Charafantah's Cave

If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time.

Browsing Posts tagged luck

I Hate Probability

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I hate probability, not because i sucked at it at school, on the contrary, i used to love it but it seems that probability doesn’t want to love me back.

What is the probability that you are listening to your MP3 (which is in your pocket) and a Tamer Hosny song decides to popup in the playlist while at the exact moment you are opening the elevator door and at that exact minute while you are changing the song that the MP3 falls from your hand for no apparent reason, disconnects from the headphones and falls EXACTLY in the TINY space between the elevator and the floor to be never seen again!

Very low probability i guess! Anyway, i just wonder why this weird probability doesn’t happen to me when am like winning a contest or getting a great job or something!

It’s all Tamer Hosny’s fault anyway, he’s the one to be blamed!

Some people don’t believe in bad luck…those people have not met me yet.

I certainly agree that everyone will definitely face bad situations in his life, and i certainly agree that any of the situations i’ve been through could easily happen to anyone else. But i also believe that they can’t happen to anyone else than me in such a systematic, ironic and timely manner.

It’s as if the whole world is conspiring against me, it’s like i am the living proof of Murphey’s laws. Sometimes people meet me and say: “dont worry, its just coincidences, you are perfectly normal, my cousin was in the same situation as you” but they realize their mistake later on when they know me better :)

Its thousands of small things, nothing severe or fatal so far, thank God, but its too much.

So, back to the story, let me tell you how did my last week go:

  • Tue 21 April 9:30am: I join my new work….
  • Wed 27 May: A stupid conversation with my father about how careless i am, it all started when he saw the mess in my room, the conversation included a question on where do i place the work’s laptop among a few other questions…. all my responses where among the lines of “dont worry father, i know what am doing”
  • Thu 28 May – 5:00pm: Work is finished,  a colleague asked me if i could give him a lift as he doesnt have his car today, i said yes, since he live in heliopolis which is not too far from me.
  • Thu 28 May – 6:00pm: Dropped him off at his home, discovered that he lives near Diwan bookshop, so i decided that after all the tension i am going through the past few weeks, i really need a relaxing weekend at home with a good book.
  • Thu 28 May – 6:10pm: Got my book and headed back to my car.
  • Thu 28 May – 6:11pm: I noticed the car is much noisier than usual, looked back, to find the window’s glass is broken, 10 seconds later i realize that the laptop which i left on the back seat is missing (yes, the laptop i got from my new work, which costs 1200EUR)
    Yes, this is the SECOND TIME I LOSE WORK’S LAPTOP!!!!!!! mesh mesada2 nafsy ya3ny!
  • Thu 28 May – 6:30pm: Trying to file a report in Nozha police station(which is located just next to heliopolis square btw!!), after long conversation, they told me the robbery didnt occur in their area and i have to file the report in Heliopolis police station
  • Thu 28 May – 7:00pm: Trying to find an officer to file a report…
  • Thu 28 May – 7:30pm: Still trying…
  • Thu 28 May – 8:15pm: The report is done, i ask to get the report number and a copy of it to provide to work, the guy said we have to ask “Wael Basha” first!!!
  • Thu 28 May – 9:00pm: Wael Basha went out….still waiting for him.
  • Thu 28 May – 10:00pm: I go fix the broken glass
  • Thu 28 May – 10:45pm: Looks like Wael Basha mezawa3′….i go home
  • Fri 29 May – 3:00pm: I go get a haircut
  • Fri 29 May – 3:45pm: Finished my hair cut, go back to my car, Wind Shield glass is broken (YES! The front glass) lewa7do keda! ghayran men a7′ou!
  • Sat 30 May – 4:00pm: Back to police station, trying to get my copy of report, had to pay money under the table to get the report number
  • Sat 30 May – 5:30pm: The guy said he cant get it to me today as the number i got is wrong, will meet him tom early morning to get it (he wants more money!)
  • Sat 30 May – 7:30pm: You dont want to know.
  • Tue 2 June – 7:00pm: My car totally broke up
  • Thu 4 June – 6:00pm: Total cost to fix car and renew license etc 3200LE

lets try to do a rational analysis looking at the past events, we can find the irony in the following:

