It seems so much has been happening in the Month of May that I just cannot keep track. I unfortunately received another metro fine. I know right? This happened a while back when school was still running, but Laura and I were actually riding the metro when the green guys stopped it, came on and checked everyone’s tickets. Bastards. Neither of us had tickets, so we got off and he was lucky enough to let us split the ticket fine. Man oh man, no travelling to that jail cell on the tram again for me.
I think its been clear that 167 has been our beverage of choice for the past several month, but wowzers, post Amsterdam/the Hague, 167 had not sat quite as well. Maybe it was the 12 bottles we drank, but sadly 167 was not featured in any evening this month. We did however, bust her out this week for Petey’s final evening here: 3 bottles. Amen.
Another thing I have been quite busy with is figuring out my travel situation for the month of July. My original flight had been scheduled for July 1st, but I would like to do some more travelling for that month and ideally like to leave August 1st. Well this all sounds swell and dandy, but I needed to verify with the Canadian consulate that I could do so. Turns out they are only open from 9-12am (super long work day), so I went on a Thursday. Took the tram and started walking. I double checked with an older woman to make sure I was going in the right direction since I couldn’t see any street signs and yep I sure was. What was I looking for she asked; the Canadian Consulate. She pointed to a gorgeous old brick house filled with lilac trees. Well done Canada. So I keep walking and yep, the gate is open. Beauty. I waltz up the front steps and notice the buzzers: two family names, then underneath a sign that said Canadian Consulate below. Okay, so I go downstairs, turn the corner and BAM. The Canadian consulate is the garage. I am not even kidding you. Are you serious? Yep. A one car garage, and the door to enter labeled the Canadian Consulate. We even had one of those plastic flags sticking out. How mortifying. This is the best we could do? Wow. To top that all off: another sign that said ‘unusually closed’ today. Of course you are; a 3 hour work day was too exhausting I’m sure.
The next day we had gone to Calais so I went back the Monday to ask…and shock: they were ‘unusually closed’ for the day…again. Seriously? Let me call you up on that number you posted. Of course no one answers, so I leave a message. Turns out it is the most ridiculous process getting a straight answer from anybody. She said I had the right to stay in France 3 months, but I needed the other countries permissions that I wanted to travel to. She gave me another address to go to which I did and she said the same thing. Okay, so I am now in the process of e-mailing all the countries I am going to be visiting in July: Germany, Switzerland and Egypt. Egypt is tentative, but how cool right? So this has been a never ending story as I’m trying to book my plane to come home. I’ll keep you posted on that one.
Also – I got my hair done. What seems like ages ago now, but I got it done before heading to Germany. I had found this place not even 5 minutes from my place and it was perfect. 20% student discount, if you were under the age of 20. When I booked she had asked and I said I was, and she then said I had to show ID. There went that plan. Well when I arrived, I had to wait a while in my chair. Small place, but she had another customer. No problem. I fell asleep. No joke. I freaking fell asleep. I woke up when she came back and asked what I wanted: blonde with a cut. Fabulous. She did the colour which is super strange here: blue and no foil or anything. Like I was getting my whole hair dyed; except they were highlights. Anyways, she brought the machine to put over my head and the heat….you guessed it…put me to sleep. Unreal. Well when the timer went off, the girl came over to check my colour and was so thrilled to see that the front of my head had not seen a second of heat. I had to re-sit. Of course. She told me to stay awake this time. I put my hand under my chin and was out cold again. I woke up to find that I was being moved to the washer. Super. She left me there to see another customer and I fell asleep. It was ridiculous. Honestly, my appointment was at noon, and it was not even 1pm at this point: how is this even happening? I soon became the laughing joke of the salon I’m sure. Unreal.
So I get back and the guy is about to style my hair and jokes that I have to stay awake so he can cut properly. I made an extra effort to stay awake for that one. Now, when my hair was wet I swear she hadn’t even put any colour in. Eff. This was going to be a huge waste of 88 Euros. Ah well, faith right? Yeah well he blow dried and when he moved the hair from in front of my eyes I was so damn blonde I couldn’t believe it. Magic. Yes. Paying was the best part: I guess that note saying I was a student was still on my file, so I only paid 70 EUR. Cha-ching! I saved 18 EUR, I may have fallen asleep, but I saved 18 EUR. Great day. I loved the hair though, super short, a bit longer in the back, shorter in the front and blonde. It was a risk getting it done so far from home and on a whim, but face it. Sometimes it’s just nice to get your hair done.
Now you know when you have one of those weeks where nothing goes right and everything possible goes terribly wrong? I had one of those. Right in the middle of exam. Brilliant. You get bad news here and there from home, then we have no hot water, no furnace and no gas to cook with. For almost 3 days. Now, I am good at surviving, but c’mon now, you can’t do anything. Of course it was just our floor of the apartment that suffered from this, but somehow we managed. I think we ate cereal for 3 days. We did take a freezing cold shower once, but with a blazing headache after and almost hypothermia, you really don’t want to do that twice. Its brutal. So that was 2; the third was that that stripper swing around the pole in Amsterdam cost me a black ankle, a nice through and through black on either side. Of course it did. Ow.
