Just another reason

I love Switzerland.

Anyone who knows me well, and even most of the people with whom I only have a passing acquaintance, knows how attached I am to my computer! And by my computer I mean any one of the three that I currently possess: the old one that I need to sort and finally transfer to the new one and my travel one.

I do tend to arrive in the mountains without one part or the other – and one famous year when I was planning on being here over a week actually had to go purchase another mouse. Usually it’s the separate keyboard, but I can actually manage without that for a few days (it allows me to put the computer on top of the mini toaster so that the screen is at eye level but still type properly at elbow level (those of us who took typing lessons will know what I am talking about).

Yesterday though was the biggest of disasters when I realized that I had managed to get up here without the battery pack! For an old computer where the battery maybe holds an hour this was not going to be good – all the photo work that I needed to do, the e-mails, the blogs, etc. for perhaps a week.  E-mails I could eventually pick up if I installed all my programs into the new computer, which I have brought along for the second time in hopes of starting that famous transfer. However as all the passwords are on the old computer it would have meant a lot of boot it up for 5 minutes, find a password, turn off, transfer to new, etc. with no hopes of actually getting it all done.  I love walking, but there is a limit to the number of walks that one can take in any given day. My reading materials are meant to be supplementary for a week so even they were going to run out. What to do? Go buy yet another battery pack – that is if I could find one?

Then I remembered: I live in Switzerland!

Call home, spoke to my housemate and R, had them locate the one that I had lent to younger son when he lost his, and send it express mail yesterday in the hopes that it would at least get here tomorrow whilst I was out taking my train ride so that come Thursday I could “work” again.

Bless my housemates, bless the mostly-efficient Swiss postal service – by express sent last night around 18:00 it arrived here in the mountains at 9:00!

Yes I’ll still go take a walk, but my life as I know it has just been immeasurably improved by this seemingly small proof of a system that on the whole works and works well.