Stuff Happens

Lviv, Ukraine, April 29, 2019

I don't know what to say.  I guess I'll just start writing and see what comes out.

This trip has been most unusual. A lot has gone wrong.  I wrote a Blog post but wasn't able to post it because my laptop crashed, irreparably, as it turned out.

Then when I retrieved the post using my new "computer setup" you see in this picture I deleted the post because it's really tricky using this new setup and I hit the wrong key.

I'm using my smart phone and a new blue tooth keyboard and mouse.  The key board is really cool It folds up so I can hold it and my phone and mouse all in one hand or put it all in one pocket.  I like to travel light so this may be what I do from now on. And it has letters in both Roman and Cyrillic.

My laptop crashing was part of a series of "events" the first losing my main credit card temporaily as I was preparing to leave home. And before that finding the debit card I only use for traveling had expired. So I had a new one sent to my hotel in Ukraine, and brought enough cash to survive til it arrived.

Oh, but then I find out, when I get to Ukraine, the new debit card won't arrive til I've left my base hotel in the city of Lviv for the next leg of my trip, a 7 hour train ride deep into the Carpathian mountains for 20 days.

And the the great big "Beginner's Ukrainian" book which i left at the reception desk last year for my return this year is nowhere to be found.  But no worries, I had it scanned into my computer,  yet it's much nicer to study outdoors on a nice Spring day sitting in the park here in Lviv which you can't do with a laptop cause it's too bright to read out.

Oh, and then, of course, if your computer has crashed irretrievably the scanned book isn't available either.

So I don't think you want to hear more about this.  How my best friend in Ukraine who just happens to be a Professor of Computer Science and the nicest guy you could ever meet almost got my laptop working but it turned out to have a bad chip and I had encrypted the hard drive and don't have the encryption key with me and the HP service center I took it to which replaced the chip can't restore it without the key.

So God, or the Gods, have a purpose in all this. To keep us humble? And i've always found that if you look for the good outcome in bad events you can find it.  And in this series, it seems to be my new traveling light and not having to worry about my laptop being stolen with all my personal info.  I'll leave that home from now on.

And my debit card did show up ahead of when they last told me it would.  So I'm good to go.

Easter is a week later here in the Orthodox church.  So I got to attend the most important religious service in the year in this part of the world yesterday.

A lot has happened here.  I arrived just in time for the first day of a new President elect.  Hopefully, it will be the dawn of a new day for Ukraine with a better government than the last.  I wrote about that in my last blog post which disappeared in the ether but I'll deal with that topic in my next post.

For now I just want to launch this before I have the chance to hit the wrong key again.

Happy Easter and Thanks for Reading!