{"id":1937,"date":"2014-03-16T23:18:46","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2014-03-16T23:18:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:18:46","slug":"the-bermuda-desk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1937","title":{"rendered":"The Bermuda Desk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Bermuda Desk<\/p><\/div>\n

I am under my desk. And when you are under your desk, you often wonder how you ended up there.<\/p>\n

As usual, I decided to celebrate Sunday with a themed documentary film marathon. Whether inspired by recent airline incidents or my morbid Sunday mood, today\u2019s theme: mysterious disappearances.<\/p>\n

So I queued up some documentaries on YouTube and made popcorn. We had the Devil\u2019s Sea, the Bermuda Triangle, Flight 19, The Carroll A. Deering, Amelia Earhart, and lots of other mysteries. Some explain these as the result of bad weather, others as a mix up with another dimension, and others as run-ins with the lizard men.<\/p>\n

While watching, I began gathering every document in the house. In one week I have my final appointment for Czech permanent residency. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it means that I will be a permanent Czech resident and, more importantly, not have to get a visa for ten years. Ten years. If you are familiar with the ass-probe, Kafkaesque nightmare that is Czech bureaucracy, then you are holding your thumbs (or crossing your fingers) for me now.<\/p>\n

In any case, since it\u2019s my last appointment, I want to bring every slip of paper, every document, every notarized tax sheet, every medical record, and every stamped contract that I have ever laid my hands on. I want to have all of my bases covered. Anything they ask to see I want to be able to hand it over with sweaty palms and poor grammar.<\/p>\n

And I am missing one.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a seemingly unimportant document concerning my income during last summer and silly as it may sound, I am 100% certain they will ask for this document. Why? Because it\u2019s the<\/i> one I don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

Another mysterious disappearance. And the search began.<\/p>\n

My parents have a kitchen table that in appearance seems like most others in America. It\u2019s flat, wooden, round, has four legs. But this is no ordinary kitchen table. It is the Bermuda Kitchen Table. Anything you put onto this table disappears within minutes. Keys, wallets, papers, plates, sandwiches. And once they are gone there is little hope of finding them ever again. Oddly, the table not only taketh away, it also giveth. Several times lost bits and bots have randomly appeared on the kitchen table. Perhaps this is why my parents always put important documents on top of the fridge. Maybe it’s a food thing.<\/p>\n

I have a Bermuda Desk in my flat. Put something on it and it disappears forever. Other times things that have no business being on a desk turn up there. I have found packets of coffee, cleavers, and baseball cards. I once found a spatula that I swore I had lost in Pittsburgh. It is the place of mysterious disappearance and appearance in my flat. Maybe one day Amelia Earhart will turn up here.<\/p>\n

So I guess that’s the story about how I ended up under the desk. I wonder if the seven minutes of your life lost reading this post will turn up on my desk. If it does, I’ll call you.<\/p>\n

But now I have to call my mom, I bet that document is on her kitchen table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am under my desk. And when you are under your desk, you often wonder how you ended up there. As usual, I decided to celebrate Sunday with a themed documentary film marathon. Whether inspired by recent airline incidents or my morbid Sunday mood, today\u2019s theme: mysterious disappearances. So I queued up some documentaries on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-vf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1939,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}