Diary of being sick

I think I am getting the flu. I say “think” because I don’t actually have full-blown symptoms yet. I’m guessing the reader is now failing their arms, “What are you saying?! Do you want to be sick?”

No, really, I’m not hoping to be sick. I just feel I am being honest with myself by acknowledging that something is not right with me. I tried to search the internet for more information about how the flu develops, but it doesn’t seem easy to find this type information. Yes, you can find a list of common symptoms, but no explanation of the timing of them and their development. I suppose people believe that everyone gets sick differently. But after 20-some odd years of experiencing sickness in my body, I find there is a very standard routine.

If I get a cold, it first begins with slight fatigue. Sometimes, I fail to notice this first sign. I think it’s just due to lack of sleep or working too hard. But the next sign can never be missed: the tell-tale sore throat. It starts as a little scratchy nuisance and then becomes worse and worse. If it’s a bad cold, a headache is also coming on and now I really feel tired. I find myself sneezing more often than usual. By the time I am starting to suck on lozenges or drinking hot water with lemon and honey to soothe my throat, my nose is getting stuffed up. This usually all happens within a day (although the first feeling of fatigue often comes the day before). By the next day, my sore throat is mostly gone but my whole head is replaced with cotton balls (the number of cotton balls correlates to the severity of the cold). I can no longer hear clearly or breathe through my nose. At this moment I know that I definitely have a cold and will probably not being able to breathe through my nose again for at least 3 days. I begin to horde tissues. Usually, my nose starts dripping slowly at first and then grows to an accelerated pace.  For the rest of this day and the next, I suffer the wrath of the cold.  Usually I don’t have any cough, but I may lose part of my voice if the cold is particuarly bad.  Nevertheless, on the third day, I usually wake up for the first time feeling ever so “slightly” better.  Although my nose still drips constantly and I might lost my voice, the pressure in my head has decreased slightly.  By that night, I usually have accepted my fate and come to peace with suffering a cold.  In other words, I believe that I will eventually feel better (on the first and second days, I wasn’t sure about that).  The next few days each bring less suffering.  The headaches are gone, my hearing is getting better, and the nose flow decreases.  Towards the end of the week, my cold symptoms linger in the morning-time but are more or less over.  Not too long after, but always longer than I think it should be, I wake up one morning feeling completely normal.

So what about the flu?  I have only experienced it once in my life—as far as I can remember.  It occurred in winter of 2001, a few months after I had moved to Seattle.  I can’t recall the details so well of how it all started.  I just remember that in the early stages of it, I was completely exhausted.  I spent a lot of time just lying in bed with no energy to do anything else.  I also remember realizing at one point that a cold and the flu are completely different, and I will NEVER, EVER mix the two up again.  During the flu, I felt that I was going to die.  Although I may joke about that during a cold, I really felt it during the flu.  I suppose it’s the fever that does it to you.  I also developed a bad cough during that time.  So bad that I felt I was choking to death if I laid down.  So I had to sleep at night propped up with pillows.  The worst of it lasted around five days or so, though the effects lingered on much longer.  And when I started to get better, I didn’t feel “at peace with my fate”, I felt damn grateful that I was still alive.

And now for recent events.  My memory of my last day of wellness goes back to Wednesday.  I had a big meeting at work that morning and it had gone well.  That afternoon I was back at the desk grinding away on a particularly annoying problem.  Goldie and I agreed to meet at 8:00pm for sushi on the island.  Around 7:15pm, I realized I was already running late (takes me about an hour to get to the island).  So I ran down the hillside to the train station.  It was the first time I had real run in a looooong time.  Although it was downhill, so it didn’t seem so hard.  By the time I got to the train station, I felt a little winded but not too bad actually.  My legs were a little wobbly though.

The next day, I could feel my legs aching a little.  But it didn’t seem to bad.  It was Friday that I really felt something was coming on.  I woke up that morning feeling exhausted.  I didn’t walk so much as a I stumbled.  I still went to work, but by the afternoon, I felt my brain had left the building.  I spent a lot of time staring at the computer blankly.  On my way back home, I felt like crawling might be easier.  That night, I wondered if I should cancel my tutoring lessons for Saturday morning.  But I also wondered if a good night’s sleep might be enough to bring me back to life.  This morning I woke up feeling tired, but not truly sick in any way.  So I went off to tutoring.  By the middle of the second lesson, I was counting down the minutes till I could leave.  I took the tram instead of walking like usual.  The moment I got home, I went straight for the sofa.  I haven’t done anything else except take a short excursion to the vet around the corner.  Mimi (the kitty) got a rash on stomach, so we had the vet look at it.  Just walking around the block once made was enough to get my head hurting.  I’m now back at home, lying on the bed.

