Sometimes they are weird
Culturally, I have never been feeling like a fish out of water in Australia. Apart from the language thing, Australia is not all that different to Canada. It is different from Québec, but that is because Québec is special and has latin charm (just like me!).Although, lately, I have noticed some subtle differences.
They don’t sell cinnamon flavoured chewing gum. Nowhere. I have eaten my last piece of cinnamon gum yesterday and I had been “saving” it for when I was really feeling like having it. And that gum came from the bottom of my laptop bag where my big pack of gum had spilled in the Los Angeles Airport. It could have very well been on the LAX floor before landing in my bag. And yet, it’s cinnamon-y goodness was worth the possible bacteria intake.
Also, I bought a whiteboard. Well, it is not truly a whiteboard, it is a magnetic board that I write on with whiteboard markers. It is a semi-good idea because the finish doesn’t allow me to properly erase the marker (which is kind of the point of this whole whiteboard thing, uh?). The internet gods are telling me that rubbing alcohol would probably do the trick of cleaning my smudged magnetic-wanna-be-whiteboard. I mean rubbing alcohol; de l’alcool à friction, it’s kind of easy as 1-2-3 to find, right?
Hum… no. Australia doesn’t seem to have any clue about what that oh-so-weird substance is. When I asked Mark about it, he asked me back what kind of alcohol it was. The isopropylic one. And then, he went on to draw the molecular structure of that substance. He’s cute, but not helpful. I checked at the grocery store. None. I went at the pharmacy and asked the clerk about it. I could have asked him about rubber-flavoured crumpets and he would have given me back that same absent/you’re a freak look.
I mean, I knew I was “right” (as in, that rubbing alcohol exists and is generally sold in pharmacies), but because I was outnumbered, I was the one who looked like I was asking for a screwdriver in a seafood shop.
As a side story about that pharmacy: when we bought our wooden bench in the kitchen, we needed some mineral oil (parafin) to seal the counter bit. You can buy this from the pharmacy because it is also a useful thing to consume if you’re ahem… backed up. So I went there and asked for it, taking care to precise that it was for my countertop. I don’t know why I felt the need to precise that I was not buying this because I was constipated. Which probably made me sound like I was trying to cover the fact that I hadn’t pooped in a few days. Oh so meta.
About the interview thingie and the visa thingie
Monday night, I started writing a post about how I was feeling slightly nervous about the immigration interview of the following day. I was not stressed or anything, but I just wanted to be over and done with it already: we put so much efforts and money into that process that it had to work or else, we’d be up shit creek.
So Tuesday morning, off we go to the immigration office in the city. We even have time to take a coffee before we go it (my tastebuds enjoyed it, but my bladder thought it was a semi-good idea, quite frankly). Finally, we got to meet our case officer and thus the interview began. I was kind of expecting the interview to involve dark room with a spotlight in my face and a big burly guy in a trench coat with a hat asking me to confess about everything.
Instead, we got interviewed together (no cross-checking of our answers) and the case officer was a young woman who really just wanted to chat with us! She asked us to tell her about our relationship and that was pretty much it. I was expecting to have to defend our application, recitate the name and birthdates of all of Mark’s relatives (btw, Mark has been learning dutifully my family tree for nothing! eh!), explain why we did not have a joint bank account and how we maintain a relationship while living with housemates (hum… we like our group sex?).
At the end of it, she asked us if we had any questions and if we’d like to know how long from now before her decision was going to be made. Of course we wanted to know. She then said something un-be-lie-va-ble: “I should send you your visa approval via email THIS AFTERNOON”. Holy shit!
And people: she did.
I am now officially an australian permanent resident. I’ll get the sticker to go in my passport tomorrow. I might just sleep with it under my pillow for the next month.
______________________
Bonne fête maman! Je m’ennuie de toi tout plein.
And the application is in
I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so much trouble and paperwork to submit a permanent residency application. I felt at times that I had to prove my relationship to them with their own standards. Yes, we lived in a shared house for a few years. No, we are not hippies into orgies and community sex. Yes, we had our space and our privacy. No, we don’t have any bills in our name in that house. Yes, we were a de facto couple. And so on.
I wouldn’t have thought it would be so expensive to get it all together as well. So far, that immigration business has cost us more than 2600$ (and that doesn’t include my flight to Australia).
Anyway, at this point, it doesn’t matter really, because we want to live together.
