A sign of the times

News of the Virginia Tech tragedy is making the rounds. Since I've spent most of my time in this country living and studying in Virginia, I have quite a few VT friends and acquaintances. My heart goes out to them, and the students in Blacksburg who are bravely trying to make sense of things right now.

It is a sign of the times, however, that one of the first reactions I had when I heard about this was to say, "Oh God, please don't let the perpetrator be a Muslim." In today's world, where a group of deranged individuals have hijacked my faith, my knee-jerk response to any tragedy is to pray that we haven't dug a deeper hole for ourselves.

But just as I feel great sadness for young kids with immense potential who were robbed of the chance to live fruitful lives, I also feel sadness for an immigrant community that has so far not felt the scathing eyes of public scrutiny. Preliminary news reports say that the gunman was South Korean, and I can't think of one thing that the Korean community in the US has done that would cause it to walk with shame. Not that the act of a mad gunman should reflect on a group this way, but coming from a pseudo-ostracized community myself, I know how these details rarely matter when the hate crimes start. Besides, South Koreans, like many Asian cultures, are a people where "family" comes before all else. It is quite likely that there is going to be a lot of soul-searching on their part to figure out how one of their own youth could have gone so far astray, and where his family failed him.

I just pray that concrete gun legislation results from this tragedy, and that the usual lobbying interests aren't able to bury any legal recommendations with the shameless impunity that they have become accustomed to.

When technology decides to spit in your eye

In this digitally connected world, it is cliche to state that we have developed a dependence on technology. Without our handy gadgets, life becomes a drain on our energy. Tasks that would normally take 10 seconds start taking ... *gasp* ... 15 seconds. Impersonal email must be replaced with, heaven forbid, a personal phone call should the server ever go down. Life's pictures must be captured in our mind's eye rather than our dinky cell phone's crappy camera.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a luddite by any means. I love my tech toys, and although I'm not the first wave of adopters, I'm usually not far behind with things. But today technology sat up and spat in my eye, and has left me pseudo-paralyzed.

First, my Palm Pilot died. Actually, this had happened last month when, in a sheer stroke of genius, I decided to plug its charger into a Hong Kong outlet without using an adapter first. I couldn't hear the thing frying with the surge of electricity, but I may as well have.

Second, my cell phone died three days ago. Not it's fault, actually. The two of us have done battle together over the years, and unfortunately the scars were too many for it to bear. Put aside the fact that it is one of the only phones around that ONLY makes phone calls (that's right, no camera do-hickey, no color screens, no crazy games), even so it was only being held together by my wife's hair band, literally. You see, when I dropped it for the 100th time a little while ago, its battery pack came loose, and I needed something to hold the thing together. See for yourself.

But the worst event of all happened two days ago. My hard drive crashed. Just like that - without any crazy shenanigans on my part. The laptop simply refused to reboot. In a panic, I took it to the Geek Squad today, who after overcharging me told me that there was nothing they could do.

My life is on that computer. Which is why I take regular monthly backups to an external hard drive. That alone would have meant all was ok with the world. However, I've been working on this 10 page paper for one of my Hong Kong classes that is due tomorrow, and most of the work on it was done over the last week. So I hadn't gotten around to backing things up before the crash.

I'm screwed.

With are the chances of such a tri-fecta occurring in the span of a month. I'm left without a communication device. And given my crappy memory, I'm left without a way of recording my appointments, tasks, or my to-dos. Do I need to bring out my hunting knife and polish off my fire-starting skills next? Exactly how much more is life for me going to devolve over the next few days?

It's a brave new world out there, and I'm lonely and defenseless.

*For those of you wondering, I've swiped my wife's laptop to access the internet and compose this entry*

The future of the blog?

What to do now? In my myopic creation of this blog several months ago, I had no idea how addicted I would become to recording my daily activities. But now that this Great Asian Trip is over, what do I do? Document my adventures in ... Chicago? I guess I'll have to. Blogging has definitely taught me an appreciation for the uncommon events that occur in my daily life, so perhaps I will continue recording those.

The venue may have changed, the descriptive text above may need altering, but we remain Desi Adventurers...