So, am I sick?  I figure that if things don’t get any worse, than I am just suffering from exhaustion (maybe due to the cough that I fought off last week—during some of Hong Kong’s worst ever pollution).  But just in case this is the beginning of the flu, I’m trying to prepare psychologically for the rough times ahead.

Finally, I should add that Hong Kong is in the midst of peak flu season.  The hospitals are overcrowded and the news is talking about the flu problem every night.  So if I’m wrong about having the flu, I could just blame my mistake on the power of media suggestion.

Unprecedented moral failure

Our starting point is that the battle against climate change can–and must–be won. The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act. If we fail to prevent climate change it will be because we were unable to foster the political will to cooperate. Such an outcome would represent not just a failure of political imagination and leadership, but a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history. (Human Development Report 2007/200

I went back to mainland yesterday again, after a long absence. The dark pessimism about the mainland that I felt earlier has only become darker. Crossing from Hong Kong to only a few kilometers beyond the border, it would seem that the differences should not be that great. Surely there must have been differences between Hong Kong and its bordering neighbor, Shenzhen, far more visible 30 years ago as Hong Kong’s economy was soaring and mainland was still under a radical socialist regime. Today, the differences may be more subtle, but they seem just as shocking.

The polluted air that bothers Hong Kong so much is only worse in Shenzhen. What should have been a clear blue sky was actually a murky grey with orange hues were the sun should have been. While you can actually have space to stretch your arms and not hit someone in the face, you’re far more likely to be hit by a car. The roads are vast and wide yet still packed with cars.

Everything is a little more pale, as you find it’s all covered in a grimy mixture of soot and construction dust. Young spindly trees, which have been planted in large numbers lately for “greening”, are actually grey from the dust. Or often times, just simply dead.

The university campus we visited is a branch campus of China’s “MIT”: Tsinghua. It’s recently constructed (5-6 years), yet the buildings are full of flaws. The walls are cracking, and the materials are cheap. Strangely, there are few students. It feels more like a ghost university. There are rooms that still have the original seal –unbroken–across the door jam from the construction days.

I had made a comment earlier that day to some of mainland colleagues on what I perceived as wasteful living in the U.S.: oversized houses and rampant materialism. As we toured the large but empty campus, they chuckled and said I must feel the campus was a real waste!

I admit that I might be pessimistic to a degree that is not quite justified. The sadness that I feel in mainland is overwhelming. And yet, these are the days, where mainlanders feel more optimistic than ever before. Perhaps given the history they come from, it is indeed a better situation now. But as far as I see, mainland is living on borrowed time. We are all living on borrowed time right now.

Yet I really have to read that last sentence several times to remember what it means…“a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history.”

Yes, indeed, what crime could be worse than destroying the world?

Work and “work”

I’m working full-time now, starting since last week. It’s nice to have a “real” job. I get to crack open my computer science books again! I have more routine in my life now. And sometimes I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to be doing at work.

This week there is also another big change lurking. Goldie’s mom is supposed to move in soon. I honestly didn’t think it was possible when I first heard the proposal. Well, with enough pressure, I guess a solution is always possible. The “study” as I affectionately used to call my cubbyhole with desk, bookshelf, and computer is now the guest bedroom. I moved my computer (and all the thesis stuff that goes with it) to work. My new idea in tackling my thesis is to work on it after “real” work.

That’s all I really want to say for now.

Mind playing tricks on me?

I woke up late this morning.  No time to drink coffee before I left the house.  On the way to the bus station I stopped by the bakery to buy some breakfast.   The people at the bakery are starting to recognize me since I often stop by in the morning now.  I order in Cantonese and it makes them smile.   Although the last time I was there, I asked for a BBQ pork bun and the woman replied with “Tunafish bun? OK!”  Now I know I have a terrible accent, but it can’t possibly be so terrible as to confuse “cha siu” with “tu na yu”.  The words are simply not at all similar.  But anyways I took the bun that day, and this morning I decided to go for tunafish again.  (Luckily the woman didn’t confuse it with BBQ pork.)  Since I use them to practice my Cantonese, I guess it’s not surprising one of the women there likes to use me to practice her English.   After she gave me the bun she switched to English with sign language and told me “Tomorrow (point to watch), ??? (point around), off (palms out).”  I caught on and responded with mixed Cantonese and English, ” Tomorrow closed?” and she nodded enthusiastically.  She switched back to Cantonese “Mid-autumn festival!” and then back to English “Eat mooncakes!”  I smiled, still in morning daze.

