Murphy's Law

I woke up today with simple plans. Here's how things were supposed to go down: 1) Meet Karina to see The Hunger Games in the afternoon; 2) Come home and eat dinner; 3) Meet Mandy, Rachel and Tiffiany to see Brave. Too bad it was one of those days where nothing goes according to plan.

Here's how things actually played out.

1) I rolled over, turned off my alarm, and willed myself into a sitting position. It was time to get up. Wait, when was I supposed to be meeting Karina? How much time did I have to get stuff done before I actually had to go? I shot off a text and drifted almost back to sleep. My phone buzzed: Karina, saying she couldn't make it because she had too much stuff to do. Oh. Okay. Just the one movie today, then. 

2) I had eaten at awkward times all day, so I didn't really feel the call to eat anything until about a quarter till 7. Feeling lazy, and a little Taiwanese, there was only one obvious choice for where to procure my delicious foodstuffs: 7-11. I meandered down, grabbed some frozen pasta and frozen pork buns and some watermelon milk--dinner of champions!--and headed back upstairs to prepare my dinner for eating, (read: nuke it). That accomplished, I was chatting with Rachel when my phone rang. I looked at the screen: Hal, my tutee. I looked at the clock: 7:05. Crap.

Yep, after a full four months or so of having a tutoring session every Sunday at 7pm, never missing a session and never being late, I had completely forgotten about our last session ever. And that, even with the fact that I'd prepared a little gift as a going-away present for Hal, a gift I'd thought about both earlier in the day and earlier the previous day, as I had made conflicting movie-going plans with Mandy and Tiffiany. Whoops. Hal was gracious as I arrived 15 minutes late, and was even willing to put up with my request that we cut the length of our session from an hour and a half to an hour, so I could leave in just enough time to make the movie with Mandy, Tiffiany, Rachel, and Chialing, whom Rachel'd invited. It would work.

3) Partway through my session with Hal, I got a text from Mandy saying that the wedding she'd been invited to (and which had, thankfully, already moved our movie time back from 6-something to 8-something, or my session with Hal would have been COMPLETELY derailed) had been delayed to the point where it hadn't even started yet, so she wouldn't be able to come. Sadface. After I finished up with Hal, I rushed home to find Rachel waiting for me downstairs, lest we miss the beginning of the movie, with the news that Chialing also wouldn't be able to come. Again, sadface.

So Rachel and I jetted off into the night and, after a few quick U-turns, found the movie theater we were looking for, retrieved our tickets from Tiffiany, and sat down in the correct theater right as the movie began. There was only one problem: the movie was in Chinese. Not just with Chinese subtitles, but dubbed in Chinese. And, call me crazy, but when I, as a native English speaker, go to see a movie set in Scotland, it just isn't the same without the Scottish accents. We left within three or four lines.

But we didn't go far--Rachel found an employee in the hall and asked her if they had Brave playing in English (it's really not uncommon here, I promise: most theaters I've seen have popular American movies like this offered in both languages, with Chinese subtitles under all of them). They didn't. BUT, she was quick to point out, we could exchange our tickets for another film playing just then--they had an English version of Men In Black 3 that began in just a few minutes. So we exchanged our tickets and took the elevator to the third floor. They told us it was on the fourth, but when we made it to the third and didn't immediately get off we were met with several employees frantically waving at us to get off here, from which I gather that if we had continued up in the elevator, rather than the stairs they pointed us to, we would have been victims to some sort of Tower-of-Terror-style horrors or something.

We went to see this...

And somehow got this instead.

So, to recap: I began the day thinking I would have a leisurely time of watching two movies, including an animated one with Scottish accents, with five friends, with plenty of time between in which to do nothing, and I ended it having nearly missed a work appointment, and having watched, with two friends, one movie, including not a single fierce animated Scottish girl, but with no dearth of aliens and Will Smith. And, in the process, we all managed to make a little bit of a fool of ourselves in front of everyone. Hooray, Murphy's Law!