How much I depend on it was brought abruptly to my attention the other day when I accidently left my adapter and charger cable at work over a two-day period when my colleagues with keys were out of town. Maybe I could have found someone else in the village with a key - who knows! But, I decided, it's for the best. Let's see how much it sucks.
I realized exactly how much I use my computer - for e-mail, for digital pictures, for working on my website, for watching movies, for getting news in English off the internet, for listening to 150 CDs from home that I copied onto my laptop before I came here, for journaling, for playing Hoyle Casino games as well as round after round of spider solitaire, for managing my incoming and outgoing mail, phone records, for working as co-editor on the PC Macedonia staff and volunteer newspaper, and just about everything else that you could think of.
I sat around in my house so bored, before finally going for a jog. When I returned, I really felt like going online, but I couldn't. Music, not other than my Discman and 1 CD, and my shortwave radio. DVD's? Not so much. Card games? No, not so much. The thing that bummed me almost as much was not having my adapter and therefore not being able to dry my hair with my American hair dryer when coming out of the shower. Going around with wet hair here outside at any time of the day, especially when you have as much hair as I do, isn't really such a stellar idea.
We sometimes joke here, about how lucky we are to be in Macedonia. One of our unofficial slogans is "The Posh Corps - It Ain't Africa". We have electricity, water, and yes, many of us have digital cameras, laptops, and mobile phones. I really started thinking about how lame it was to be upset about not having access to my laptop at home for two days, when I know of other assignments living in huts with dirt floors. Do I think my assignment is better? No. Do I think I could hack it in sparser living conditions? Gulp, and yes I think I could.
In fact it is what I was expecting and what I was preparing for. I think that sometimes all the similarities in being here, such as access to amenities I am accustomed to, etc., makes it even more difficult at times for me to adjust. Because on the surface things don't seem so different (once you get used to the way things look and all that) but they sure are.
So this is an ode to my laptop, for making my life so much more efficient, entertaining, and pleasant! I am so lucky, and have no right to complain. That's why I didn't cry about not having it for a couple of days, and that's why I am writing this now, an ode... to my laptop.