ladders, broken mirrors and black cats

It appears that my faithful Dell laptop, the one I bought in my first year of uni with the money I got from the Australian Student's Prize, has finally given up the ghost. Its timing couldn't be worse. Inside its be-stickered interior are not only all my photos (the ones that are too saucy and blackmailworthy to publish on flickr) and basically everything that I have written in the last 2 years, BUT TWO ALMOST COMPLETED ESSAYS DUE THIS WEEK. I have been steadily researching these essays for the last two weeks and a half. Gone, gone, gone.

It all happened yesterday. As soon as it started acting weird on me yesterday i felt a chill of foreboding run up my spine. It eventually stopped working all together. I took it to the tech shop in town and sat with my queueing ticket in hand, knowing the news would not be good. And i was not surprised. I was told by a tekkie with quite handsome bicep tats (Sweden: a land of exploded stereotypes) that the hard drive was damaged, and for them to even look at it would cost about 450kr (aud 90) just to work out what exattly had happened with it, and quite possibly up to 3000kr (aud 600) to retrieve the data from it. I weakly agreed to a temporary limit of 1500 kr repair. Minimun five business days before I find out anything. It was not long before I had found my friends and over a coffee and 'consolation muffin' thoughtfully provided by Dougal that I was planning my second faked insurance claim.

It's strange - instead of feeling sadness at this, or rage, or a sense of the brutal unfairness of the world, i'm kind of indifferent. My brain just keeps on receiting these catch-phrases for these types of situations: it's no use crying over spilt milk, everything changes, shit happens, etc. Maybe it's because I haven't tried to start writing the essays again yet. No, i lie: I did sit down last night, pen in hand, blank piece of paper in front of me - i wrote the word 'introduction' but then was overcome by such a sudden wave of anger that i threw the pen across the room, scrunched up the paper and went to the pub instead.

so now i write this from the fashion parade coffee addict central that is the Språk och Literaturcentrum library, surrounded by well groomed swedes. This will probably be where i will be writing my posts from now on. I really miss my computer already. Not only was it my window to the world, it was my sound system, my phone, my research library, my cinema, my ideal procrastination tool, EVERYTHING. and these dicky swedish keyboards have ä, å and ö keys in weird places too. WAAAAAAH!

anyway i don't want this whole post to be a whinge. Life in other respects is nice. The sun is out today. I am wearing my reindeer jumper. it rained last night and everything is fresh - reminds me a little of melbourne in autumn. And i really should get started on my essay again, so this is all from me for the time being.