Back to daily commute… I hopped onto the bus, second deck like usual, and started to stare blankly off in space.  I was staring at the ponytail of the woman in front of me when I suddenly realized I knew that ponytail!  “Sensei?” My Japanese teacher turned around a little startled or maybe she was a bit sheepish because she already saw me?  Actually we often run into each other because we live in the same neighborhood.  But it’s always quite awkward.  She only responds in Japanese to me, but I have forgotten most of the little Japanese I once knew.  When she sees me, she smiles and asks me something about the time.  I guess she is asking me what time I go to work.  I respond slowly with a mix of Japanese and English for the words I have forgotten.  We smile and both chime together “Nemui!” (Tired!).  As much as I wish I could talk to her, I hope that’s a cue for us to cut conversation.  The rest of the bus ride I worry about how we’re going to negotiate the transfer to the train, since we both are clearly going to the same place.  When the stop arrives, we both wait for the other one to leave first.  I finally remember “Dozo” (You first) and we smile again.  On the way out, I walk a few steps behind waiting for another cue.  Sensei turns to me and says something in Japanese with a smile and small wave.  I really don’t know what it is, but I nod, smile, and wave.  Then try to walk really slow while Sensei tries to pick up the pace in high heels.

At work, the room is strangely empty today.  The phone rings and I realize I am the only one to answer it.  I don’t make any attempts to practice Cantonese at work.  I answer the phone with “Hello” but the woman on the other line doesn’t have any intention of practicing English either.  She asks in Cantonese for a name that sounds vaguely familiar to me.  Half-trying to figure out the person and then realizing it doesn’t matter if the room is empty, I stutter “He’s not here”  in Cantonese.  A short while later, the phone rings again for the same person.  I’m slightly quicker on my feet now and ask if they would like to leave a message.  “Um, can you speak a little slower please?”  Now to figure out how the names map together.  I have his Cantonese name, and my brain is plugging away at pattern matching.  This person has five names that I know of: his nickname within the lab, his English name, his Mandarin name, his Cantonese name, and his Mandarin name produced with a Cantonese accent.  I run to the next room to find my other colleague.  I ask in English about his whereabouts and use his name with a pronunciation not quite Cantonese nor Cantonese-accented Mandarin.  Oh, you mean …?   “Yeah…” and then I switch to Mandarin and ask, “Can you write down his name for me?”

Back in the office, the phone rings again.  Another request in Cantonese, but this time the name is not familiar.  I repeat it dumbfounded…  the caller says “Oh, I must have called the wrong number.”  Less than a second goes by, the phone rings again.  I’m ready this time to respond in Cantonese, “What’s his English name?”  The English name I recognize right away.  Well, what does it matter.  No one is there anyways.  And actually I realize that I don’t really know his English name.  Because of the Chinese accent in English, he has two possible names: Calvin or Kelvin.

By one o’clock, I’m a little jumpy.  With every face I see, I’m not quite sure what language we’re supposed to be talking.

Oh yes, and this afternoon I got a phone call from the university personnel department.  The work visa was approved.  That’s a good thing of course.  But the funny part is that last I heard I needed to send them some more paperwork justifying how I can study and work at the same time.  I didn’t even send that paperwork out yet, but they’ve approved it regardless.  Did someone just pull a string for me? Behind my back?

New job, new life

It’s the middle of typhoon season now.  The rains come in waves.  An interlude of muggy, sticky heat followed by another dousing of cat-and-dog rain…for weeks.

I’ve been kinda in and out these last few months.  More out than in, I think.  Perhaps I should run through a brief summary.  At the beginning of the summer, I was facing the impending deadlines of my thesis submission, expiration of my student visa, end of the lease for the flat, and finding a job.  Oh, and Goldie was packing up to live in Shanghai for two months and, all the while, trying to convince me to relocate to Shanghai permanently.  By mid June, Goldie was gone and I was fretting over whether the thesis was really going to get done or not.