So, last Friday, we went to the immigration office to submit the application. I was giddy with excitement. Finally, after 3 years of pretty much dreaming of that moment, that was it, we were finally applying for me to live here.
It went quite smoothly. We paid and after the immigration lady started to ask us some questions. When did your relationship started? Since when are you in a de facto relationship? I answered the questions quicker than if it was a “Génie en herbe” quiz. Bring on the red buzzer, I rock with dates. I thought it was funny that the immigration lady briefly made sure that we were satisfying the basic criteria for our visa after we paid 2000$. What if we were clueless idiots (and not checked the condition of this visa) and we hadn’t been in a relationship for more than 12 months? 2000$ gone and also a speedy 5 minutes visa assessment to tell you that you didn’t make it?
After she checked those basic facts, she gave us right there an interview date! Yé! Get party hats and gazous, people! Our interview date is May 1st. When you apply abroad, it can take a few months to get an interview date (and it is also the case in bigger immigration office like Sydney). We were pretty happy.
Interview is really an important bit of the process. You can photocopy 142 receipts of things you bought together, but I would like to think that they will be even more convinced of the “genuineness and ongoingness” of our relationship when they see us in the interview.
So I am now hunting immigration forums to get a sneak peak at the possible interview questions. Some say their interview was quite easy, mostly asking questions you already answered in your relationship statement (when did you meet, what happen afterwards, bla bla bla). Others seemed to have it a little more harsh: what was he wearing when you first met him (Emilie jumps on the buzzer: his lucky black stripped shirt! Mark says… euh… a black top?), what are the birthdates of every family members, etc. They might even also get into more private stuff, but nobody on the forum seemed to incline to say what that stuff was about. How nice would it be to be an immigration case worker and have to ask random people when was the last time they had sex?
Basically, at this point we are in a mild anxiety state (well, I am) and we do interview rehearsal. I can’t wait for that immigration thingie to be through people. I can’t wait.
Some catching up
We all know April 11th is a very special day, right? It is on April 11th 2004 that Mark and I met in Salzburg. Up until last week, Mark didn’t have a precise idea about the “specialness” of that date (a careful remark about it put him up to speed though, it was all good). I can’t really blame the guy: he is highly gifted in the “understanding complex theory field”, whereas I am the one with talent in “remembering useless facts and tiny bits of unrelated information for a really long time”. We complete each other in a very practical way. Also, Mark did not have that much practice with celebrating our meeting anniversary: it is the first time that we get to spend this day together. We were in different countries for the 2 previous years. So it is not as if he had to remember this date every month or anything.
We had a lovely day together. I got roses and we went to have tea at the Windy Point Cafe. It is in the Adelaide Hills so we have stunning views of the city and the ocean. Very civilised. I also got to gush about how great and special and wonderful our relationship is. So it was a very good day all in all.
I insisted we take a picture at the Cafe (for immigration you know). Sorry for the bluriness and darkness of it, that it is the best I could do with the .27 seconds of patience Mark had to get his picture taken.
In other oh so thrilling news, we decided to be all anticonformist for Easter and instead of giving each other chocolate, we went to Bunnings (un genre de Réno-Dépôt) and we bought some gardening stuff to put in front of our . We kind of went all out. Mark seems to have a fairly green thumb, but what I lack in knowledge, I have got in enthusiasm (is it time to fertilise the plants yet? we want them to be really strong, should I put some in now? I saw some slow release fertiliser at the shop, should I buy it?).
We got some herbs and loads of seeds. I have never gardened from seeds before. It is truly a test for my patience. From seeds, we are expecting to grow 3 types of lettuce, beetroots, radish (they are the “French breakfast variety and it never ceased to crack Mark up” – for the record, as a French speaking person, I have never eaten radish for breakfast), spinach, some mixed flowers, strawberries, chives, pepperming, cress and mustard. As I said, we went all out.
While planting and potting our stuff, we got an unexpected visitor (although he -she?- looks somewhat artificial, this is a true and living creature). Mark reckons it is a blue-tongued lizard, but I cannot confirm since the thing did not open its mouth (an internet search seems to confirm Mark’s hypothesis). If it is a blue-tongued lizard, it’s good news: they are garden friendly, eat slugs and they are not poisonous.
Here is our garden 10 days later. Some pots were added, but most importantly, our stuff is growing!
