ANNIVERSARY FAILURE IN LHASA

How romantic! Liz with the customer rep at the Lenovo Service Center contemplating computer repairs and the location of the nearest ladies' room.

As we exited the plane from Kathmandu into Lhasa's international airport, we were excited. The day marked our four-year wedding anniversary, six months had flown by since we'd left the United States for this journey, and we had been granted permission to enter Tibet! 

But best of all, we simultaneously spotted a sign in English for "RESTROOMS," dead ahead. Now, if we could just make it the next 100 feet without any accidents, we would really celebrate. Either the food on Air China or the breakfast in Kathmandu had left us with a little stomach surprise.

Thankfully, we both made it to the bathrooms OK (thanks for being concerned!). We then cleared Chinese customs without incident, making it through their weird scanner machine that looks for books (a customs officer made Liz take out all her books, went through each one, and asked if they were all fiction) and finally made it to our hotel.

Looking forward to finding a pharmacy and sending some emails, we booted up the computer. Instead of the comforting Windows start-up sound, we were greeted with a series of beeps and the very panic-inducing blue screen below. Welcome to China, indeed.

Happy anniversary! The "FAILED" screen from our hard drive crash. Much more photogenic than stomach problems.

Our hard drive was fried, and along with it, we may have just lost nearly every photo from our trip. So much for celebrating.

Then Kip remembered seeing a Lenovo sign on our way to the hotel. Turns out, there was an official Lenovo Customer Service Center on the same street we were staying. We were saved! Or so we thought. 

After 30 minutes of CPR with something called "the Golden Key," the helpful young man shook his head solemnly. "Don't open the computer again, until you're back in the U.S.," he said. "There's nothing we can do here." 

We thanked him and immediately found a cafe with Skype, with which we reached the most unhelpful Lenovo customer service representative on earth. No luck, unless we wanted to mail the computer to New Jersey and pay a phone technician $150 per hour to talk about it. We both started to cry. Not really. (OK, Kip might have teared up a little). 

The owner of the Summit Cafe overheard our pained Skype conversation, and he recommended we go to a place called "the Cyborg." This conjured up all kinds of fantastic images in our heads, but it turns out it's a four-story high strip mall of electronic chaos. There, we met our saviors.

Since our tech savvy-ness is about as poor as our Mandarin, our saviors talked to us through an online translator. 

Three eager guys in their mid-twenties who spoke no English immediately grabbed the computer and a screwdriver. Despite our protests, one proceeded to take out the hard drive while the other two "spoke" with us via an online translator. The internets are amazing.

We're not sure what kind of magic they worked, but (as far as we can tell) they saved all our files to our new one terabyte external hard drive, replaced our fried 500GB hard drive with a new one, and updated all our programs--they did this all for less than $300 (the hard drive alone would cost that much back home). These are some cyborgs that we could get used to. Only in China.

In addition to our computer freak out, it seems all of our other electronics (as well as our GI tracts) failed us in Lhasa. We noticed that both (yes, both) of our cameras are beyond damaged. Our small point and shoot has a severely scratched lens (a design flaw due to the auto-lens cover being too close to the lens), and something in our DSLR lens is rattling, inhibiting the auto-focus from working. 

Not to worry, we are keeping a running list of our "first world problem" complaints in a notebook so we can look back and see how we were really "roughing it".

To top it all off, we were fortunate enough to come home to our extremely warm and cozy hotel room. At least, as long as you kept your parka and beanie on.

True romance--our anniversary hotel suite, with no heat or running water, and a squat toilet outside.

After a rough few days, we finally got back our appetites and went out for a fancy anniversary dinner (thanks, Larry P, Todd P, and Sheila Z!).  A yak pizza, yak steak sandwich, and a tall Lhasa beer were just what we needed. Happy Anniversary to us.