By Ahmet Abdulaziz …
What I hate the most is a last moment surprise. Interestingly the more I hate it, the more I come across unexpected surprises. Of course life is full of surprises, but I really get out of my senses when I am in such a situation.
Unfortunately it happened once again just two days back. As I was all set to write my column and some news for “CyprusScene“, all of sudden my computer broke down. That 
was the moment when I had thought over a couple of topics and details to write. As it is not usually very easy for me to find a suitable time to sit and write, that was the time when I had managed to find a short period of time, enough to write.
But, as I started, the computer went off without any notice. Startled, I thought of re-starting it, when it re-started by itself. I waited patiently for the computer to go through the routine few moments of re-lightening of the computer screen. Everything seemed perfect, and I re-entered the file to write, then the computer once again went off.
That made me really upset. I switched off the computer, to retry after a few moments. The result was not different this time too. The computer did not want me to write at all.
I tried one more time, but the situation did not change. I phoned the computer guy to come and check it out. He said that he would come.
The computer guy did not turn up the whole day. I phoned him in the evening, but he was busy. He promised to come the next day. He came and took the computer for formatting.
One more day passed. I waited the whole day. He came back in the evening and returned the computer after formatting. Everything seemed fine. But unfortunately by that time my priorities had changed. I had had to attend to some other urgent work. The column writing episode was put aside for the next day.
As I started working on my Excel files, I realised that the dates were not appearing in the same format as it used to be previously. For the whole of my life I write the date as day, month and year, but my computer was now showing all dates in excel files as month, day and year.
That was a serious setback for me, as that particular excel file was a large file in which too much information related to dates. Almost every line was starting with a date in the first column. It was night, and I had had to sort the problem out by myself.
I accept that I am not very good with computers, because still I consider the computer as the elder brother of the typewriter. However, I found out that at one place there was a command from where the date formation can be changed. From there I found out that while formatting the option of English (United States of America) was applied on all excel files. Due to that, all dates were showing month first and day later.
That was what I had thought. I changed that and applied English (United Kingdom ). The dates were once again in the required format. I was happy about sorting out a technical issue by myself. It took me hours to apply the same option in all the files and sheets and columns, but at the end of the day I was happy to reach the point where I could re-start my work in the excel files.
The next day, I re-started working on my excel files, because I had to complete the assignment at the earliest. But then I realised that the ordeal was not over at all. The dates that I had corrected earlier were there in the format as I wanted, but the new dates that I started typing, were again showing the month first and day next. Once again I started trying to sort it out. I checked the option of English (United Kingdom) was correctly applied for all the column of every sheet. I was astonished how the same option that was giving the desired results the night before, was not giving the same result after a few hours.
It seemed that I had taken up this challenge. I wanted to sort it out by myself. I did not call the computer man. I worked hard for hours, but to no avail.
At the end of the day, I decided to leave that assignment, and start writing this column. So I am writing this column, and am happy that I do not have to write any dates here.
But my mind is still not here. My mind is still worried about my excel files. There is not much time left, to finish and deliver that assignment in the excel files.
I have accepted my defeat, and have decided to call the computer guy to check and sort that problem out. I hope that he would be able to sort it out in a short period of time, otherwise if he takes the PC away with him, that will make things really very difficult for me.
But this is life, full of unexpected situations.