  • The work’s laptop had to be stolen(2nd time :( ) when i merely completed a month at my new work!
  • It also had to be stolen just the next day where my father was accusing me of being careless and tells me to watch out where i place my laptop in car!!!!! :(
  • My colleague at work HAD to ask for a ride that day!
  • He had to live next to Diwan!
  • The theif had to pass by my car during the 10 mins i left it unattended!!!
  • The glass HAD to break the next day!!!

Do you think it’s all a coincidence? i think NOT! :)

Just to remind you:

  • Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse
  • Smile today. . . tomorrow will be worse
  • If it seems to good to be true, it probably isn’t

ان حظي كدقيق فوق شوك نثروه ,,, ثم قالو لحفاة يوم ريح اجمعوه !!!
صعب الأمر عليهم ثم قالو اتركوه ,,, ان من اشقاه ربي كيف انتم تسعدوه!!!

I haven’t been blogging lately because i officially no longer gives a damn :)

I don’t give a damn about:

  • Politics and where the world is heading to
  • Egypt and how miserable we are becoming
  • People and their attitudes
  • Life, love & values
Thursday 1 Jan 2009, here’s what happened during the first 2 hours of me waking up in the new year:
  • Got a speeding ticket, the policeman took my license as i only had 140LE from the 150LE i should pay
  • Lost my 3 weeks old 8GB USB flash memory in the hand break compartment
  • Went to a hospital
With a simple calculation, according to google; a year has 8765.8 hours that is roughly 13,148 unfortunate events to come.
So yea, i don’t want to blog, work, see my friends or do anything actually. i think it’s a severe case of depression, for no obvious reason :) (i want to travel, read, listen to music and chillout)

I always say i am the most unlucky person, catastrophe magnet person you could ever meet; and still many people do not believe me.

Here  are two incidents that happened the last 2 weeks.

 

1 - The Worm – الدودة

There is that new fancy coffee shop chains that recently opened, they opened a branch at work, so in their second day of opening, i decided to take a break from work and go get myself a treat from there. I thought a nice cake with a cup of tea would be great.

The place is in a very strategic place in the office, with a great view and comfortable seats and the prices are specially discounted for the company employees too!!! which is a really nice thing to have at work!!!

I go through all menu and chose an “Eclaire gateaux”… a few bites later, guess what i find on the plate sharing the food with me? YES! a nice huge GREEN worm! :)

 

2- The Wii Tragedy – مأساه الويى

A friend of mine was in a visit to China, i told him to get me a Wii from there as it is WAY much cheaper there(save 3500LE). I made sure to inform my friend to try the Wii there and make sure its modded so i can run my own CDs on it.

I got the device 2 days ago; and finally, yesterday i had a chance to open it. I was so damn excited, when i runned it, i discovered that everything is in Japanese, the menus, the manuals, EVERYTHING!!!

I said ok, no problem i’ll learn my way through the menus, and I took the first CD and put it in, only to discover that it doesn’t run PAL cds,,only NTSC!!!

I said ok, out of the 11 CDs i have only 1 is NTSC, i can try that one, so i put the CD in and start the game, only to discover that if the Wii language is Japanese, all the games will run with Japanese text and Japanese sounds!!!

So yea!!! I have a totally useless Wii that i cant use or run CDs on it! :(

 

 و على رأى المثل: قليل البخت يلاقى العضم فى البيتزا

It’s been a few days since my last blog, a few things happened, but i was so busy to blog (specially that i have no laptop now, so the only chance to blog is from the office, which as you might notice, i would be SO busy, so i can get out of here as soon as possible)

A few good things happened too, i can’t deny that :) finally things at work began to move a little bit and i made some progress.