Then on the early morning of June 20 HK time, I got a phone call.  My grandmother had just passed away suddenly and quite unexpectedly.  The news didn’t register with me at first.  I blindly tried to go on with my day as scheduled… until some point in the middle my train ride to school and it hit me, hard.  By that evening, I had bought plane tickets back to South Dakota.  And in just a little more than a day, I was heading up to the heavens.  That flight was the first time in my life that I ever felt that sitting on an airplane for 18 hours was easier than getting off.

I spent two weeks with the family in South Dakota.  There were a lot of tears, a lot of hugs, a lot of stories, and even a lot of laughing.  The biggest reunion the family has probably ever had in years.  But I just couldn’t believe that grandma wasn’t there.  At every corner, I just kept expecting her to come out, arms outstretched to hug me and tears in her eyes saying, “Oh honey, you made it here!”  I imagined that she would say that the story wasn’t true after all.  She’d say that she just wanted to get me back for all those times that I scared her half to death over a fake spider or mouse.

But even as hard as it was, I was so happy that I could be back with the family.   It couldn’t have been any other way.  And it turned out that one night, a few weeks later back in Hong Kong, grandma finally did come out around the corner and give me a big hug with lots of happy tears.  So it really was just a joke after all, she never did leave us.

And now it’s suddenly late summer.  After I came back to Hong Kong last month, I applied for an extension on the thesis.  Goldie told me that she was sick of Shanghai and is going to come back in September.  So we’ve extended the lease on the flat.  And a professor from the engineering department that I met several years ago emailed me out of the blue with a job offer.  I’ve already signed a one-year contract to work as a research assistant in her lab doing work on speech recognition projects.

In fact, today was my first day on the job.  After being a student for so long, it felt like an out of body experience.  Perhaps that sounds a little ridiculous considering I’m still working at in the academic environment.  But it was all the little things that shocked me.  Like, having my own desk space and computer.  Getting my own mug with the department logo.  Being asked if there was any equipment that I needed, say, like a portable hard drive, faster desktop, a laptop…  Oh, and I have so missed the efficiency of engineers.  It’s almost as if you can move the world through email in a morning.

Yes, and now would be a good time to announce that I have stopped using the Internet (ahem, except for work, email, and blog posts).  I had to take radical action last weekend when I realize that my Internet usage had gotten out of hand.  I think it’s been almost the biggest life change I have made this summer.  More to come on that, I suppose, and anyways I got other things to do now.  Ah, the rain is back.

Lost in translation

I needed some entertainment today. So I decided to try the ole’ trick of doing Google Translation.  To play the game, you come up with an English sentence, translate it to another language, copy the result to the input box, and translate it back to English.  You may be surprised to find out a significant difference in original sentence and the one that went through translation.  Here’s my results from translating  between English and Japanese.

1. Please feel free to use the toilet paper provided.
2. You release feeling in order to use the toilet paper which is offered.
3. Being moved is released in order to use the toilet paper which is offered.
4. Being moved, it is released in order to use the toilet paper which is offered.
5. Moving, it releases the fact that you use the toilet paper which is offered.
6. That releases the fact that you use the toilet paper which it is moved is offered.
7. The fact that is released that it is offered you use the toilet paper which moves.
8. The toilet paper where factual that it is released moves to use it is offered.
9. The toilet paper which moves in order to use that it is released in fact is offered.
10. Movement really being released the toilet paper which is offered in order to use.
11. The toilet paper which is offered in order actually to use the movement which is released.
12. The toilet paper which is really offered with order in order to use the movement which is released.
13. In order to use the movement which is released order the toilet paper which is really offered.
14. In order the order which is released to use the movement which is the toilet paper which is really offered.
15. The order which is released in order to use the movement which is the toilet paper which is offered with order really.
16. Order the order which is released in order to use the movement which is the toilet paper which is really offered.
17. Order the order which is released in order to use the movement which is the toilet paper which actually is offered.

The results finally stabilized at the 17th attempt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thesis labor pains

I just saw that my last post was mid-April… that’s a bit of a shock because I don’t really know what happened to me between then and now. I have been working harder than ever on the thesis which seems to just mean that I am more frustrated than ever on producing next to nothing. Seriously, the last couple months has been *almost* the worst time in my life. Luckily the misery of my 18th year still wins out by far and I hope I don’t ever have anything that takes its honor of being THE worst time of my life.

Tonight I am on the up side of things because I actually did get some writing done today (however small) and I still far enough from my next deadline to ignorantly think that things are progressing good enough. (Yes, split personality also seems to be developing from the stress of the thesis.) I don’t really want to moan and groan about my thesis problems here, but I do just want to put down these thoughts in a place where I will be accountable to them. I still sometimes worry that I will (again) forget the pains of academia and go stupidly back to apply for a Phd program. So I am making a point of whining about the thesis to everyone. This way, all of you can slap me silly when I say I want to go back to this masochist hell.

