Things that make you go vroom

On Tuesday, I suffered what could be described as a comedic mishap. Well, if you're a sadist. I was cooking pasta with my laptop in a convenient and sensible location next to the sink, so I could catch up with The Daily Show as I cooked. I was obviously a bit clumsy with taking the pot of pasta off the stove, because I managed to spill boiling water down my front, and then had the reflex action of thrusting the pot away from me into the sink and splashing my laptop with water too. Now, it's not quite as bad as it sounds - I have an angry red welt about the size of the palm of my hand on my stomach and not that much water got on the laptop. In fact, although I did react straight away to wipe the water off, I at first thought it was fine, since the video kept playing and everything stemmed normal. Maybe that was dumb, but I've had the odd spill before with no dire consequences, so it was only when, a short time later, I tried to type something that I realised the keyboard was fried. Several days later, the keyboard is still on the fritz. Other things kind of work, but you'll get weird reactions like windows opening and closing over and over, so it's not really useable.

Naturally enough, I went hunting for the receipt for this thing costing hundreds of euros which I only bought back in April and couldn't find it. A receipt for my broken nano which I bought over three years and three moves ago in new Zealand? That I have. So anyway, I went down to the place and they reckon they should be able to find it for me. Obviously that kind of thing isn't under warranty, but I'm hoping my insurance will do something - or more likely, tell me that the excess would be more than the repair. I wouldn't know, since I emailed them and obviously in France people don't do crazy things like replying to their customers.

Anyway, I'm typing this out laboriously on my iPad (yay iPad), so I'll wrap things up with an explanation of the title. Today is the three-year anniversary of my move to Europe! I left NZ on the 09/09/09, so it's easy to remember. Of course, time zones and 27-hour plane trips being what they are, I didn't actually arrive in Europe until the 10th, and then I spent a couple of weeks intially before arriving in Nice around the 27th of September, methinks.

And (I'm getting there, I promise) the reason for my flying to Milan was to go watch my first live Formula One race. Some of you may be aware that I'm a huge F1 (car racing) fan. I try not to go on too much about it on the blog, as I know it will bore the pants off everyone, but if you follow me on twitter, that's where you can go for pants-removing F1 chat every couple of weeks or so.

F1 races are always on a Sunday, which was not the 9th, obviously, in 2009, but this year the Italian GP is on my Europeversary, which I thought was a nice little coincidence. So without further ado, I invite you to take a wee walk down memory lane with some photos, videos and stories from Milan, monza, and the exciting (honestly) world of formula one. It's really hard to understand just how fast, loud and exciting F1 cars are in real life even if you are a fan, so i dont know if this will convey any of that, but it will give you a little taste perhaps. Just FYI, again, F1 cars are crazy loud, so I suggest adjusting your volume if you watch any of the vids.

Photos of Milan and at the track:
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/photos.html 
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/more-photos-and-below.html

Videos of the cars in action:
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/videos-i-hope.html 
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/race-video.html 
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/race-video-last-one-i-promise.html 

And a super long account of our time in Milan and at the race. FYI, every time I go on about watching "quail", it should be "quali" i.e. the qualifying session before the race. I am not that interested in quail:
http://gwannelsandiego.blogspot.fr/2009/09/milan.html 

PS So many people read and seemed to enjoy my last post, probably largely to Mary Kay tweeting/linking it, so big thanks to her and welcome if any new readers decided to stick around! Probably not, since I cunningly followed it up by not blogging for over a week and then posting a rehash of old blog posts on a niche subject, but hey...

PPS I wrote this in advance, and I think now my laptop has pulled a Lazarus and come back to life! Hallelujah!