Thursday, March 17, 2011

Good, Bad? Who Knows!

On Chinese New Year while everybody else was having fun with family, I was not feeling well. I had a sore throat, headache and my body was feverish. I took a Panadol and sleep, hoping that the next day I would feel better.

The next day, I felt no better. I decided to go and see a doctor in the morning. Since the doctor was only a block away, I just walked there. When I arrived in front of the doctor’s clinic, I saw a “CLOSE” sign hanging in the window. “Aaah more bad news,” I thought.

Since the other doctor only practices in the evening, I decided to stay at home and rest. I was sleeping most of the time, only waking up to eat lunch. I didn’t even do my ritual of reading blogs on my notebook computer that morning because I couldn’t stand the glare from the screen.

That afternoon I was sleeping comfortably accompanied by the sound of heavy rain. The sky was quite dark, the air was cool. I thought, “What a perfect weather to stay at home and sleep!”

Suddenly my sleep was interrupted by the sound of loud crash! I thought, “Oh no…the maid who cleaned the house must have broken my new vase!” I quickly got out of bed to have a look. When I opened my bedroom door, this was what I saw:

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The ceiling had collapsed and water was pouring on top of my desk like waterfall. It was basically raining inside my house! Water drenched my computer equipment, my chair, and my books! The collapsed ceiling was all over my work desk. I quickly jumped through all the debris and started pulling the plugs. (It was a dangerous thing to do with all the water flooding the whole area. I had a brief thought about the danger of being electrocuted, but somehow I still decided to do it). After pulling the plugs, I quickly grabbed my notebook bag and other bags from behind the desk. Then I started to worry about my books. Fortunately the design of the bookcase was such that the water couldn’t get in, it just flowed straight down outside the bookcase door.

After the crucial few minutes, the maids and workers came in and they started to help minimizing the damage. Two of the workers went up to check the drain and clear the blocked drainage so that the water stopped pouring inside the house. Everybody else was frantically busy to mop and clean the place. After about one to two hours, we finally finished cleaning the whole place.

While they were mopping the floor, I moved all my gadgets to another room and started to check the damages. Most of them were alright but I still spread them out and let them dry.

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I didn’t even bother trying to save my printer, monitor, keyboard and networking equipment on top of the desk because they were really soaked!

What’s worse…I had two guests staying over at my place that night! I was sure that they were quite shocked to see the condition of my place. I was glad when they were very understanding and sympathetic. 

The aftermath….

I still went to the doctor that evening. After taking the medicine I felt so much better.

The next day, workers started to fix the ceiling and they worked real fast. Within three days, everything was back to normal.

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Almost all of the gadgets and computer equipment work normally, even the monitor works! The printer also works again after a minor service. I thought the toner would be useless after getting drenched in water but they are still usable. The only thing that couldn’t be saved is my logitech dinovo keyboard.

Some afterthoughts:

  • Being ill that day was actually a good thing because I was home when the incident happened and I could save most of my electronic gadgets and equipment. If I wasn’t home, the maids and workers wouldn’t have known what to do and what to save.
  • It was a good thing that I was too sick to work because otherwise I could’ve been injured if I was sitting on my desk when the ceiling collapsed.  Moreover my notebook would have been on top of my desk and it would have been soaked wet and all my important data during the week lost.
  • I was able to remain relatively calm during the whole episode. I didn’t feel sad nor upset watching my things got soaked. I believe that it is attributable to my daily meditation practice. I was able to accept that things happened as it was. I was able to focus more on the solutions rather than the problems. 

So….

Good, bad? Who knows?

Learn and Grow!

Inge Santoso, B. Com

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