It's a little less than a month before the date when my thesis final-final version must be handed in, and my computer has died. It's toast. Completely. It won't work anymore. Not ever. No way to fix it. End of the line. That's it.

And all of a sudden I saw myself computerless. Worse. Access-less. Web-less. Not-even-the-keyboard-to-write-my-thesis-with-less. Everything-less.

How troublesome it is to be without a computer! I've been TV-less for more than six months. I was DVD-less longer than that. Radio-less, as well. I've never had a microwave. And a fridge... No, OK, I've never been without a fridge, that's impossible. But it's astonishing to realise the computer has reached the same necessity level of a fridge.

I could have survived for a while without the internet. I'd probably be feeling like punching the monitor every 15 minutes, bouncing up and down for not being able to read my emails, follow the crisis in Iran, see the latest celebrity gossips, check the spelling of some more exotic words, and why not say it, shopping for a new computer. Because I'd still have within my reach the technological wonder that is the word processor, alied to the modern life magic known as the keyboard, without which there is not even the slighest possibility of me finishing my thesis one day, not to mention within schedule.

But no, not even that. All of a sudden I was back to pre-informatic times, having only a pen or pencil and the blank page to write with. Pre-historic times, indeed. What a waste of time, writing and then rewriting and then re-rewriting! And the joint pains? Unused to the effort, the hand hurts after several pages. A few more, and the pain becomes paralising. What was bothersome typing becomes, when writing by hand, a pain that hinders, immobilizes, cripples.

Luckily for me, I found out I have a friend who had a spare computer at home. Had. Now it's with me, solving a big problem. And I can go back to writing my thesis, and also to reading emails, following the crisis in Iran, seeing the celebrity gossips, checking the spelling of obscure words, writing blogs, and all those things that distract me from the original purpose that was writing the thesis.