Sarajevo Diaries Vol. III

Some things you have to learn the hard way.

Before getting to the “hard things” let us first point to some links just down the right hand side of the page that will guide you to some recent photo collections. Please check them out!

So, what have we had to learn the hard way? Tuesday morning I started my day with what was becoming a nice morning routine. A little espresso, some news, and some email at my new workstation. I chatted with my sister in Edmonton Alberta for a few minutes, and then was about to get started on the rest of the day and head to school. In the process of getting up from the desk I knocked over my delicious espresso all over the laptop…which promptly shorted out the motherboard and rendered the computer nothing more than a paperweight.

The last three days were spent scouring the city for possible computer repair shops and retailers who could either help us fix our caffeinated machine, or simply replace it. Masa’s cousin Namik was able to connect us with a Toshiba distributor, who confirmed our initial diagnosis of morbidity, but who was able to retrieve a few documents off of the desktop. That was small consolation for such a silly mistake, but was nice to get a couple of items that had not yet been backed up onto our external hard drive.

Ultimately we have purchased a new machine from a small retailer here – and for those who know me it is a sad truth, that we did purchase a Windows machine again. I was gunning for a new IBook, and there is a smashing new Mac store here in one of the University buildings, but due to this unforeseen expense, a shiny new IBook was simply not in the budget. Maybe next year…..

I must add that it was Masa’s laptop that I injected with the lethal dose of caffeine, and even though her baby was lost, she was incredibly understanding and did an amazing amount of work to locate a technician and negotiate for our new computer.

Oh yeah, you still need to get that “Check Up” done….

You may recall from an earlier post that when we had first arrived in Sarajevo we had attempted to go to the local clinic for a check up that I need to have certified for school, such that they can confirm I have not brought any lethal Canadian pathogens into the country. Well, this week the school actually arranged for a large group of us to go to the clinic together (read – please inundate the clinic staff with a large group of loud students with no translator), such that it would be a bit easier for everyone to go through the process at the same time.

Thursday morning we arrived bright and early at 8am, along with about two hundred other Sarajevans. Straight away we settled in for a long morning (read – all day.) The head nurse in the reception area was, how shall I say, one with a “rough exterior”. I offered this description to the friend of a schoolmate later on, wanting to describe her as tough and firm, yet reasonable, yet he took my Canadian euphemism as an expression of her simply being “butt ugly.” Sigh.

Our nurse-friend tersely explained (in rapid Bosnian) that we should take these forms, fill them out, and then go to one side of the building for chest x-ray, another side of the building for blood and urine analysis, the third floor for form stamping and psychology analysis (not sure why this was necessary – and for me the psychologist simply said “AH! Canadian from Edmonton Canada, but you look more Scottish. Welcome to Bosnia.), and then back to reception for overall certification of the results.

In the end, of the group of twelve of us Masa ended up translating for at least 8 throughout the process, and we eventually wrapped our day at the clinic around 2:30pm. I am apparently free of disease. Although it would be tough to say exactly whose urine ended up in my results, as at least 37 of us all left our samples on the “in tray” at the same time, each only loosely marked and identified. Oh well, at least I did not get results telling them I was pregnant.