It never rains but pours

When things go wrong for me, it really goes all the way. Murphy’s Law comes to mind.

Couple of months ago, my wife suggested that she takes our spare 14” tv and cheap vcd player to the factory for the foreign workers. She promised to replace them. She has yet to.

Couple of weeks before Christmas, she decided to go ahead with some renovations to 2 toilets, one involving an extension of about 2 feet. Imagine the noise during demolition of the wall and other structures. The dust was unbearable and all my earlier cleaning of the antiques and collectibles had to be done again.

While a workman was at it using a power drill to break the wall, lightning struck and all our sensitve fuseboards in both houses tripped. Little did I realize that for the first time, our main TV and my fairly new dvd player were zapped. Took the tv for repairs and was advised that it has been repaired partially - only good for receiving vcd/dvd and not tv transmissions. For the latter repair, it would cost an additional Rm200 or so and requires waiting for the order to arrive. For several weeks, we were without television service and I was quite surprised that I could wean myself off the news (read propaganda) and some serials. I still wonder why my spare tv was taken away just before I needed one! Murphy again?

It would have been nice to have everything ready before our two daughters and foreign guests arrived. But instead of a clean house with new bathroom fittings, they had to put up with old toilet systems and a half bath lying around the house like “Roman ruins” to quote Cheng. The 2 vintage cars which I had earlier cleaned was still covered with dust from the demolition work. Because we had to be in KL for more than a week for the grand wedding and taking the foreigners around, I just did not have the time to clean up. In fact, I was in the middle of repainting some sections of the house and fencing walls.

It took one week for me to get back to normal routine.

But disaster struck my computer. Because of unknown reasons, maybe viruses, some of my files were multiplied many times. I used anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to check. While doing so, I had difficulty running my usual scanning program. It was reported that some of my programs were interlinked with each other. I must have deleted vital parts of those programs. Now my Outlook Express cannot be opened which means all my addresses and folders cannot be opened too. Even my Words program had problems for a while. My A drive cannot read my diskettes. My Winamp does not work too.

I have to use TM webmail to receive my emails and all attachments cannot be opened. I had to rely on receiving others’ mail before I know their addresses. Maybe it is time to get a notebook for a change. But first, show me the money!