A sign that things are back to normal: Endless bureacracy and lack of helpfulness at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

OK, so there are about 8000-10000 destroyed vehicles on the island after Hurricane Ivan. There were also 10000-12000 people who left in the following days, many who are not coming back at all. Stories ran around of people driving to the airport and abandoning their cars there. I even heard of a guy who had picked up a hitchhiker on his way to the airport, and then gave the hitcher the keys when they got to the airport and said “keep it”.

The Fire Service parking lot has been filled with left-behind vehicles, and vehicles that were damaged/looted/ransacked of tires and wheels and gasoline and things like that. The Civil Aviation Authority has yet to decide what to do with the unclaimed cars. Some of them may have been damaged/submerged or just left behind in the exodus.

One of the many, many cars that was left behind was left behind by a friend of mine. He left the keys, the title/logbook/paperwork behind and said Use it, sell it, whatever. I'm outta here. I'm trying to get rid of it, but have run into a slight problem: In order to transfer the title, the title itself needs to be signed by the owner of the vehicle. No problem, just fedex the paperwork to him, have it signed and notarised, fedex it back and it's a done deal. All I'll be out is some time and $35 bucks for the fedex envelope.

The problem that's occured however, is that the owner of this vehicle has gone off for “basic training” for lack of a better word and is then headed back to Iraq as a “contractor” providing close-support protection. Basically he's going back as a merc. He's now out of contact for the duration of his training, and if they send him right from camp to his assignment, he's going to be out of contact for a long time. I sure as hell hope that I don't see his head (without the rest of him) on Al-Jazeera.

The Cayman Dept of Motor Vehicles doesn't care, though. They require the registered owner's signature, duly notarised, to transfer the ar to someone else. I explained the situation to them, and they said too bad. I said “What if (god forbid) something happens to him over there? what then? They're unflappable. They just repeated “we require the registered owner's signature, duly notarised, to transfer the registration” end of story.

SO what I need to do now is find a Notary who will accept that the email I got from him saying “it's yours” is valid and will put their stamp on an affadavit authorising the transfer, or else this vehicle will sit here on the island to be found by some future civilization.

Bunch of arse.