First day back at work after a 5-day holiday and what do I do first thing in the morning?... Colleagues excitedly pop into my office to collect "lai see", I get a bit nervous and then, yes, topple my coffee thermos right onto my PowerBook G4! The coffee drenches the keyboard and I quickly hold the PowerBook upside down. For about 15 seconds the PowerBook still runs but then goes out. I disconnect the power cable, take out the battery, pop off the keyboard and start wiping down the keyboard and try to absorb the coffee from underneath the keys. After the keyboard's exterior is dry I take off the thin titanium base plate of the PowerBook. The mainboard and most everywhere else is pretty dry. I leave the exposed PowerBook resting open and on one of its sides like an open book. I discover that the keyboard's ribbon cable easily disconnects from the mainboard and I start popping off keys, one by one to try and soak up the coffee from inside the thin membrane-like keyboard base. The keyboard is well designed because it protects the mainboard from spills and the keys pop off and back on easily, yet firmly. I want to blow everything dry with a hair dryer but none could be found in our office. I let everything air dry for about an hour while I go off to sort out another emergency — a PC that had a power supply that had blown. In the end, many keys on the PowerBook's keyboard don't work and so now in order to do any work I need to plug in an external USB keyboard. Thankfully, my company insured the PowerBook for accidents like this and so soon I'll be taking it in to a repair shop. I understand that they need 5-6 days to fix it so I'm wondering how I'm going to get much work done without it for that long! Well, I'm definitely going to try and rush them.

On the way back home I stopped by the Wanchai Computer Centre and picked up a cheap, HK$55 (US$7) Genius-branded USB keyboard to use at home. It works but the Command (Apple) key is the key with the Windows logo on it.

A nice thing that happened today was Nancy, who now lives in Tokyo and is visiting Hong Kong for just a week, dropped by to see Justin and ended up joining us for dinner. It was nice to catch up with her!