Regarding the disasters, nothing really major, except that my tooth was hurting me really bad, dentist said it would cost 800SR just to fix it….it’s much better now, the pain is gone, i hope it’ll stay that way until am back to Egypt.

Apart from that, nothing really serious, just minor stuff, like we go to eat, we all order grilled chicken sandwich, and i am the only one who gets his sandwich with all the salad and topping but without the chicken :) (it’s ok, i returned it back to the restaurant)

Maybe also that once, where i was waiting for someone in front of the mall, and that weird dude in his car came and tried to “give me a ride”…it was so disturbing

But hell!!! life is much better now :) (compared to what it was a few days ago, it’s very relative…… moving from -100 to -20 is a great improvement, but you’re still in the minus :) )

Regarding the passports, we still have to complete some more papers before we could get new passports, we’ll see how it goes, police here is so bad (worse than egypt, can you imagine that?) and the Egyptian embassy is as bad as..ehmm i dunno,, as an Egyptian embassy :)

I had many people speak to me, saying that i am not so unlucky and there is no such thing as disasters magnet and that it’s all just a coincidence and that probably me putting all these thoughts in my mind is what causing it.

So i thought to myself, and i was like “Yea, it could be true, i’ll just not think about that anymore”

But here’s what happened:

All the Egyptians in the company working in Riyadh at the moment gathered in the office to watch the final match between Egypt & Cameroon (WELL DONE EGYPT!!! i never really thought we could make it….well done)
Thank God we won, or they could’ve killed me if we didnt :)

Our office is in a HUGE building called “Al Faysaliah – الفيصلية” which is one of the very few massive buildings in Riyadh.

There are 5 elevators in that building, so after the match we all decided to go back to the hotel and so, we get into one of the elevators and it’s really neat and clean, the elevator is BIG the sign says it fits 15 persons, it’s made by Mitsubishi and it’s really advanced (DOH! it needs an electronic access card to operate)

We were 7 inside it, less than half the allowed capacity, while the elevator moved down, a few shakes hit us, but it’s okay.
Just the minute we are near the ground floor, the elevator stops.

Opps, we’re stuck in the elevator!!!!!

We tried every possible button combination one could imagine, shouting and screaming and everything (the alarm button did not seem to work)

 

After a few minutes, we called our friends from the office who were lucky enough not to get into the same elevator as us to call the security, just seconds later, the speaker in the elevator worked (looks like that alarm button was working after all )

A saudi speaking guy, saying stuff i didn’t understand, later they translated to me he was telling us to wait, and asked how long we’ve been here.

They try to open the door, they successfully do, but we were afraid to jump, as the elevator was stuck between two floors, if it moves while someone is jumping, it could cut him in half :o

so we told them to leave the door open for a few mins to get some fresh air in, and to try and move the elevator from the main control unit. To do so , we had to close the door first (so the elevator can move)

But hey! no luck :)

It was more than 20 mins passed since we’ve been stuck in there, so i was really tired and i decided just to sit on the floor until we get out ( i have some pictures :) will post them later)

So we decided that if they can’t move it, we’ll risk jumping out of the door if that’s our only choice…. but :) (why must be always a but? ) they cant open the door again…somehow, for some weird reason, the tool they use to open the door, or the door itself i dunno, became loose and doesn’t want to open.

It’s like, i gave you a chance to escape and you refused it, now you’ll be stuck here forever :D
Many people decided to sit down like me, as we were all tired

we called the police to ask for help.

After about 45-60mins they managed to open the door again and we all jumped out safely.

You have no idea what looks everyone gave me :) , you know in the movies, when they catch an evil witch in the 17th century, how everyone look at her? i was the evil witch

So yea, 7 of us got stuck in an elevator for almost an hour :)

looks like i will have a disaster to blog about everyday, so wait for the series. You know what, the only good thing about this, is that no one gets hurt (so far, ya rab dayman)