Tiger tiger, give me some GOOD luck!

I never really belived in luck. I always think that the term unlucky is just a lame excuse for people who don't want to face the reality when they are unable to achieve something. Since young until now I believe in humans' capabilities and not luck, this is in line with a mandarin phrase that humans can achieve victory even over God (ren2 ding4 sheng4 tian1).

The series of unfortunate events that I faced recently put a big big question mark over my belief and my principle. Sorry but today I just want to spit it out. It can easily be seen as a lame excuse for my stupidity etc, but I just don't care. I need a space to vent my frustration out.

It was first started with the extreme weather we had in UK. It was a whooping negative fifteen degree celcius on one of the days. I remember it was so cold during that period of time that I had to always try my very best to avoid stepping out from my house whenever it was possible. (On the plus side, it was really nice to hide in the duvet to sleep =P) But very soon, I was forced to get out from my house due to some "unforeseen circumstances". Due to the extreme weather condition, somehow the sink in the house was blocked completely, probably by the ice formed. My housemates and I tried to drain out the water from the sink. It was drained out very effectively BUT into the washing machine which left the inner part of the washing machine a horrible smell after that. Very soon, we realised that we can't do anything in the sink including washing up our plates and cutleries. The amount of plates, bowls and cutleries accummulated over the time, mountains upon mountains were formed. When we no longer had any cutleries etc to use, we were forced to live on nomad condition, hunting for food outside every single day.

A few days after this problem was finally fixed after N number of phone calls to the housing agency, we had another nightmare. There was a blackout in the place that I lived. Only five rows of houses in the whole Manchester were affected and my house was one of them. What a luck. I was forced again to go camping somewhere in the university. It was really near to the mid term exam during that time hence, (for the first time in three years) when I went to the library I was shocked to find out that it was completely FULL of people with no space for me at all. I moved on to another location again and again. Finally I settled down in the computer lab. The blackout episode ended at around 12am that day.

I thought my misfortune stopped right there. However, I was very very wrong. Two days after the blackout, when I was halfway doing my revision for exam, my laptop broke down. The monitor just simply refused to work. It was disastrous for me as I survived on the entertainment provided by the internet and my laptop. My heavy reliance on it had really caused me to panic (I love my laptop way too much!^^). Luckily my housemate helped me to fix the problem by connecting my laptop to a separate monitor and it worked brilliantly. It didn't last long before it became problematic again. On the next day, the new monitor started to behave in a weird way again with random images constantly disappearing and the function malfunctioning. Trying in vain to revive it myself, I gave up in the end, surviving solely on another of my housemate laptop. (I am lucky in that sense that there is somebody that is willing to sacrifice his laptop for me ^^).

Anyway, things had been quite right till after exam. I bought a new laptop in the end. With the new laptop looking so cool compared to the previous senile fatty- looking laptop, I am actually quite happy with it. However, the happy story didn't continue. Bad luck striked again. Over the one whole week since I got my new laptop, I had been constantly having trouble playing any audio files including those on the websites such as youtube. I really felt like I am dying without any music in my room! Anyway that is not the main point, I just want to solve the problem and lead a normal life again (lol, exaggeration^^). I checked with Aaron and Melissa who bought the laptop the same time as me and apparently their laptops are behaving well so far. The problem striked again last night. Being so incompetent with the computer stuff, I wasted the whole night trying to repair it following some online instruction. I called up Dell today. They were really helpful in helping to solve the prbolem. Nothing can go wrong right, one might say? No, absolutely wrong. This is because suddenly when I was calling Dell, all the window media player, real player, itunes, youtube website, crunchyroll website and whatsoever that were previously not working suddenly decided to joke with me by starting to work so brilliantly again. Thanks to them, Dell technical support team was unable to pinpoint the exact problem of my laptop. After trying to do something to avoid similar problems to arise again in the future, I ended the call after two whole hours talking to Dell technical support team. I should be really happy by now that my laptop is working perfectly again. I think many will be able to guess that this is not the end of the story. After all these hassle, the next time I tried to use the window media player again, it is NOT working again. Every programs freezed and became irresponsive. I have to say I am really feeling really "pasrah" now. I wrote an email to Dell just now. There will be another round of long talk with the technical support team again on Friday. Endless hassle, it seems to be.

Final finally, I had a hot good shower and a good dinner. Feeling calm and happy after all the rubbish that I had, I started to type my final year project report that I direly need to type. I was making some slow progress but I was happy enough that at least I made the first baby step! Ahh.... I was then reading through some journals and books. Out of the blue when I was halfway reading, I sensed that something is very very wrong again. I have not seen a book that I borrowed from the library since last Friday. Panic- stricken, I desperately rummaged through the whole room of mine for the book. It was no where to be found. I started to think about the possible location of the book now. There are so many possibilities: my supervisor's computer lab, magic bus or stagecoach bus, Oxford Road station, Piccaddilly station or just simply somewhere on the street! I can't tell you the ending to the story yet. I can only hope and pray that it ends with happiness. If things turn ugly, I will need to pay for around 80GBP to the library for the replacement of the book. Sigh. For this event, it is not that much about being unlucky, I know to a certain extent it is the carelessness that is fatal.

Problems, big or small, all contributed to the frustration I had now. Things have not been too well recently, hopefully in the year of the tiger (my year!^^) everything will be alright again. When I think carefully about it, despite the few stupid unnecessary things that had happened, life is not all bad. I had a really good chinese new year celebration in Manchester with my collegemates from all over the UK. We had a lot of good food together but what matter most to me is I enjoyed their company so much! Lastly, to all my family and friends in Malaysia: Happy Chinese New Year! Huat ahhhhhhh........!!!!! ^^ It will be a good year for ALL of us. *smile*