Popagandhi

It’s been a slew of difficult situations all December: first the insanity of the final exams, from which I’ve yet to really recover, then the recent shocker of losing something which was dear to me. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to this loss, and the last two days have been especially difficult. She was an extension of myself, my brain, she was my best (inanimate) friend, commanding a position of monogamy and total devotion few others could come close to. In some of the darkest 30 minutes of recent history (between 7.55pm and 8.25pm on 6 Dec), my week of sleeping two hours a night and sitting for exams in the morning (stimulated by an unhealthy amount of Red Bull and coffee and herbal chicken, sometimes together) finally gave way to illness and fatigue so strong I could not, for the life of me, remember much of what happened in that time until I realized my PowerBook was gone.

While I had initially borne the hope of retrieving her, and that kept me going, the past two nights have been full of sleeplessness and worry. I keep, and still continue to, be unable to sleep without thinking of a million possible situations, and when I do sleep, my mind is literally still playing tricks on me. Each night I manage to find my PowerBook at least 5 times, and then I wake up. I mourn for her the way I’ve never mourned for anyone living. Which is scary, I guess, but one has to understand we’ve been through a lot: she’s played me Bob Dylan to keep me going in remote, rural Bangladeshi hamlets, kept me up with Monty Python in Kolkata more than once, and never once failed me in all our 32 months. I did not lose any data â�� I have backups â�� but losing a PowerBook is like losing a friend, and is a thoroughly traumatic experience.

Perhaps I should have been superstitious enough to check up on horoscopes â�� whose monthly overview helpfully predicts my fates and fortunes for the month of December. Apparently the 1st to the 5th is a slide downhill, and by the 13th “you’re feeling brand spanking new”.

Well. It’d better be.

Because with some elbow grease and magic stardust, on the 13th I’ll be at the Bangkok Conrad (which I’ve heard has great beds), and the 14th in the little Lao riverside village of Pak Beng; beautiful, ancient Luang Prabang by the 15th; floating down the river Nam Song on a rubber tube by the 18th (well the horoscope says I’ll come up with some really deep insight about the meaning of life on the 19th, to my knowledge the best way for such philosophical insight is through floating on a rubber tube), then back in Bangkok with a fab motley crew of some of my favourite people in the world. Have I mentioned Christmas on a stunning beach in Koh Phi Phi and New Year in a yet to be determined locale (we’re on a one way ticket..).

Can the good part of December come any sooner?

What will 2007 bring? Perfect eyesight (LASIK), a bachelorette pad, proper-proper publication in Jan/Feb, perhaps a black MacBook? Before I find out, it’s sabaidee Laos!

originally uploaded by kasper1s

(Apparently for US$3 you can float down the Nam Song river for a few hours, and there are bars along the banks you can ‘float to’ for a drink â�� of course it’s gotta be the $1 Beer Lao!)