I know I promised to talk about last week (and holy hell was it a long week), but this one is much more “relevant” (and I figured since I had been depressed, talking about things that are awesome will elevate my mood).
This week started out crappy enough, I won’t lie. I had an insomnia bug that got so bad I couldn’t go to my group meeting on Tuesday. I kind of had sickvivors guilt, because apart from the (extreme) insomnia, I wasn’t really sick. It felt the same way I feel when I get a snow day. I know I have to go in for “work”, but circumstances that are beyond my control and COMPLETELY understandable say I stay home. I owe my group a lot more then that, but I did enjoy it. My laptop was having those heat flashes more too (although I am less and less convinced heat is involved…that being said, what the hell IS causing this?). However, even in this early point life was good. The problem I had with my phone had solved itself (mom yelled at them and found out the letter was auto-sent in error).
By Wednesday, things turned around in a BIG way. Mom had sent a package from home. Among its contents is a DS charger that works. Admittedly, I was skeptical of her ability to discern what an old DS charger is (I would be grateful all the same though), but this one really does work. The next day, a problem I had with MSDNaa downloader mysteriously solved itself.
Next I went to file my residence permit. It took a damn long time. Here are some observations I made (note, because of fuckuppery with my application, I didn’t make an appointment).
-Begins at 8:30, but the gates open at 7:30
–Not knowing the opening thing was not the gates, I got there at 8:30 and was 27th in line (the last one attended to)
-Approximately 4.5 people go through an hour
-Processing takes from 10 minutes to 1 hour.
-They give out 40 tickets, but only 27 were tended to (I should know, I was the last one)
It took 6 hours, but my application has been submitted. Furthermore, I didn’t have to pay ANY additional fees 
DDDD. I hung out with my Erasmus ‘buddy’ Randi (it was her birthday) that night. It was generally fun. However, there was a…incident when we headed out (I don’t want to go into what it was for personal reasons). However, honestly, with the way my week has been going, it might have been a blessing in disguise (I have…some evidence to support this).
The remaining part of my week I just got a lot of sleep and worked the kinks out of the Vis-Studio installation (I had to uninstall and reinstall service pack 1 because of a weird installation bug). I heard on the wire that I did get my rent from Scott Village returned after all. This is extremely unexpected.
So, let’s see which of my bad luck problems got solved.
-Plane ticket? Not really, but I honestly don’t regret that one
-Residence permit: Got solved, no additional payments necessary
-DS Charger: Successfully replaced
-Laptop: Still has problems, but has been surprisingly good lately. Have narrowed down causes of heat flashing
–Also, lack of linux is a blessing in disguise, since my project is very MS platform based
-Bus incident? Not much I can do about it now. Minor problem
-Kidney Stone: Hasn’t come back yet, good way to know the differences in hospitalization
-MSDNaa downloads: Mysteriously work again. NO IDEA why they didn’t last time
-Phone problems: Solved themselves
Also, I didn’t mention the payment of rent to Scott Village then, but that was returned too (I am thinking of using that money to pay back certain benefactors who helped me in the initial part of the trip).
So, re-evaluating my budget
Plane ticket mishap: ~700 USD
-Again, I don’t regret this apart from the extra costs
Kidney Stone: ~50 USD.
I am up 850 USD from my problems of old, plus I have 2.7K USD back from an unexpected source. I can safely say I am secure in my standing here barring the unexpected. Planning on paying 2K of that back to my benefactors unless circumstances beyond my control say I don’t get it anymore (that’s about how much their initial investment was, although knowing them, they won’t accept my payment). The net is up and working again too. All I need to do is pay off my remaining rent and AFAIK, I’ll have everything I’ll need and can solely concentrate on my projects. This semester is going to be much tougher from here on in (since our project has finally kicked into high gear). However, I am ready. The groundwork is laid and there is nothing else distracting me from what I need to do. I am hoping this good luck continues throughout this semester (well, throughout my life, but that’s way too tall an order). If there is a deity behind this, I wish to thank zir for their benefaction. I am genuinely appreciative.
Well, see you later space cowboy (are we at the point where it is worth points for those who get this quote? I don’t think so yet)
ETA: As of 02/21/2012, they FOUND MY BACKPACK! I had lost that last October. I searched high and low and couldn’t find any traces of it. I bought a new backpack (and a new set of Daria DVDs, because those were inside), but I didn’t think they would find it. This is so awesome!