Here is an up-close-and-personal encounter with the radish and beetroot pot. Also worth mentionning, I am trying to get Mark to learn French through osmosis: whenever I write something for him, I also write it in French. So all our little identifying sticks (made out of an ice cream container – turns out those are not only useful for protection against magpies) are bilingual. Maybe Mark cannot conjuguate verbs from the first group in any past tense, but he sure can tell you that dill in French is aneth.
Finally, I could not resist buying this funny little gnome. Hopefully, it’ll help resuscitate our dill. Also, behold my good taste, because I could have easily gotten that horror. Nothing says welcome better than a garden dwarf showing its butt in front of a toilet in a garden, right?
* * * * *
Bonne Fête papa!
Yesterday, I almost got attacked by an emu
I caught your attention, eh?
I mentionned that we are not living in the same area as we were last year. So, in order to get more familiar with my surroundings, I decided yesterday to grab my bike and hop on the train that would bring me straight to Belair National Park.
A little side story here: did you know that when you feel all economy+environmentally conscious and you buy rechargeable batteries – right before catching the train to get to the park in the hills – well, those earth-friendly batteries will not come charged? I paid 12.50$ to buy freaking flat batteries (and I obviously discovered it in the train, so no option B here). This is going to explain the lack of pictures to document my adventures. Which is a shame.
Adelaide is a flat stretch of land surrounded by hills and the sea. It makes for gorgeous scenery. Belair national park is in the southeastern part of the hills. I haven’t been there before and for whatever reason, I felt like going for a bike ride so I thought it would be a good idea. The only problem was that Mark hasn’t been there in a long time so he was no use in telling me what the bike tracks would be like. I was a tad scared because of the concept of hills+bicycle (and I am the person who would bicycle downtown Montréal in peak hour in the middle of freezing February). My point being, I am not naturally squirmish on a bike, I am just not a mountain bike person. I actually seem to have a bit of a trauma even about it. Maybe in year 6 when I opened my elbow at camp Minogami because of a bike tumble or maybe because of the mountain bike at Mont Ste-Anne in secondaire 2 (Rosalie, did anything that traumatising happened then? I don’t remember anything, but maybe I have repressed that memory… hehe). Anyway.
The Belair Park website said that the bike trails are the sealed roads crossing the park. I was cool with that. Hills I can do on pavement.
I got there and the place is hilly (what a surprise, seeing as we are in the Adelaide hills). I decide to do the whole tour of the park. One of the road I have to take is called “Saddle Hill Road”. If they put “hill” in a road name, you can safely expect that the thing is going to be a mean bitch of a hill. Oh man, it was. That typical nightmarish hill that each time you think that it cannot possibly climb more, there is a turn and there it is: an even meaner incline right in front of you. Well, I am proud to say I did not turn back. I climbed it and I got to realise that yes, there are circumstances when that smallest speed on the bike is not even quite small enough (and I also got off the bike at some point and walked a bit).
At that point, I was basically on the top of the universe, with all the uphill riding. And I had to turn on Queen Jubilee Drive. Sounds like a civilised place, right?
Oh man.
For whatever reason, I don’t feel confortable going downhill (from that point, it couldn’t possibly climb more, obviously) on uneven ground with slippery rocks and what not. I don’t feel enough traction and my reflex (which I know is not a good or a safe one) is to hit the brake and go slower. I understood there why wearing bike gloves is useful. I still have as we speak the imprint of my bike handles in my hand because I clutched them tightly. All that time, I was thinking that my comfort bike was not design for “offroad use or stunting” (there is a little sticker on it saying exactly those words). I was also thinking that Matt (our used-to-be-housemate), a mountain-bike amateur, would laugh his head off if he could see me.
Anyway, I am pleased to report that I didn’t die (well, duh), didn’t fall and did not have a heart attack. And it doesn’t sound like it with my dramatic depiction of the events, but I managed to keep my shit together during the more mountain-bike-like part of my ride.
No, the heart attack came a little bit earlier. You know, that emu story.
In the first part of the bike ride (where there were sealed road and no killing hills), I arrived to a sort of clearing just in front of a volunteering association building. And in the clearing, there were 2 very still birds that looked very much like emus. As in they were big. Then, because of the stillness – and the lack of decent fence – I thought that they might be statue-emus decorating the lawn accross the volunteer house.
And then, the right statue moved. Hum.
