There was more to come. While waiting for the car to be fixed (at Leng Kee Workshop) me decided to gym and then shopped around at IKEA for a nice pot of palm for a colleague whose housewarming was to take place on National Day. Three hours in IKEA and some cash in hand can be a dangerous thing, as I would soon learn. Decided to get myself a new quilt cover, some pillowcases which were on offer, a new coffee table for the tv, a few pot of plants for myself... (and even decided to be creative: bought half a dozen of salad bowls with the intention of turning them into avant garde plant containers). Reached home; shifted some furniture and unplugged everything as a result. When I plugged my CPU back I smelled something burning....
That was about two grand burning away....
Managed to salvage the monitor, a cdrom and a paltry network card. Nothing else. The harddisk and all the precious memories --> the digital pictures for the year 2002 evaporated into nothingness. I learnt my lesson well. Backups are important.
Stayed off the net for a day or two, and before I turned cold turkey I ventured back into Sim Lim Sq to get myself a brand new CPU. Pentium 4 2.0 processor with NvidiaGeforce4 and a 40Gb harddisk and 256ram. .... all these for about $1200.
And so I turned up at Damien's place with the extra-expensive pot of palm and lamented on the spate of events to his amused wife.
And realised three hours later that the public carpark downstairs is not FREE during public holidays, be it NATIONAL DAY or whatsoever.
And the pot of palm is now $30 more expensive.
Damien, you better take good care of it!
Sob.