Computer Land is that one place here in UB that I always dreaded to go like that of the Principal's Office when you're sure that you are really in trouble. Lo and behold that after three months of stay, my notebook had forced me to step into this "magical" Computer Land last Friday. I had deflected the idea of going since I don't want other people tinkering it with some Mongolian magic words and wands and so I tried countless solutions of fixing my own computer using a Safe Mode.
The night before I went to this Computer Land was my usual night of re-running How I met your mother and The Big Bang theory latest episodes then after which I tried out my latest downloaded game of Angry Birds. I finished at Level 1-5 and decided to put a password in my computer( since I am connected to 10 gazillion people at work). I shut it off and got a shut-eye myself.
The next morning at the office started my series of unfortunate events. I could not get passed the password prompt and my computer kept on beeping a weird sound. I had tried fixing it and thought that maybe I forgot to shift the Mongolian Cyrillic language to English that my computer could not recognize the characters even if I typed my password correctly. After our scheduled meeting with our social workers on our Day 1 Training, we decided to feast out in Loving Hut where I had a glorious цүъаи (Tsuvian). Tsuvian- is a Mongolian stir fry noodles with potatoes, carrots, other vegetables and meat (and more meat because it is cooked by and for Mongolians). The noodles I gobbled up however had no meat because Loving hut is a vegetarian restaurant and instead of mutton meat, I had soya meat in it. Loving Hut's tsuvian can easily lighten up my day especially on circumstances when your laptop is in the verge of giving up its life.
Around 2:00 pm, me and my interpreter Alta were finally at the Computer Land. Like almost majority of Mongolian shops, the repair shops are in the basement and look unappealing. Thousands of junk laptops are piled up in shelves so imagine how anxious I was of thinking that later that day my laptop will be joining those army of rubbish laptops. I was so thankful to have been entertained by Zorig who knows little English and a lot of hand gestures which were very helpful when Alta had to go earlier.
Zorig tried installing a software that can bypass my password. After hours and hours of tinkering and tapping on the keyboard, he decided to reformat my laptop because of a virus that damaged a boot drive. He managed to restore some of my files ( ~25% of my total files) though, but all of my precious pictures and VSO documents vanished.
Computer Land closes at 7:00 p.m, but Zorig was too kind enough to finish all the reformatting and installations until 8:00 p.m. After grueling 6 hours in that cold basement waiting for my laptop's survival from a shocked state, Zorig told me that I need to come back on the next day because he had not installed an anti-virus software and some drivers on it. He was so kind to charge me 15,000 tugrugs for all the repair he did, bought me a Sprite and dropped me off at my house.
Computer Land- that magical land in UB where dead laptops are brought to life but even if they managed to repair my laptop, I hope I would not go there again SOON.
