Too Far

Last week I was sitting at my desk and, in my hourly spasm of unco-ordination, I slapped my water bottle toward my keyboard. As I scrabbled to grab the falling bottle before it shot water all over my PC, I knocked my glasses down my nose. With one hand still reaching for the bottle, I grabbed at my glasses to push them back up my nose. There was a snap, a dramatic pause, and then the lens fell onto my desk. Wonderful.

I love my glasses. They are chunky, and green, and probably shouldn’t have broken just two and a half years after I bought them. No worries: plastic, superglue and bob’s your uncle. Or so I thought. Turns out you can’t really mend plastic frames like that. Points for effort though.

This is where a sane person would say, “Well, these glasses have been good to you, but they’ve broken now, so it’s time to go to the optical superstore and find some new frames.” As time has proven, I am anything but sane. On Friday I went and saw several opticians before finding one that had a stock list for Levis, and could call the Australian supplier of the frames. Turns out the model I have is overseas only and in Australia you can get replacement frames, but only in burgundy and pink. This is getting better and better.

This week I embark on a mission to buy replacement frames from dodgy person-to-person sale boards, in languages I do not speak a word of, and in countries where ripping foreigners off is a grand national hobby. So far I have had marginal luck locating frames in Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand. I’m also 110% convinced that I am going to get fleeced to within an inch of my life and possibly lose all my money, several times over.

I will document said process, and report back.

Posted in Mwah on Saturday August 11, 2007.