Well folks, there has been a slight SNAFU. It seems my perfectly good and new Apple laptop has a defunct hard drive, or as I’ve been calling it around the office (ASHI), a case of Influenza. Nothing that could have been done to avoid it, it’s just one of those things.
Time for the good news, bads news update:
Good News: It’s not my health. I’m fit as a fiddle, everything fine, the heat and humidity are bad but not atrocious and all in all, things are good. We heard in Kiva Fellows Training (gut-check) stories of past fellows breaking bones, being in accidents, a porch collapsing, malaria, pneumonia, theft…and fingers crossed this is the worse thing to happen to me.
Bad News: Since the Philippines doesn’t have an OFFICIAL Apple Store, they have Premium Resellers, the part has to be ordered from Signapore. Which takes 1-2 weeks. Yes, I’m totally serious.
Good News: No cost to me at all since it’s under warranty. I was in a bind because when this happened I was in Antique Province with no access to any kind of computer help. Eeks! But through the grace of God, I was flying on Saturday back to Manila to debrief with the President this week at headquarters and then head to another Province early in the week. I arrived in Manila Saturday, dropped off my things and rushed to a Reseller.
I went to the Apple site and got the names and addresses of the Apple Premium Reseller stores (there were 3) in Manila and picked one near me in a mall where the staff at my MFI said they knew it was a good store. I’m sure they were the same, but it made me feel better to be in a store that looked JUST LIKE the Apple Stores we know, and with a big tech center and service help desk. It took most of the afternoon to assess the problem and then to pull my information off the old one and back it up. Yes, I brought my own external hard-drive and have been backing up regularly. This was all good preparation for worst-case scenario.
(Interesting side-bar was the culture shock of wealth vs. poverty at the mall in Makati. I felt like a totaly fish out of water, another story for another time.)
Bad News: No photo editing or video editing while this break happens. Blogging I can do, most other things I can do too. Internet Cafe here I come! Again, I’m happy to be in an Asian country with lots of tech stuff around to be able to help me out.
Good News: I’m simple re-arranged my schedule the next week to include more Borrower visits and staff assessments. I was going to use this week to upload profiles and journals, and a few visits, instead I’m going to hit the ground hard starting Tuesday.
So there you have it. What will I do with my evenings? At night, this is more time to read. I’ve already finished 3 books since I got here, almost done with a 4th and also picked up 3 news ones at a used-bookstore on Sunday. I’ve been journaling a lot, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on this year and thinking. Excluding the need for a computer for professional reasons, it’s good to reflect and not use the computer as a crutch from really taking stock of our lives and at night I am definitely prone to working on a million things but not sitting back and just thinking. Spending so much time in my own head can make me feel a bit batty, but hey, that’s part of the experience.
A huge thanks to everyone who gave suggestions on Twitter about how to fix my Mac when we thought it was jsut frozen or a error. I appreciate your support more than you know, I don’t think I could do half of these things without knowing you guys are there to help me out if I need it!
Virtually yours from an Internet Cafe in Quezon City,
Sloane
