In Thai, there is a phrase “Jai Hai“, literally means your heart (Jai) has gone missing (hai).
The meaning of it is that your heart skips a beat when you’re startled. The same expression is used for when your heart drops when you hear bad news or read about something horrible that has happened.
With all that had happened on Mega Fun Saturday, I was in some kind of a daze today. It didn’t help with Nhien having moved into Amy’s old office. And the girl had her hair up in a bun and wearing a white shirt. The whole Princess Leia is in Amy’s office totally threw me for a loop a little bit. The whole day had been incredibly surreal to me.
Before I left work, I talked to Celeste after she got back from her doctor. Her hand actually was worse off than the burn on her back. We didn’t put that much attention to the hand since the burn on her back was bigger. But the burn was nastier than we all assumed it was. The doctor tended to her hand now she had open wounds there.
She couldn’t close her fist. It appeared she will need to go to neurologist to check out the nerves in that hand and may require further surgery to get the full use of it back. We shall see. Eva and I will see her tomorrow after work though. That girl needs some cookies to cheer her up.
That fresh thought of Celeste went through my head and it brought back images of Saturday of things that happened and I witnessed and things that my mind conjured up from the witnesses’ accounts. That blended in to the thought of going home and seeing mom. And that wandered into Justin and his mom this past few weeks.
Suddenly, I came to realize I wasn’t paying attention to the buses. I came to my senses.
And for a few seconds, I seriously wasn’t sure where I was or how long I had been there.
The light and the warmth told me I was Thailand. All the conversations around me, clearly English, sounded Thai to me. Even the downtown scenery felt vaguely like Bangkok, just the part of town I have never been to before.
That was when I had me a “Jai Hai“.
Just because I was sitting at Heroes’ “Kirby Plaza”, was I suddenly Hiro Nakamura? Did I just bend time and space and for a moment I actually was in Bangkok?
I blinked a few times. English sounded like English again. A cool breeze reminded me that it was definitely not Bangkok in June.
But I doubted myself for another moment if I was sure I was where I think I was.
Then, my “Jai” “Hai” some more.
I was losing my mind at 5:18 p.m. in the middle of Downtown Los Angeles.