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I was at the microroastery where I'm going to get my Beans for the upcoming trip showing off my portable coffee kit. The Kit is the work of years' of refinement towards making the ultimate in portable coffee. In terms of getting some of the subtle flavors you could get with fancier tools, it's pretty basic; in terms of having something that packs down small and weighs next to nothing, it's damn near perfect.

I was having a good day.

Almost finished negotiating the terms and conditions of a government contract where I'm going to get paid to do something I wanted to do anyways; got one of the 4 outstanding payments for a Very Large Sum of money owed to me by organizations I'm not in a position to complain about; bit the bullet on paying for more things related to my Rohloff upgrade; and then, he called me.

Detective Zeng.

Would I mind coming down to his police station again tomorrow morning?

Yes, I'd mind.
I'd mind very much.
There are very few things I am actively less interested in doing than coming down to his police station again tomorrow morning.

There's a cup of coffee still sitting in front of me. Made with lychee flower honey and South American beans. I take a sip but I can't swallow. As quickly as that, eating is broken again. When night comes, I'll find out that sleeping is broken too.

I know for certain what I did or did not do, and I know how trustworthy I am, and I still think I'm suspicious. My only option is to be polite and cooperative (and cooperative and polite) and hope that this all eventually goes away. From officially being told last time that I can stop notifying them of where I am, and some of the paperwork that came at the end of today's deposition, it looks like its in the process of going away. But, procedures need to be followed.

Maybe because of who the Most Likely Culprit is, maybe because Detective Zeng actually seemed to recognize good bike stuff when looking at a picture of my tour bike, or maybe because whatever exactly is going on right now needs to be done either before my announced Planned Departure Date or after I come back, but today's regularly revisited Topic of Irrelevant Conversation is my upcoming Tour. 

That's one of their tactics: quickly changing the topic back and forth so that you are too confused to remember to lie. Also, rhetorical questions, questions that have no right answer, rewording your own statements and passing them back to you, and head games.

If they are playing any head games with me today, they are subtle enough that I'm not picking up on them. Instead of being in an Interrogation Room (with a locking chair that they are both nice enough not to make me sit in and cruel enough to actively remind me of by making me sit next to it), we're in a Conference Room; the chairs are comfy; and, the air conditioning is a good temperature. 

Of course, its entirely possible that us being in this Room instead of that one is actually a Message I'm supposed to picking up on and not just them being nice to me.

Based on some of the paperwork done at the end of today's session, when I next get called back, they'll be returning the Tramadol they took from my refrigerator. Which I'll then be promptly throwing out. Probably while I'm still at the police station. Before it was confiscated and subsequently stored without refrigeration for two years, it was old and sad and somewhere in the realm between very expired and very very expired. Also, since that time, I've come to the conclusion that I don't just merely dislike Tramadol as a painkiller, I absolutely hate it.