I’m kind of a control freak. That’s not good, especially when traveling for business, when everything that can go wrong often really does.
I was in Bali, Indonesia, and my trip was going very well until about the third day, when my laptop computer broke down. I needed it for work, and like everyone who has experienced a broken computer, I felt out of control and out of touch. That’s not a good feeling for me.
My first instincts were to just dump the computer, ship it home to Oregon for repair or buy a new computer somewhere in Indonesia. Each of those ideas had its own drawbacks, so I finally decided to try to get the thing fixed in Bali. At the time, Bali had a good electronic infrastructure for commerce, but not everyone was as plugged in as we are in the United States. I still figured there must be a few computer repair technicians available somewhere in Bali who could help me out.
The hotel front desk directed my driver to a computer dealer. We drove out of the hotel district, and cruised through neighborhoods crammed with shops for baskets, teak furniture and kites. When we passed some beautifully manicured rice fields, I really thought I had made a poor decision, since we were in rural Indonesia. We finally got to the computer store, and a woman there directed us to the computer repair part of the establishment, which was in a shed packed with pool tables. It looked to me like the most out-of-control high-tech service center anywhere in the world. It was like a computer graveyard, with parts strewn all over the place. To say I was a little concerned is an understatement.
No one seemed to speak English, but an older man finally pointed to a teenage boy who apparently could help me. The young man quickly said my computer wasn’t booting up, which didn’t give me much confidence, since I already knew that. But I asked him if he thought he could fix it. He smiled and took my laptop.
Instead of using that magic electronic tester that I saw computer repair people use at my shop back home, this young man began tapping on my computer’s plastic shell with his fingers. It reminded me of how I used to check the backs of my older patients for pneumonia. He then put his ear down on the computer’s surface, which made my blood pressure rise even more. I could not figure out what this young man was doing since he was doing absolutely nothing high tech. It was really more like he was performing a deep Balinese massage on my computer. I nearly lost my mind when he started to take it apart. Screws were all over the place, and he was jiggling wires and jamming connections together. I thought everything on my computer was lost.
But then he put the cover back, flipped the switch, and everything was fixed. Best of all, nothing was lost. I would have paid him anything, but he only asked for 20,000 rupiah, which is about $3.18 in American dollars. I gave him much more.
The computer worked like a charm for years after his repair. But even more important is that I learned that sometimes you simply can’t control everything. Sometimes you have to trust the most unlikely of people. It’s a good lesson to learn, especially when you are on the road.
By Gideon Bosker, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/business/global/out-of-the-country-and-feeling-out-of-touch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
