Laptop Woes

So we have been reading about exploding laptops, and dell woes on bad publicity and plunging sales. I have a few woes of my own. On the second night of my trip in bangkok, my hard disk dies. Being a non-technical person, I thought I had corrupted the Windows OS program when I did a hard reset to shut my machine off (it was taking forever!).

Well, I brought it into the bangkok office the next day for the IT department to fix. So while I was out for site visits and interview with a key customer, they ran diagnostic tests on my IBM Thinkpad. When we returned to the office during lunch, I was told very grimly by the country marketing manager, that my laptop hard disk had died.

If I had foreknowledge that this would happen, I would have been really upset. Just thinking about the flood of emails in my inbox, being unable to access nor reply them, the emergencies piling up... I would have been majorly stressed.

However, I did not. Whether it was that Thailand has a good effect on me, the fact that I was in Thailand for site visits rather than meetings, or simply because I have been thinking since 2 months ago that my laptop would break down anyday soon, I don't really know.

Fourth possible reason - Am I psychic? No. Well, at least not in this case. Just the logical deduction of someone who goes through the consternation of hearing the whir and click of the hard disk getting noticeably loud, pronounced, and slow. The "clicks" got more as the startup (and log off!) got slower. I kept thinking to myself "If it's not going to die today, it'll die tomorrow".

Why my Thinkpad chose to die in Bangkok, I am clueless. Maybe that was where it was manufactured and he wanted to join the spirits of the laptops before it in the place where it was born. But that it died when I was there, meant that I could not work over the weekend, but was actually forced to enjoy my weekend without work.

So I went shopping and eating and sleeping without guilt as there was nothing I could do about my situation. It didn't make sense to change my flight to reach home on a saturday instead of a sunday as the IT department in the Singapore office won't be at work until Monday. The use of the Internet at the Business Center costs 500 Baht an hour (full day internet access in the room on a laptop was 642 Baht for the entire day!!) so that wasn't good for my budget, and no one would be at the office on a Saturday anyway. They had my mobile number, so if anything was really urgent, they could call me.

I am amazed that I was that calm when the marketing manager broke the news to me though. He (half) jokingly commented that I could trash my laptop. Frankly speaking - i was very tempted to. But our company policy was that you had to return the old laptop - no matter how broke it was - in exchange for a new one. Same goes for every piece of instrument / gadget the company gives you. Want a new one? It has to be broke, and you have to return it first. Almost like a trading business.

So I lugged my broken laptop home with 2 bags of luggage and a hand carry bag of shopping. My calf muscles are really sore now. Where is a Thai foot massage when you really need one??