Here again, I have to tell a tiny side story. One of my mom’s worst fear is big birds. She has told me countless of times she’d rather be around a tiger than a turkey or a goose. So, really, don’t start her on emus and ostrich. Though, I have not absorbed that fear through genes or osmosis, I am not comfortable around birds looking like this and being free to come and peck your eyes out.
Look at those red eyes.
At that point, I reached for my camera and foolishly hoped that there would be enough juice for just one picture. After some fumbling, the answer was no. But one of the bird started to walk in my direction. Not fast, but steadily. At that point, it was probably less than 3 metres away from me. I remembered that if that thing was going to run for me, I was done: an emu could probably outrun a leopard (ok, not quite, but almost) and I am no leopard. So, I threw the camera in the bag (stupid camera with the flat batteries) and I briefly thought I could at least take a picture with my mobile phone, but my survival instinct kicked in and decided it wouldn’t be wise to linger any longer. People, you have never seen someone hoping on their bike quicker than me at that point. Comme on dit, j’ai paqueté mes p’tits pis je me suis pas attardée pour jaser.
I thought Maman would have loved to be there.
All in all, it was a good day.
Bits and pieces
I have documented before my utter lack of imagination when it comes to meal planning. If you ask me spontaneously what to cook tonight, I can come up with 3 meals: stir fry, curry and spaghetti. A rotation of the same 3 meals is obviously doomed to come back very often. And I have to say that Mark is never particularly helpful with my usual “what do you want to eat tonight?”. Although, last week, when I asked him, he said I should make something “québécois”.
A québécois meal? Hum. Apart from simmering everything in maple sirup or making poutine, what could be a typically québécois dish? The answer to that question: pâté chinois.
People, last week, I made my first pâté chinois ever. Steak, blé d’inde, patate (thank god for La petite vie, maybe I wouldn’t have remember the recipe without them). And I got all fancy and put paprika on top. I am proud to say that it was pretty good. But I am even prouder to say that Mark is becoming more québécois every day: not only can he swear in French (what a skill), he also loved pâté chinois. I am sure that if I keep working a little bit, he will become a sovereignist.
So here is my creation:
Man, my life is thrilling.
In other news, my ordeal with HP Australia is not over yet.
I called them last Friday and they said they didn’t receive the email I was supposed to send them (bullshit, they did, I checked), they didn’t have my phone number to call me back (bullshit again, they had it, it was in the email and I gave it to at least 3 different people) and that anyway, the documentation I provided was not enough (it was straight from HP Canada with the details of the work that has been done on my laptop).
So really, they are full of shit. I will make a complaint Monday because it is not acceptable that almost 2 weeks after my initial call, they have still not done anything for me except lie. In the meantime, Bestiole is still not functionning.
In my search terms last week, somebody googled “problem nx7000 hp laptop not booting” or something and they ended up on my page. That fills me with a little bit of glee because maybe that person read what I have been through with HP in Australia and in Canada. This is like bad publicity through word of mouth, except that it is done at a planet level with potentially a lot of people hearing how much HP is a dishonest company as far as warranty goes.
Home sweet home
Ah… the nesting.
I haven’t really talked about “our new place”. Mark had to find a house/flat for us while I was away. I am sure if he had a blog, he would have a special category called “rental: why it makes me feel like banging my head on a wall” for all the posts he would have written about that ordeal. Indeed, it seems that young male uni student is the target demographics in a landlord’s mind for “wilderbeest who will smash your property into pieces”. Anyway, he did a wonderful job at picking a place because I am very happy about our flat.
We used to live before in the western suburbs right by the city. I have lived there for more than a year overall. I knew that area. We now live in the soutern suburbs, a few kilometres off the city. Obviously, not at all the same location.
Here is where we live:
I like the concept of a few buildings all facing a court. It is very pretty and it has a bit of a private park feel to it.
I now have to get familiar with my new neighbourhood. So far, I have made some nice discoveries: we have an organic chicken shop just around the corner, the trees next to our place smell like lemon myrtle, we are literally 2 minutes away from the train station (very useful for my “I should have left the house 5 minutes ago” habit), there is a an op shop almost in our backyard, there is a Target (oh my!) about 3km of our place (I jogged there and back yesterday… weird motivation, huh?) and we have a community cat!
