I woke up from my phone ringing around 9am. It was the technical support of my company offering help to fix my notebook. I don’t know what happened to it since I haven’t used it during the last 3.5 months. But for some reason it’s not booting anymore and I hope the data on my hard drive aren’t lost. In order to go to the office I needed to dress up. The issue was I have thrown all my business clothes away after my last working day since I thought I won’t wear these clothes when I will re-start working one and a half year later and rather buy new ones. However, I was able to find a smart looking skirt, a white blouse and some high heels which I consider a sufficient outfit to see technical support in the office.

What I expected to be a short visit to the office turned out to be a full day activity. The support guy removed the hard drive from my notebook and inserted it into another one. Luckily the hard drive was booting now as there was no issue with the hard drive itself but probably an issue with a part of the notebook responsible for booting. The problem seemed to be solved within five minutes but unfortunately this wasn’t the case. I wanted to stay in the office for a few more minutes to read my emails and to allow my notebook to update its virus protection files and the Microsoft Windows system. While doing so the screen was freezing and when re-booting the notebook an installation of Windows updates was running. For whatever reason the Windows updates couldn’t be installed successfully. This resulted in the operating system on the hard drive screwing up completely. The only solution was to manually transfer the data of my old hard drive to a completely new one which kept me busy until 4pm.

In the late afternoon my friend Michael finally had time to see me. He had worked until 8am this morning, slept over lunch and is now going for an early dinner with me. We went to one of the restaurants in the neighborhood and had some traditional German food. I had potato soup with truffles as a starter and calf’s liver with mashed potatoes as a main. It was very delicious. I also really much enjoyed the conversation with Michael since he’s one of my closest friends and the both of us know each other so well that we really understand each other. Unfortunately, Michael needed to leave after a couple of hours since he was very tired and exhausted from the heavy work and nearly no sleep during the last days.

I spent the later evening to wash my clothes and getting stuff arranged for my next trip to Central Asia. It felt good to have a washing machine and dryer available for washing my clothes. It’s so convenient and quick compared to the hand washing I usually do when travelling. Only after having experienced how things are done in a basic manner you really appreciate the comfort and luxury you have in the western civilization.