Chapter IV. Diary, ‘Headache’ - Letter From A Persevering Friend
Chapter IV. Diary, ‘Headache’
The young-adult man gained a better sense of where he was by analyzing himself objectively, but he could not help coming back to recalling grim days of the past and seeing those days as the mirror image of his recent cycle. He found the entry ‘Headache’ and started reading.
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I took powdery medicine for headache; I do not know the name, but it works well whenever I have headache. I guess this is a prescription drug because I only get this at clinics and hospitals. There is another powdery medicine I often take and it is for cold; this is just an over-the-counter drug. I do not know exactly what is in them, but my guess is that it is dextromethorphan; many other typical over the counter drugs for cold contain this. I only take either of these two whenever I have headache, but I get this type of headache too often. I have a guess; I think this is stress related. When I started working on the current project, I was very stressed because there was no income, nor was there any funding available. Because of an odd incident, I found a contract job and I have been providing services to this same client ever since. But whatever I receive from her is minimal; I did not have any other income, so life was difficult. I could not exactly get a part job because, if I had done so, I would not have been able to spend much time on the project. I was in a violently strenuous situation. The IT infrastructure I built itself started generating revenue a couple of months ago, but I had to deal with yet another problem then. Ace Dias wanted to share the revenue, while working on that infrastructure was already my full time job and I desperately needed that money. He barely spent time on the project, yet, once it started generating revenue, he was eager to share it; that was one of reasons why I felt irritated. But, in addition to that, this was a man who kept lecturing about how entrepreneurs ought to work strenuously in a seemingly antagonistic world and produce. This was a man who stated that he was one and that he would just eat bread and drink water in order to not become a follower but a pioneer. Yet what he ended up doing was to get by as a follower on the side while his presumed partner worked almost all by himself and when a result was attained, just share it. He did not fund it; finding funding for the project was supposedly his job but he completely failed in that as well. Also, to him, receiving a part of the revenue would enable him to save money while he did nothing to develop or maintain the infrastructure. On the other hand, the same cush would finally enable me to start paying bills without resorting to borrowing money or cutting essential expenses. This ‘sharing’ did not make any sense.
This was when I realized that I made a tactical mistake, and this was a very serious aberration. I trusted Ace Dias based on the assumption that he was trustworthy. One earns trust; one is not entitled to be trusted. He never earned my trust, yet I just granted him. Also this resulted in a number of technical problems, one of which was that checks were sent to him. I don’t get into technical details, but basically, the revenue was generated using a certain infrastructure provided by a major IT company. The registration was done using his name, so all checks were sent to him. Retrospectively speaking and not very surprisingly, he quite literally took three months or longer to process one check and wire-transferred a portion of that to me. To this day, I do not know exactly why he took that long. In California, it only takes threes days to clear a check. It can take up to a month to wire-transfer, but adding two makes a month and three days. Taking three months is absurd; it does not make sense logically.
Of course, it did not make much sense for me to keep waiting. Even if it had been a result of administrative issues created by the bank, this could not go on. I dropped him an email and told him that I’d change the registration information; I would use my name and address so that I did not have to wait for three months to receive a portion of each check. Eventually, I politely asked him to give me the whole amount of each check cached because, after all, I was the only one who was working on this project. That is what I have been doing for the last two months or so.
But you know, the funny thing is that I still have not received the whole amount of what I am supposed to receive from Ace Dias; this amount was a percentage of the total of all checks sent to him and cashed in by him in US. Given the information I gather, two checks are missing. I asked him about these checks, but … I do not recall receiving any convincing answers. Did he just … steal? Did he just cash in checks and not tell me about it? I am afraid that it is very possible. It is absolutely nauseating as I have to come to draw this conclusion; it is simply preposterous that this guy lied to me to steal money from me. It is a sickening feeling as my reason tells me that it is the most plausible scenario.
I met Ace Dias when I was in my senior year in college. We were never close friends, but we kept in touch. I admit that he was one of key characters when I made the decision to leave New York; it was one of the most significant decisions I made in my life, so I assumed his importance in my life. But now, I know that that paramountcy is collapsing. I already hypothesize that he lied to me quite a few times. Scary thing is that I do not know how many more times he lied to me. The more I think about this, the more abhorred I feel. This is probably the major cause of my headache.
Japan is one of countries where one cannot obtain hard drugs like heroin, morphine, ecstasy, LSD, methamphetamine, opium, hashish and such; it is one of reasons why I do not get into these drugs. Now, if they are available, am I going to get them? Probably not. I will probably stick to dextromethorphan; but the idea of using these hard drugs would cross my mind.
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This was written shortly before the partnership fell apart. It sounded rather verbose, but he could understand why he was being so pleonastic. He was tormented when he wrote it, and the harrowing thought was circling around in his head. That being recognized, he had to ask why he chose to read this. There was a good reason; he felt like that he was making a similar mistake now. He asked, “Is anyone stealing money from me outright right now?” Not exactly, but the possibility of his getting the short end of the stick seemed very real. He could not help worrying about being cheated and he asked himself, “Yet again?” And the thought felt so torturous.