In fact, I think we may have 2 community cats. Let me explain the concept of a community cat. It is a rule of the landlord that tenants are not allowed to have pets in their flat. And there was this cat that kept coming and through persuasion, the caretaker decided to adopt it. All the residents can give some money for food and vet care. The cat obviously is not allowed inside, but it always pretty much sticks around and the caretaker feeds it. The thing is that I see regularly 2 cats in our yard, so I don’t know if we now have 2 community cats or if cat #2 actually belongs to somebody on our street. Anyway, I love the concept of a community cat.
Here it is:
It is really friendly and it does understand French quite well (for whatever reasons, I cannot calculate or speak to animals in English).
And here some pictures I took around the flat. I have been adding my “touch” here and there (this is where Mark would probably say that I have started putting glittery bits e-ve-ry-whe-re, but really), but we still have some work to do on the deco of the flat.
The window ledge in the kitchen (aka the lovely view I see all 294785 times a day I make dishes).
We bought this bench at Ikea (duh! where else) and it is extremely convenient. And we did not even fight once over its assembly.
This is my favourite mug. I got it last year for 79 cents or something. And in the back, we can see our lovely coffee machine. Merci Mark’s parent for that lovely gift to your eldest.
We are so green that we have those funky energy saving bulbs pretty much everywhere in the flat. We got them for free because we are on a green energy plan for our electricity/gas. That means that it will cost us an arm, a leg and a cornea each month to pay that bill (as opposed to only an arm and a leg), but at least, some percentage of the electricity we consumed comes from green energy sources.
I had no idea Mark kept it, but he hung the STM map he got from the time he was in Montréal.
It is not hung yet, but this will go in the bathroom. For whatever reason, those ducks crack me up every time I see them… you know, we all need glamour shots of plastic ducks.
It is interesting to decorate our flat because I cannot go all out girlie in my decoration impulses. But after shopping a looong time for a decent shower curtain (the one that came with the flat had brown tape at the top and some pink Laura Ashley flowery print that was ugly as hell), the only one that was in our price range and not ugly as hell was this one. A tad girlie, but pretty, don’t you think?
I have talked with a few people about living in old houses in Adelaide. It has its perks: lots of character, a bit cheaper to rent, but it also comes with its quirkiness. Here is our very elaborate electrical panel: a main switch, one fuse for all lights and another for all the power outlets. Pretty basic, non?
When a fuse blows, this is when the fun begins. We need (and by “we”, I really mean Mark here) to pull the porcelain fuse. Inside, there will be a little broken metal wire. We need to put back another piece of fuse wire. Here is what it looks like:
(I love the “modern look” of the packet!).
We still have a bit to do around the flat: hanging some pictures, finding me a desk, etc. But it feels really nice to have “our place” and live by ourselves.
Finally, some updates: my battle with HP is not done yet. I haaaate them. HP Australia is supposed to call me today (I wouldn’t bet anything on that happening, but that is what I have been told, so let’s not be cynical) to tell me if they will charge me or not for the repairs on my laptop. So for more than a week now, the laptop hasn’t functionned. I love that. Grrr.
Also, we are gathering the last bits of paperwork for my permanent residency application. It should be done at the end of the week or early next week.
In which I curse HP Canada profusely
Now now, what is it with the cursing of various entities? Well, people, I have decided that this blog was also going to serve as an outlet/public shaming space for evil evil corporate bodies.
You see, I have a laptop. It is named Bestiole and I love it with a love that probably shouldn’t be wisely bestowed upon something as unreliable as plastic, transistors and integrated circuits.
I bought Bestiole (a swanky compaq nx7000) in 2004, just before leaving to study in Switzerland. I also – wisely – bought the extended warranty (because it helps the love not to have to pay for repairs for 3 years). For the first 3 years minus 2 weeks, everything went quite smoothly. In time, some glitches started to crop up. The speakers were not functionning properly, I was getting some random “non system disk” errors, but overall, the laptop was functional. Just before Bestiole’s warranty was to expire, I sent it to be repaired at HP Canada. I figured a health check-up would do Bestiole good before I was to leave for Australia.
I was trying to reinstall the os on my just received-still-fresh-from-Purolator computer and bam! Windows could not be installed because it could not detect a drive to install it on. Oops. Not good eh? So we start again. I had to resend the computer back to HP Canada, they “fixed” it, took their sweet sweet time to ship it back to me.
I got it barely a week before I was due to fly to Australia. But at last, I was reunited with Bestiole.
