No signal

The chronicles of me losing my computer and connection, which I can only upload now:

Day F-ing One

I have a corpse of a computer in my room.

Well, not exactly a corpse yet. A vegetable, more like.

A freshly fried one.

I don’t really know how to deal with fried computers. It’s like this soul-less crate with its innards unabashedly exhibiting itself. My Dad and I removed the CPU covers, unable to accept that my tool of trade for 5 years is now barely smarter than my keyboard. So we yanked off the covers and peered purposefully into it for ten minutes, before realizing that we are not even sure what we were looking for. The torchlight merely illuminated more gibberish.

My baby won’t load. And it’s probably the mobo (hah! I know geek lingo. I just don’t know what a mobo looks like). Oh please God let it be the mobo. If it’s my hard disc that’s just got whacked I’m going to cry. I’ll lose 5 years worth of, well, stuff. Important, definitely. I just can’t really remember what they are. And when I do remember what they are, I AM really going to cry.

But until we get the expert’s verdict (that’d be Bryan doing another round of purposeful probing before he nags me about my dusty CPU interior), I’m stuck with a gaping casing. I can’t even look at it in the bulb. I’m responsible for its vegetative state. I fried its brains because I didn’t turn it off in time when the lightning strike. I killed it, and when its cursor stared at me for the last time, cold and frozen, right after the lightning, the last words I said to it was “Oh shit nonono shit.”

And when my lost has sunk in (right after the hit I actually went and did some filing, which shows you how crazy a shock can make you), I actually felt a little relieved. Like, yay, I’m free to do anything now because I have no more obligations to work. I have no computer, no connection! So I went to finish up with my filing. And when that is done, I watched Gilmore Girls. And when I had enough of Gilmore Girls, I sit down here and blog on my parents’ computer. Or rather, I type on my parents’ computer, because it can’t go on the internet.

And then it really sunk in, like a hammer. How the hell am I going to work tomorrow? I have no computer, no connection! How do I type out my article? How do I Facebook? How do I check my emails? What do I wake up to? Who will make my breakfast?

Oh wait, my mum makes my breakfast. But its funny how losing a machine creates a similar feeling of losing your loved ones. Suddenly, I have this huge computer-shaped hole in my life. I cannot imagine how would I live without it, yet at the same time, I’m curious to know how would I live without it. I feel like the strings that bind me to my computer have been cut loose. Technically, I am free. But really, I am balancing the strings on my wrists and pretending that the noose is real. Because anything else is unimaginable.

If you think I’m being melodramatic, let me fry your computer. Then we can together-gether be melodramatic, because misery loves company.

Gosh, so this is withdrawal symptoms.

Day Two:

Hurgh. It’s amazing how gung-ho I am to blog when I have no internet connection. Must be all the extra free time I have. Sometimes I can’t remember how I used to spend my time back when I had no broadband. Watching televisions and reading books I supposed. But the internet has overwritten my page-flipping abilities and toleration for commercial breaks, replacing it with a kind of stubborn patience for eternal buffering.

Price of modernization, they say.

Okay, I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms. My computer has, as it turned out, just a fried network card. Which means I can actually use my computer like normal, just not for connecting with the outside world. Which means I did not kill it; it’s just having social issues due to some nasty shock (lightning bolts can do that to you). Which means I’m good.

But I’m also greedy. I have been kinda sick of my computer running in snail pace for a while now, and this lightning strike has just been my excuse to finally pump up those specs. So, now my CPU lies forlorn in the backroom while Bryan’s old machine takes up its throne. And so far, so good. Bryan’s computer can run Windows 7 with ease, which means the programs now fade in and out so gracefully and the taskbar is not cramped with my multitasking mess.

Except this isn’t my computer. My computer doesn’t have programs fading in and out gracefully, nor a designer task bar complete with the whole clean, unlived-in look. Heck, my computer doesn’t even have Microsoft 2007, which I am currently using to type on.

My computer drags its programs up at its own pace, and if you click on the buttons too many times it hangs, just to show you who’s boss. My computer has an eyesore of a taskbar, with opened documents strewn all over and a rotting webpage from last week still lying inconspicuously beneath the pile. My computer makes Bryan wanna scratch his eyeballs out, which is fun to watch. My computer still uses Microsoft 2003, which is a darn good version, if I may impose my opinion.

This isn’t my computer. This is Bryan’s computer (you can tell from the LEDs in all colour and coolness glowing from it).

Should I embrace change, or get comfortable with my old skin?

A question that I have been asking myself consistently lately, as my pen hovers over the contract for Au Pair. A question that I have no answer for. Or rather, a question that I have been scared shitless to answer.

I am pacing to and fro in front of the rabbit hole, wearing a path on the ground and growing a beard (metaphorically, for now). I need someone to push me down.

I am really, really afraid of change. Which is kinda weird, because I really, really want it at the same time. I have a life here – a life I have always dreamt of having. Writing for a living, supportive family and friends, fulfilling days etc. Do I forgo this dream for another dream?

A sage told me in bright red fonts that change is inevitable. Things will change no matter I choose to stay or not. And he didn’t sip his Pepsi this time, so it means he’s really serious. We didn’t even mention his loincloth. It’s that solemn.

And the sage is right, again. Change will take place no matter what I choose to do. I’m not afraid of change, I’m afraid to cause the change. I’m afraid that my life will spiral out of control because of me and my actions. Better to blame life than to blame myself.

Except that it’s not better. In fact, it downright sucks. I want it and it’s right in front of me, but I lack the courage to reach out and grab. I am just staring at it, knowing that it will disappear, but afraid to seize it, lest it bursts in my palm – like a delicate bubble in the afternoon sun.

I need a shove. I need to let go. I need this.