Good News And Bad News Part III

(Dr. Marcus Brody -- I'm sans camera and I refer to him later so yes, it makes sense)

THE GOOD NEWS:

I got a job teaching English at a really good private language school called Language Link. Here's the website:

http://www.languagelink.edu.vn/index.php?lang=en

If you look at the picture on the top of the homepage I'm the white guy in the front row...or at least will be soon. The job is perfect: it pays well for Vietnamese standards, is right near my apartment, has free bottled water, gives me a cubby for my stuff to be properly stolen from, allowed me to sign a six month contract with bonuses for finishing it (most schools want one year contracts), gives me money to join a gym and has a plethora, yes a plethora, of cute girls working there. The best part is that I only have to work a few hours each day and don't have class until 4PM every day so I can write in the morning and make my body look damn sexy at the gym in the early afternoon.

THE BAD NEWS:

Some of you may recall a little incident in which I was robbed of all my belongings in the middle of the night while sleeping. You know, that whole Ninja thing. Well, you may also recall the "good news" in that blog entry. I believe I mentioned how I luckily had recently saved everything from my computer onto an external hard drive and that somehow the robbers didn't take it. I think I said to at least thirty people, "Thank god my hard drive wasn't taken." If that isn't the exact quote it's a damn close variation of it. Well, yesterday I bought a new mac and plugged in my hard drive. Immediately some message comes up:
"Would you like the Time Machine to back up your hard drive on your passport (passport is the name of my external hard drive)."
I thought, "yeah, that sounds good. I want my stuff backed up." So I clicked yes.
Then another message came up: "Erasing External Hard Drive."
Um, what? Excuse me? Then the wheel on my screen starts to turn as if it's starting to work. I freaked out and did the only thing someone who doesn't know crap about computers would do--I pulled my external hard drive plug out of my Mac. Phew, saved it. Um, not so much. I then tried to plug back in my external hard drive and well, the computer wouldn't recognize it. Panic started to set in, more so then when I realized I was robbed last week.

I took a few deep breathers and thought, "I'll just try it on Ryan's mac." I went up to Ryan's room and plugged in my external hard drive into his slot (that is not a gay joke and for the record since I've gotten a few too many emails about this: RYAN AND I ARE NOT GAY LOVERS). Well, his computer couldn't recognize my hard drive either. Yeah, I think I did what the robbers couldn't do: I LOST ALL MY PICTURES/MUSIC/SCRIPTS/ETC!

Hold on, hold on, there is some possible good news:
1. This morning I took my hard drive to the apple store here (which by the way I'm pretty sure isn't really an apple store and, like everything else, is a rip off of a major brand) and the IT guy said he thinks he can fix it. I left him my HD and was told to come back tomorrow.
2. The other day I put all of my scripts onto Steve's computer. Well, Steve is traveling in Cambodia and Laos at the moment so who knows if he'll make it out alive or with his computer. It's kind of like that scene in Indiana Jones when Dr. Marcus Brody has the grail and Indiana says he could never be caught but in reality he could easily be caught. In this scenario I'm pretty sure, based on his blog, Steve would trade his laptop for a night of spooning with a girl.
3. I recently put online all of my Australia and China photos. Also, Ryan stole a bunch of my Cambodia photos which I'll soon steal back.

The moral of the story is never, never ever, hit "yes" on your computer if you don't know what you're doing. Ironically the thing called "Time Machine" won't allow me to travel back in time and fix this problem.