Watch out, thieves about!

Losing your phone

You won’t believe what happened last weekend. I find it hard to believe myself: my phone got stolen! Things like that have happened to a lot of my friends before, but I always thought it would never happen to me since I always look after my things when I’m going out… but not last Friday.

Myself and three of my friends went to our favourite bar to have a few drinks after work. It was a fun night and we stayed out a little longer than expected. When we were leaving I wanted to grab my phone that I had put on the table, but I realized that it was not there any more. First I thought it might have fallen down onto the floor or perhaps that one of my friends had taken it as a joke, but after we checked the floor and all of our pockets, we had to come to terms with the fact that it was not there any more. Somebody had stolen it!

Not having a phone is really hard for me since I have all my music on my phone. I use it to take pictures, check my emails, browse the internet and of course, I have all my numbers stored in my phone – and nowhere else. So all the contacts are gone now.

The worst thing was not that my phone was stolen. The biggest problem was, that I had my ID, my credit cards and cash in my phone case. I had to report the theft to the police, which took me about 2 hours in the police station. I also had to get my SIM card and my credit card blocked so that nobody could use it. Last but not least, I have to go and get a new ID next week. Goodness knows how long that will take!

So much trouble just because of a few seconds of carelessness! Next time I go out, I will definitely keep an eye on my things.

How annoying!

Chicken Pox at my age

So after the New Year’s Eve celebrations, I was all ready to deal with the inevitable hangover that would strike on the 1st of January. Little did I know that I was in for a much worse time than I had expected. Upon arriving at home after seeing my friends and family over Christmas, I was set to ring in the New Year with some work pals and other ex-pats at the flat of a friend of a friend. The usual so far, nothing out of the ordinary. It was not welcomed then, when I couldn’t manage to eat anything at all the next day and so I moped around feeling very tired and sorry for myself until it was time for an early night. I woke up the next morning with a small, what appeared to be, a bite of some sort on my arm. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and to my horror I was covered head-to-toe in tiny little spots.

I had chicken pox, I didn’t know this for a fact since I’m not a doctor myself and not having ever encountered them before, so I took myself off to the hospital where I had to wait another TWO HOURS to be seen. After a lot of going to and fro around the hospital for X-rays and prescriptions and double checking my details (which they still managed to get my date of birth wrong somehow) I was free to go to the pharmacy. I arrived at the pharmacy about half an hour before it was due to close and realised that, after the pharmacist had given me my “medication”, which consisted of Talc and paracetamol, that I was going to need to pay for it and I didn’t have my wallet. Luckily I wasn’t staying too far from the pharmacy so I went home to get my wallet and walked back with ten minutes to spare.

Unfortunately, this was already a really rather bad day and it wasn’t getting any better when I realised that my card nor my cash were inside after having left them in the trousers I had been wearing on New Year’s Eve. Off I went, back to the flat to hunt for my card and/or cash before the pharmacy shut. Luckily, I did manage to find them and i did manage to get back to the pharmacy but surely all of this would have been easier if I was 3 or 4 years old. I mean, obviously I wouldn’t have been able to take myself off to the doctors or pay for my medication (actually come to think of it, they might have been free then) but the general logistics of me having chicken pox would be a lot less hassle. My mum could have taken care of all that for me, but then she too would have caught the virus since she’s never had it either. My advice is, if you’re going to get Chicken Pox, get it young, don’t scratch when you do get it or better still, get a vaccination. Prevention is indeed better than a cure.