10 March resuscitation

picture of lunch break during computer rebuild... Ivana, Tito, Alice and Thomas

If people here spent less time, effort and money on advertising and on religion I guess it could be a reasonably pleasant and rich Country but there we are – I daresay Indonesian visitors to the uk could come up with some equally pithy observations.

Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable but today it happens and its like losing your right arm (left, if your left-handed of course) – a computer virus, Mr Coolface (aka My Princess) took control of my laptop after saving a document from the web onto my ‘flash’ memory stick in an internet café and then loading it into my machine back home. I find a couple of possible data recovery contacts in Jogya from the web but whiz kid Tito, just completing his computer studies course volunteers to rescue what he can, re-format the hard drive, building partitions and re-installing the operating system, Microsoft Office etc along with any rescueable data files that can be moved about and disinfected between the laptop and Alice’s machine ( also affected but at least now retrieved from the hostel). Coincidentally the office computer in the village has also gone down (but happily not with Mr Coolface so I guess its not down to me). Now, two weekends later and with two steps forward and one step back we appear to be making progress as I try to recall vital financial and vso data entries.

Having at last tracked down some long grain rice, to replace the local round grain rice that I associate with primary school puddings to go with the food parcels from home with the curries I’m ready to try out a kedgeree as a trial for the party next week. It’s a success but will try once more to ensure its ok on the night.

Finally a postscript to the Thomas and Alice saga. Thomas appeared out of the blue, possibly in response to all the text messages but neither from one of Pak Biwa’s ‘safe’ houses as Alice feared nor from the Catholic seminary as I had guessed. For the moment he remains sleeping in the hostel but not working and curiously with no attempt by him or Biwa to discuss matters. Alice, in her temporary girls hostel is planning with Thomas to set up a laundry business in a student area of the town and I doubt if I have ever seen them so happy together – perhaps they should lose their jobs and living quarters more often!