Well, 2 nights ago, I noticed that Bestiole was doing an odd noise. I checked the screen and surprise! The “non-system disk” error is on again. But really, the buzzing noise: not sounding healthy. I reboot Bestiole, the same error again. Shit shit shit. Pop in the Windows CD, try to diagnose the situation in the BIOS? The drive c: does not exist anymore (and my keyboard was converted to an AZERTY keyboard: that shits me to no end).
And here people, is where the fun truly begins.
So what do to? First, try to reach HP Canada for some cues about how to proceed. Try to call them? Huh no, they just have 1-800 phone numbers and for the information of everybody: WE CANNOT CALL 1-800 NUMBERS FROM OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA. So, the only option left: the live chat with a HP representative.
You thought we had some fun yet? It was just starting.
Chat session #1 goes a bit like this:
Me: Laptop doesn’t work.
HP dude: Call 1-800 bla bla bla
Me: I can’t, I am in Australia.
HP dude: Oh. Visit the support section of the HP Canada website.
Me: How do you think I started that support chat session? Been there.
HP dude: Oh. Well, call that 1-800 number instead.
Me: Ok, you seem a little bit challenged. Let me make this clear: it is im-pos-si-ble. Can you give me a direct phone number so I can talk to somebody?
HP dude: no.
Me: Ok… that is not very helpful. Can I give you my details and somebody can call me then?
HP dude: no.
Me: Hum… so I have a useless laptop in front of me right now and it is under your warranty. What am I supposed to do?
HP dude: Take a known-to-be-functionning hard drive and see if your computer works.
Me: Ah, well, you see, I don’t carry laptop spare parts just in case I need to troubleshoot your shoddy work.
HP dude: Well, call 1-800 bla bla bla.
* and so on, and so on for more than an hour*
After that, I called HP Australia. They were not particularly unhelpful, they just insisted strongly about the fact that they couldn’t help me, but if you dial bla bla bla and press option 2 and 5 and 7, you will speak to the person who can actually help you. And so on. 5 times. The fifth time being when I was referred to the first place where I called. All full circle like.
But then: the plot thickens. I need to have my case numbers from the repairs done in Canada. Because I could be lying and creating imaginary case numbers. Yeah, whatever. HP Australia asks me to give them the details and proof of the services. So who do I chat with? Oh yeah, my favourite HP Canada people.
Me: Can you email me the details of the following case numbers for I am in Australia and I need to give them to HP Australia so they can honour your warranty.
HP dude: Oh sure! Just call 1-800 bla bla bla.
Me: Non! I am in Australia and the 1-800 numbers don’t work (I am really edumucating this whole company about international phone rules).
HP dude: Oh. Call HP Australia then.
Me: Euh… no. Do you have a short term memory problem? Dyslexia? Anything? No? Well, go read the previous sentence where I tell you that I need the relevant information because HP Australia wants it (is it that big of a leap of inference to understand here that if they ask for it, it is because they don’t have access to that info?).
HP dude: I am not authorised to send you an email with this information.
Me: In that case, I would like to be in contact with someone who is authorised to send me this information.
HP dude: I am sorry, I truly regret, I sincerely apologise (subtext here: I don’t give a shit), but bla bla bla…
Me: Ok, just work with me here please. I am asking you to give me the info in MY file that you currently are reading. Come on. What would you do in my situation. I don’t want to have to sell a kidney to have my laptop working again (I swear I said that bit about the kidney).
HP dude: bla bla bla, I’ll ask the senior supervisor, bla bla bla…
* More than an hour later of bla bla bla-ing *
HP dude: So what if I was copy-pasting the information regarding your case numbers in this chat and you were sending them to HP.
Me: Yeah, that would work (but why on earth did you not come up with this an hour ago you stupid dim-witted freak?)
Emilie, after finally obtaining some information for HP Canada (but I did have to fight for it) is all giddy. She calls HP Australia and send them the info they asked to process my service request.
They say their warranty department is going to analyse the situation and they’ll come back to me within the next 24 hours (subtext: maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe never!).
* Emilie’s head exploded *
Man, I don’t have the money to get that *&$(%* laptop repaired (I was shopping for shower curtains and thinking that even if the 9.95$ one was not as pretty as the 12.95$ one, it would be cheaper, so I should get that one: that is how bad things are ’round here), but I neeeeeeed Bestiole. I spent 3000$ on that machine and now that it is HP’s turn to honour their word, they are behaving like arses. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate.
Apart from that, things are going wonderfully here.
