen and I left the airport.

So there I was, returning home. At first I couldn't believe it. After the tough week I had, the least was to go and enjoy myself and the concert. But no, more problems had to show up to prevent my flight.

Even though I don't believe in that, I felt someone did not want me to go and was putting obstacles everywhere.

I hate it when everything is planned to go perfectly yet something goes wrong, not because of you, but because of an abnormal factor that you were not prepared for.
Sometimes you need to just have a loophole to get out of the madness that you are in, so you travel, you go for a ride, you take a break.

But when your source of escape becomes the foundation for more madness, then there's no way out.

(Picture is of NGC 1999, a bright reflection nebula filled with dust that only shines through the light of a variable star in the Orion constellation. Hence when the variable star has minimum radiation, your loophole to escape through it fades out…)