In other news… Goldie is leaving shortly for a two-month contract job in Shanghai. I guess the timing is good in the sense that I need the space to work and it’s not exactly enjoyable for her to watch me writhing in pain all the time. Though I have to admit she has been really good support for me. Hopefully she can still provide phone support to me at a safe distance. But I don’t even want to get into the details about what’s happening at the end of August when massive decisions will have to be enacted. The lease will end, her position might become permanent, my student visa is expiring soon, I may or may not graduate, and I don’t know what the kitty is going to do when she finds out about all this.

Right now, I am just looking forward to my brother’s visit to Hong Kong! Yes, he got called to do a business trip to Taiwan and he managed to arrange an excursion to HK this weekend. It’s a terribly short visit, at a very difficult time, with a very bad weather forecast…but as far as I am concerned, it’s perfect timing. I could use a glimpse of light during these dark times.

The city that is always working

I got this comment from Dad on my last post.  I started to write a response, but it got so long that I decided I would start another post on it instead:

Nice, very nice. I know what you mean by shopping in Hong Kong. I was looking for a external USB drive housing for my extra laptop HD, everything was at least 30 bucks, then I found a nice blue aluminum case with Viao written on it on Ebay, 10$ with shipping. Just came in today, it was mailed from HK!

Not a bad deal, considering your options. However, I also bought a 2.5 HD enclosure recently too. I first scoped out prices one of the big computer centers. I saw Viao cases everywhere for about $5USD. But those look a little too small for my drive and I kept wondering why some enclosures were so cheap while others were $20 or $30USD. So I didn’t buy that day. But the next day, I went to a smaller computer market not far from my house, hidden in an older shopping mall. It was one of those places that Goldie found previously during a Sunday walk around the neighborhood. While peaking around, we found a store with literally a *mountain* of computer parts. It was clearly a case of a person who never puts things back where they belong…to the extreme. We marveled over how anyone could operate a business there.

So anyways, that’s the store I went to, and I finally got to see the person behind the mountain. The atmosphere that day was something out of a David Lynch movie. I saw a slightly balding 30-something guy hunched over eating his take-away lunch. When he saw me, he jumped up and asked what I was looking for. After making my request, he ran off to some hidden location to fetch it. While waiting, I saw a woman casually loitering around. She saw the half-eaten lunch in the sytrofoam bowl and half-mumbled, half-yelled in Cantonese “Eating curry again?! Always eating curry… it’s not good for you, you know!” The guy came running back with armloads of boxes. Although I only asked for one HD enclosure, he brought back at least 3 boxes of the exact same make and model. One for about 7USD. He opened up them all up, checking to see if everything was there, and started to demonstrate one when he suddenly got interrupted by another customer. He asked for me to wait again, and went back to madly running around fetching boxes. It seemed there was something very urgent, but I am not sure what.

Well, I bought the one he showed me. I went back home and tried to set it up, but it didn’t work. I started to worry that there was some compatibility issues with Linux, although it seems that HD enclosures are pretty universal. I worried that maybe it really was too cheap and the circuit board was bad. I worried it was secretly destroying all my data…. Yet I was desperate to get it working. So around 7:30pm, even though I figured he was closed already, I went back to the shop. In fact, he wasn’t closed at all and still running around fetching boxes for people. I told him I couldn’t get it to work and he was a bit shocked. In between customer requests, he tested it with a harddrive he had lying around. He showed me that it was working fine, and that’s when I felt really stupid. I immediately realized in admist all my fears of ruining my precious harddrive I had neglected to fully plug it in in the socket. So I thanked him for his help, and he told me if I still had problems I could come back… “I’m opened until 10:30pm.” As I was leaving, he was back to rushing around. I felt a heavy sense of guilt. Opened to 10:30pm? No time for a real lunch break? Constantly rushing around all day? And he works/lives in what can only be called a computer garbage heap. I wanted to turn around and offer to help him organize the store (a dream for me!). Well, I guess I can’t do that but I did promise to myself to shop there more often.

