they stole my bike
Tuesday 8th November 2005
They stole my bike!
The bastards stole my bike.
I left it there by the monorail station in the morning, and in the evening I returned to find it gone. To add insult to injury, the policeman refused to fill out any forms at all or take any kind of statement because I did not know the full name of the manager of the company I hired the bike from (his surname and mobile phone number, which I did know, were not enough for him to be able to satisfactorily fill in the form in question). Which makes me wonder how much of Japan’s low crime rate is attributable to things like its impressively even wealth distribution and high levels of education and social equality, and how much is in fact just a consequence of policemen avoiding filling out all the necessary paperwork.
On top of this, I have a mouth ulcer.
Posted by Mum — Thursday 10th November 2005 at 2:50 am
Oh bad luck - I guess you were somewhat spoilt on the island. Not much crime there. Hopefully you can still get the paperwork done when you have the missing information …
Posted by Andrew — Thursday 10th November 2005 at 11:30 pm
Argh. That’s really really annoying.
Are you going to get a new one or hire a PI to find the old one?
Well, I spent my entire month’s salary in one week, and last night I bit my tongue because I was eating green beans too quickly. And I’m having a really bad mushroom-hair day. But none of that is as bad as getting your bike stolen.
Argh.
Posted by lva — Thursday 10th November 2005 at 11:44 pm
Mum: Pah! I took the ‘missing information’ to the police, and then it turned out there was more information that they ‘need’ before they can file a report. Didn’t have time to go back again today, so by the time I even manage to officially report the incident three days will have passed since it was stolen. Going to be chaining the (replacement) bike to railings in future (I’d been just running the chain through the spokes). Which, statistically, is bound to make me late for work several times over the next couple of months. Pah! to bike-stealing kids / Yakuza / Taliban. And pah! to lazy, incompetent police.
Posted by lva — Friday 11th November 2005 at 12:02 am
Andrew: … getting your bike stolen and having a mouth ulcer! At the same time!
Is spending your whole salary in one week not, on some level - admittedly some foolish level that overlooks certain important reasons why it is a bad idea to spend your whole salary in one go - quite fun? For one thing, I’d imagine you could eat all the green beans and drink all the coffee you like in that week, if you so chose.
Unless you were spending it all just on paying off parking fines, or blackmailers, or witnesses. Or a dentist. That would be gutting.
Posted by may — Friday 18th November 2005 at 8:42 am
oh dear… do try to keep calm even though it is not something you’d think of right now.
i wonder what other info. they require.
rinse your mouth with salt water — it WILL hurt but salt is good for ulcers. and DRINK lots of H20.
oh crappy… i hope something positive will surface soon… hang in there.
Posted by lva — Friday 18th November 2005 at 8:35 pm
Hi May,
The other information they ‘needed’ was the bike’s serial number, which I found out by going back to the shop where my landlord had bought the bike, and getting them to go through their records - at which point they told me that the police have all bikes’ serial numbers in their computer, and they could have looked it up given the security number (which I had told them I knew). So I really think they just couldn’t be bothered to file a report on a bike they knew there was almost no chance of finding. Pah!
Mouth ulcer is better now, thanks. I did the hot salt water thing, and it seems it (eventually) worked.
Pingback by lva » what exact problem do the japanese have with my bike? — Wednesday 30th November 2005 at 12:19 am
[...] Jesus, what is it with the Japanese? Exactly what argument do they have with me that means that they have to keep messing with my bike? Not three weeks have elapsed since they stole my last one, and now they go and sabotage my new one: I leave it chained to a metal ring in the wall of the parking area of my building, and the Japanese — realising that this time they can’t steal it — decide that if they can’t have it then no-one will. They calmly, deliberately engage the wheel-lock, remove the keys which I, foolishly, left in to shave a few seconds off my morning run to the station, and they disappear into the night with those keys in hand and, probably, a little spring in their step at the deliciousness of what they’ve just done. Perhaps they stop along the way to drop my keys down a drain. Probably they do. [...]