In January I opened a door.
Quite a normal, I thought courteous, thing to do under the circumstances. However the opening of that particular door set in train a series of unfortunate events.
The door that I opened was the door to Kuala Lumpur Dancer’s Association's (KLDA's) rehearsal room, where Edwin was having one of his weekly dance lessons. The door has a coded keypad on the outside and I thought, seeing as the dancer on the outside of the door was struggling to get it open, I would help by pressing the release button on the inside, thereby being nice. At the time I was doing some school work on my school iPad (other devices are available) and so approached the door with due care. As I pressed the release button the iPad slipped out of its aged, school approved case and landed with one of the corners of the iPad making contact with the concrete floor. I examined the iPad’s screen and found it to have cracked. Arse.
I knew that my school had insurance and that repairs could be carried out, so I did not worry, deciding instead to be very cross. I may have said a naughty word or three.
Next day at school I set in motion the process of getting the device repaired. Ten days later a colleague sent me an online form to fill in and promptly, at least ten days after that, I filled it in. Weeks went by and nothing happened. I carried on using the iPad, complete with cracked screen, for all the daily and weekly tasks such as lesson planning, showing videos to my classes and recording and assessing student work.
As the Easter holiday approached, and nothing further had been mentioned about the requested repairs, I thought that I should really start making things happen. On the last day of term I took the iPad, still with its cracked screen to the IT department and they agreed to get it repaired. “We will have to send it off,” a nice colleague said. The world over these words, “send it off,” means anything from “this will take years to repair” to “you will never see this again” and Malaysia is no different.
Over the two week Easter holiday all Lawrences were traveling England for a visit to family and friends and I had, relatively cheaply, booked flights with the mighty Vietnam Airlines. Lexi and I's schools' holiday dates did not completely overlap so we found ourselves having to travel in a separated fashion: the kids and I first, followed a week later by Lexi. I had plenty of marking and planning to do over the amusingly titled ‘break’ and decided to pack my laptop so that I could access my marking as well as my planning. Having heard lots of stories about laptops being stolen from the overhead storage lockers inside airplanes I decided to pack the laptop in my case, padding it carefully in the middle of warm trousers, and securing the case with a tight strap. Normally I would have taken my school iPad instead, but you see there had been a problem when I opened a door to KLDA and …
All went well on the flight, apart from the connection in Ho Chi Minh City being an hour late departing, and we thus arrived in Gatwick later than planned, but with just enough time to get our connecting train. Children and I had to rush, but we did make our connections. The children and I arrived at my parents’ house 27 hors and 27 minutes after leaving our KL house, tired, but pleased to have arrived. We lunched, chatted and then unpacked.
Sadly someone had already begun the unpacking of my suitcase, without me asking for their help. My laptop was not inside. A thought flashed through my mind, maybe I had been an idiot and left it at home. A call to Malaysia and Lexi proved that I had not been forgetful. My laptop was well and truly gone.
And what was that the result of? Opening a door. If I had not opened that door to KLDA then I would not have dropped my iPad, it would not have needed repairing, I would not have taken my laptop with me when traveling and so it would not have been stolen.
Naturally I reported the theft to Vietnam Airlines (“You need to fill i the right form, Sir”), my school (“you need to fill in the right form, Robin”) and the KL police (“I will fill the right form for you after I finished this level of candy crush, lah.) Being an optimist and the sort of person who opens doors for other people I am hopeful that Vietnam Airlines will offer some compensation and that my school’s insurance policy will cover the theft. If both of these fail then. well, let’s hope they do work.
I hold out no hope of the laptop ever seeing the light of day with me again. I hope the thief appreciates the hassles they have caused. I had backed up most of the files, though of course not all of them.
If you do happen to see a thief with my laptop, (Macbook Pro, school machine number 1251) then take it back from them and give it to me, please, remembering, of course to hold the door open for the criminal in question.
(PS You might like to know that the dancers who entered KLDA and were part of setting this whole sorry tale off were not harmed in any way during the writing of this blog.)