Computer greed

I did something uncharacteristic of me today. I spent good money on something that was neither cheap nor absolutely necessary. I bought a 19″ widescreen LCD monitor. See, the thing is… Goldie’s desktop came with a 15″ CRT with a dead blue gun which leaves everything on the screen with a puke yellow tint. If it wasn’t for my notebook being out of commission, I would have just setup the desktop as a headless server and forgot about the dying monitor. But after a few days of eye-straining and not getting any real computer work done, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everyone else is getting an LCD, why can’t we?

So today Goldie and I wandered around the computer centers in Wanchai until she gave me the ultimatum: either buy something or else we’re going home. If you like gadgets and electronics, you simply cannot walk through the computer centers in Hong Kong without buying something. Imagine shop after shop crammed full of the latest Japanese technology at duty-free, rock-bottom prices. If you think that the price could be cheaper, you just walk a few more feet and ask the next store. Ahh…computer shoppers’ heaven.

Now I am back home and reeling over my luxurious purchase. The monitor is so….expansive… compared to the 15″ screen I have been working off for the last 3 years…wait, more like 10 years. It fits so nicely on my desk, it matches my black and silver theme, it has a trendy blue led on-light… Why, it has nearly twice the desktop space then my 15″ 4:3 screen. So now I really don’t have any excuse not to pump out that thesis, right? Except that LCDs seems to be so eye-friendly that I can now stay up into the wee hours to write silly blog posts. Hmph.

Up and running again

Last night around 1:30am while I was happily programming away on my laptop in bed… it hung.  Oh, that’s not the first time mind you.  My laptop does hang occasionally because, you see, I have had bad memory in my laptop for at least a year.  Of course, I meant to fix it a long time ago.  I have warranty so there is no excuse not to.  But last year when I inquired about warranty repairs at the local center here, they said it takes 7-10 business days.  For someone who uses their computer every day, for the vast majority of the day, for someone who only wakes up just to go to the computer…  the idea of being separated for up to two weeks is unthinkable.  So, I put it off.  I was hoping that I could wait until the thesis was done and before the warranty expired.  Well, last night was my wake up call.  ‘Cause when I tried to reboot, it couldn’t boot up again.  I silently cursed myself for not doing a backup on my research data a few days ago as I intended (actually it was Dustin who said “Alissa, you are backing up your thesis data right??”)  But I went to sleep with a sense of resignation.  I knew that my laptop’s time had come.  It wasn’t exactly a surprise.  And luckily this morning it was able to do a cold boot.  So I backed up my data and headed to the service center.

The woman asked what was wrong.  I told them the memory was bad and showed them the memory test results.   She reminded me that the problems I was reporting (system hangs) could be software related.  Yeah, right.  She took it back for preliminary inspection and lo!  Behind the closed doors they confirmed the memory was bad.  She then proceeded to tell me that it may take 1-2 months for repairs because they might need to order parts.  I felt kinda faint and tried to press for details.  “Don’t you have the memory in stock?”  “Well, your laptop is from the U.S. and we do not yet know if the memory we have for the Hong Kong model is compatible. Plus we have to check if the chipset is bad.”  I couldn’t really argue with that.  Well, not until I got back to campus and did some research.  The memory in my laptop is the same as several Toshiba models in Hong Kong.  That made me more optimistic that the woman was just giving me the standard “we must cover our asses” repair talk.  Still, I was in a bit of a trance today.  I racked my brain for ideas of how to survive possibly 2 months of solitary confinement for my computer.  Should I even mention that the thesis is due in less than 2 months?

Well, I did come up with a plan: go to Goldie’s mom’s house and take their broken desktop.  The desktop broke a couple weeks ago mysteriously and lately they have been talking about throwing the whole thing out.  Good grief!  Goldie just had the motherboard replaced last year.  So I had an inkling that it wouldn’t be so hard to fix.  Sure enough it wasn’t.  The first thing I did was spend 3 hours cleaning it.  Most of that time was wastefully spent cleaning the keyboard…but you know what?  After dusting off the motherboard, the hard drive that refused to be recognized suddenly was back to normal.  Does anyone reading this realize what that says about the dust problem in Hong Kong and Goldie’s mom’s house in particular?  Pretty scary stuff.  Goldie says it seems dust here is like a living and breathing creature.

Anyways, I really just want to boast about my revenge on the service center.   Screw waiting 2 months for a 5-minute memory repair.  I got a pretty nice desktop with Ubuntu freshly installed.  Ohhh…it runs so much snappier with Ubuntu than that other no-name operating system.  And now the sky is the limit with all the tweaks and things I can do.  If only I didn’t have that damn thesis to finish.