in which i am an invalid, and technologically trapped.

it's been about 48 hours since i last saw my laptop. it's not missing because i know where it is: on my office desk, charging. i can't remember whether it's on or not.

if i had my laptop, i'd have blogged sooner, i'd have popped open a LaTeX GUI program and worked on my draft of a research article. i'd have uploaded a review sheet to my students so that they could better study for next week's exam.

but no: i'm stuck in a d@mned h0spital.

i've been here since monday afternoon, and fool that i am, owning an a$us eee p¢ which is very easy to carry around, and i leave it in the office.

admittedly, i thought i'd just see a doctor, get a prescription, and make it back to my office hour. it's not dangerous and not life-threatening and i'm doing well, but it was more serious than i thought. maybe they will let me out by tomorrow afternoon ..

.. but part two of my seminar talk for tomorrow has been preemptively canceled. one less worry, i guess, but i was looking forward to preparing it after my treatments today.

what's good is that this hospital has a library for patients and their visitors, and in this library they have computers which connect to the internet.

the lobbies all have wifi, too. it used to be tempting; now it is taunting.

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it's easy to feel useless. i just didn't realise how much i depended on my personalised computer, with sftp and ssh and LaTeX and so on.

on the plus side, i started an introduction for the paper draft. it's written in longhand, in bits and pieces and revisions, and after today it might be ready for LaTeX.

i suppose that's something. without the right tools, it's a bit challenging to be productive.