This is the story of our poor “new” computer. About a month before we moved to Egypt we replaced our desktop computer. It was almost 7 years old and it was *really* slow. Our original plan was to hang onto it until we came back from Egypt because who wants to risk sending new electronics overseas? But its time had come. Josh reformatted the hard drive a bunch of times and it was still creeping and freezing so we opted to get the least expensive tower possible as a new family/kid computer. I think it was around $350.
So we sent the computer along with the rest of our worldly possessions to Egypt where they got held up in customs and sat for months and months. By the time the computer arrived here the kids were overjoyed to finally be able to play some of their games, get on Webkinz, Lego.com, etc. (I tend to be a little possessive of my netbook and don’t like to share.)
Josh unpacked it all, set everything up, plugged it in and BOOM! I was in the other room and for a second I had flashbacks to Egypt when the artillery fire shook the house. It sounded like something exploded in the living room. It turns out that even though the computer is 110/220 compatible (Josh checked before plugging it in), there is an internal switch that wasn’t switched and the electrical current blew out the power supply. So more waiting. Josh found a place to fix it — $75 for a new power source and the kids were happy.
Now the kids are on the computer every day, mostly related to school. As an aside I’m really impressed by how they are using technology at TAISM. Calvin is creating collaborative documents online using Google Docs with his classmates, setting up a newsreader using RSS feeds, tracking stock quotes, and pulling homework assignments from the school network and submitting them via email. The younger boys have classroom blogs and they’ve been assigned to log in and “follow” the blog, post comments and eventually post content. That doesn’t include all the in-class computer skills they are working on. All that to say that not only is the computer in use all the time, but they often are jockeying for screen time so they can do their homework. In those cases I have to surrender mine in the name of education. :sigh:
So yesterday two guys came to fix our perpetually leaking air conditioning units. Each room has 1 or 2 that are built into the wall and the embassy techs came out last week and said they needed to be removed from the walls, fully cleaned and overhauled. So they submitted that info to the landlord and then the landlord contracts for the work. Well the people they send aren’t always the brightest bulbs and yesterday as they took the AC unit off the wall, they spilled water on the computer tower and something important must have gotten wet because although the light comes on, nothing is happening. Our computer is broken, again. (And Lucy did tell them that they needed to cover our stuff with the plastic that they brought to protect the floor, but like I said, not the brightest bulbs.)
In America you would just submit a complaint to the company and they would repair or replace the unit, right? We could do that, but I strongly suspect that the company wouldn’t be paying a thing, and would take the cost entirely out of the employee’s wages. And since all of the guys who come to work at our house are low paid Indian or Pakistani guys who speak almost no English and are here working to send money to their families back at home, the cost of a computer repair would financially devastate them. If you saw how some of these guys live, you’d feel the same way too. One guy was here painting our fence for two days who spoke zero English. He was dropped off with no food or water in the middle of summer. He painted v.e.r.y. slowly, but if you figure he had to be getting paid v.e.r.y little per hour, it probably evened out somewhat.
We decided since we can afford it, we’d rather eat the cost then worry that some kids are going to go hungry back in India because their dad is working to pay off our computer repair. So it’s back to the computer repair shop for us. Hopefully it’s a quick and easy fix because until then I’m going to have to get really good at sharing.