Then the grand finale: it’s Sunday night around dinnertime when all of a sudden my computer picked up a virus and BAM. Not working. After a nice panic attack, I thought it’s okay, I’m sure this happens all the time. Reboot. Of course not. My computer is literally alarming at me. Yelling at me. Laura had never heard anything make that noise before, let alone my computer. I was going to lose it. I had a final exam Wednesday and well, I needed to study my ass off. I would take it to a computer place first thing the next morning to get fixed. Now finding a place was also difficult. What do you do, Google search that? Normally yes, here in France, of course not. That is too simple. Laura’s boyfriend was good with computers so he was sending Laura directions to give me while I tried to boot it up beside her. Safe mode, then run my full McAfee scan. That took what seemed like days, but honestly like 2 hours and nada. The scan picked up nothing. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE. Stupid computer. I would need to take it in somewhere. At the FNAC (shopping centre) Laura remembered seeing a computer section.
I’m picturing like a Best Buy at home, or Future Shop where they have techs working in the back. Brilliant. I got for 9am, but they didn’t open until 10am. I finally get in at 10 and deek right for the computer section I’m looking for. I wish you could have seen their faces when I asked for a computer technician. Absolutely not. He said they don’t have that in stores anymore. Pardon? No, only private companies do it. What the hell does someone do when they break the computer then? He had someone linked to the store that he could call but it would cost me 100 EUR before he even did anything. He would come to my house as well. I’m half wanting to cry but what was my other choice? I could search for another guy to come to my house, but that will be insanely expensive too. Oh man. So I ask when the guy could come to my house: next Monday. One week. Absolutely not. I need this thing ASAP.
Losing the will to live I go nail polish shopping with Laura and bought a gorgeous coral colour, but still, I could not get over the fact that there are no stores you can just walk into to fix your computer. The number of people that must be shot due to frustrated customers must be sky high. Okay, next plan was to go see Guillaume and see if he knew of anyone. Worst case scenario: the school has techs. Okay. I hadn’t lost hope yet.
I basically rush into Guillaume’s office and he saw that I had sent a “HELP ME” email already. I explained what happened and he said we could go ask the school techs. Awesome. On the way down the stairs he told me that even if they offer to take my computer and help, I should say no. Pardon? They are the school techs, are they not? Yes and they are crap. FML. Un-freaking-believable. So we get down there and the two men look at me like I am from Mars. I asked them if they knew of anywhere, and nope. Not a single name. YOU ARE COMPUTER PEOPLE. WHERE DO YOUR FRIENDS WORK? No, none of that. They mentioned one store they had heard of, but said it probably wasn’t trustworthy. They gave me that name. So helpful. I was thrilled…not. So Guillaume said thanks and then we would look on Google. I was not losing the will to live. He printed off a few names for me, and one looked promising. 45 EUR for him to just come in and go from there. Cheaper than 100, and I needed my computer back ASAP. I called him and he could see me that day at 5:30. Perfect.
Now, I am in the computer lab to kill some time, when I see my dad come online Skype. I fill him in and he sent a quick email to the tech at work. Gave me the directions to follow and things to download then transfer. Okay, I can do that. I managed to get my computer on in safe mode momentarily without it yelling at me and got the programmed installed and running. I was really beginning to be optimistic. It was almost 4:30 and the guy was going to my place for 5:30 so I made a quick call to cancel on the off chance that the directions I had been following would work. If not I could call him back. I get back into the computer lab after I get off the phone sit down and I swear to you not even 2 minutes later my computer started alarming. In this situation the only way to make it stop, is to shut down the computer. I am in a computer lab packed with students studying, and my computer alarmed like a tornado warning for the state of Texas. Kill me now.
I casually walk back outside and call the man back. Please give me back my appointment. Yay me. I get back to my place and wait. Of course, he is late. A half hour late. He shows up around 6 and its game time. I explain what happened, had told him the name of the virus/program that had popped up and he went to work. Only during his work, my hard drive decided to just flop on him and my computer would no longer turn on at all. Of course that would happen. Superb timing. SERIOUSLY WORLD?! Give me a freaking break here. K, thanks. He asked if I had any of the installation discs that he could reinstall XP with. Absolutely not. Those were in Canada. I essentially had to pay the man 45 EUR to make my laptop worse off. Shoot me.
He could do nothing without those CDs. So I made a very loving phone call home to get those delivered ASAP. I would be without my notes for my exam, but thankfully Petey and Laura were in my class as well, so we could study together. Oh boy oh boy, nothing like exam time stress eh? Right. I got my CDs later that week and called the same man back. Come fix my computer ASAP please. And he did, he was at my place for noon and he started reinstalling everything. I would lose some stuff potentially, but about 3 weeks earlier I had done my external hard drive so I would have that stuff saved thankfully.
All of a sudden you see his face and it doesn’t look good. Are you kidding me? What now? I had all the right CDs, except that the CD with drivers, had only Vista drivers and not XP. How, how, how is that even possible? Kill me. And it’s not like I could have lived without those drivers: it was sound, wifi and one other I can’t remember. Yeah. So he went back to his office to download the drivers and then would come back to install them on my computer. This was the longest most torturing process of all time. You just want the computer to work. You really do and went to work.
He was miraculously able to save my things and taught me the 10 billion step process to unlock each file, but that was fine. I would do anything to get all my pictures back. Brilliant. My computer wasn’t perfect, but damn I was happy to see it.
It was just one of those weeks where everything and anything that could have gone wrong did. Ridiculous really.
Since then I have treated my laptop with love. I do not want us fighting again before I get back to Canada.
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