A few days before 2012 is officially over and I am faced with a few circumstances that I could not help but write about. After writing the first sentence, I am flooded with all the pent-up frustrations that I have been bottling up lately. I am not sure if I am complaining, I think I am just trying to share what I feel about these series of unfortunate events. Then maybe, after I write all these, I would feel a little better. When it rains, it pours…
1. I encountered a disrespectful taxi driver. – Calling him disrespectful is an understatement to say the least. I ranted about this in Twitter and some friends reacted but I did not hear a reply from the taxi operator after sending an SMS to the number printed inside said taxi nor heard back from MMDA or LTFRB. I wonder if LTFRB ever reply to reports in line with their #OplanIsnabero campaign. I can just shrug this off and hopefully I will not encounter another one ever again.
2. I lost 6 years worth of pictures and files. – I bought an external hard drive (Seagate Back-Up Plus 1TB) mid-2012 and transferred ALL my files from my Dell XPS M1530 to it which now I realized is the biggest mistake I have made this year. Yes, I did not create another back-up of the back-up because machines or gadgets are bound to stop working at some point. So I lost almost 1 TB worth of songs, movies, pictures, documents among other things and now I am at a loss of what to do. My hard drive is still under warranty and I was able to keep the box but unfortunately I could not locate the store receipt anymore and I think I threw it away already because I was not expecting that my external HDD will stop working after only 6 months. I read online that it would be more expensive to have the files retrieved than to buy a new one. I am still hopeful, just a little hopeful that one day this little black thingamajig will start working again. If not, I plan to buy two 500GB drives instead of 1TB so I can create a back-up of the back-up. I am also exploring the possibility of doing an RMA process through the Seagate website. The only consolation I have is that I was able to save a copy of our wedding pictures in my office laptop. If not, I would probably just pull all my hair out right now. When did things get so complicated?
3. The SD card of my camera got damaged after I took it out to transfer pictures to my computer. – I took it out because my camera kept on prompting me that I have already used up all 8GB worth of space. I knew there’s something amiss because I only have about 100 pictures stored in it. I tried to erase some pictures and I was prompted that the disk was write-protected. I took it out from the SD card slot and immediately figured out that the SD card was physically damaged. This is something than can easily be replaced so I am not fussing over this so much.
4. I pulled a muscle in my right wrist while removing the cork of a wine bottle. – I think this does not need any explanation at all. It scared me at first because I thought it was already a case of carpal tunnel syndrome. It is still swollen now but it’s more bearable than how it felt last week.
5. I broke the battery cover of my Blackberry 9900. – You know how often you need to do battery pulls if you own a BlackBerry so I think this is how I broke the fragile plastic latches of the back cover. I could not find anyone selling just the back cover so now the cover is attached to the back of my phone with a colorful washi tape. Ingenious!
6. I lost my BlackBerry 9700. – I left it in Starbucks Glorietta 5. I called after about 10 minutes and it’s gone just like that. Oh yes, this Starbucks store does not have a CCTV installed so I hope whoever found the phone will take care of it and will put it to good use.
Apart from the other misfortunes that I have experienced this year, I can say that I am still lucky as I survived the end of the world last December 21. Oh yeah, it didn’t really happen to the dismay of the naysayers and the interpreters of the quatrains of Nostradamus and the archaeologists that unearthed the Mayan calendar. Some of my gadgets faced their own deaths so now I move forward with a clean slate.
I will be starting 2013 with a renewed hope that taxi drivers respect their passengers and still remain hopeful that our government agencies will do their jobs.
I will be starting 2013 with hopefully 2 blank external HDD’s to store and back-up my files and a new SD card to use to capture new memories using my camera. I am hoping as well that the torn muscle will finally heal so I can do more things with my right hand. Meanwhile, I can live with the washi-taped back cover for my phone and I am over hoping that some honest person would still return the phone I left after sipping a cup of coffee in front of the cashier in a Starbucks without CCTV.
After all, life must go on…
