Perspectives

All a matter of perspective.  Just watching Spiral with the extraordinary convoluted loyalties and moralities of the police and justice system. It all seems very curious to me as there seems to be a general acceptance that anything goes in order to achieve an outcome.  I ask Jon if that sort of thing ever went on when he was in the police force. He doesn't answer.  I guess they think in France that sometimes you have to fight things on the same level with people that simply don't care about the consequences.  Well there are a lot of people on Spiral who in one way or another don't seem to be concerned about the consequences. It's a matter of perspective to them.

I broke a tooth this week.  Just fell to pieces in my mouth.  Got an appointment straight away with the dentist.  Predictably he said I would need a crown, as the tooth was already well filled and the remaining outer shell had fractured.  Before you know it he's popping an injection in and drilling the remainder down to a peg.  Oh well, another £500 I wasn't expecting, I think.  He explains he will be using a Zirconia filling - it will be as strong as rock, 'well, stronger'.   I'm sent down to wait whilst the temporary filling hardens.  Returning to the chair he explains I will need my teeth cleaned before the new crown is fitted.  The lower tooth on  on other side will one day need doing as well; the fracture was caused by the pressure from the crown above and I have crowns on both sides.  Great, now my new super-hard crown will be cracking the crown above, which is of a lesser quality than the new one, of course. Yet again I'm amazed at how anxious I get about these procedures. My palpitations have only just about subsided by the time I'm ready to go.

I'm called over to the desk.  They've prepared my 'quote'.  Well, quote it says but as the treatment has already started I am hardly in a position not to pay. I look at the amount - £1210!!!  Over twice what I was expected.  In a cute little move my dentist has found an even more expensive material than the previous ceramic (which was the ultimate in it's time) and now from my perspective I will have a tooth that will most certainly outlive me, costs more than any other part of my body, will not be seen by anybody but me (and only if I choose to look) and that may cause more damage in my mouth in the long run.  Splendid. My anxiety this time (and frequently before) has clouded my ability to see how easily I'm led into more expense than I wanted simply by not stopping and asking what other options are available (and what the price will be) before putting my bum in the chair.  Looking online I find Zirconia crowns cost between £500-700.  My actual crown is costing £850; the rest is 'treatment, fitting, etc'.  If I'd gone to Budapest, I read, it might have cost me £290.  From my dentist's perspective he's made a tidy little profit which can go towards doing up his surgery... again. There goes my Summer School money and I don't even earn it until July.

I had taken my precious Mac in to the dealer to mended - the usb ports had stopped working and it needed a new motherboard (sorry, 'logic' board) - under warranty, thank goodness.  In order to sit next to Sophie  on the sofa (and with an aching mouth) I try to finish my latest batch of marking on my 15" workhorse but Office keeps crashing and the computer keeps freezing (those hold-the-button-down to restart jobbies).  You could make a cuppa and drink it every time it has to restart. Jeeeezzz.  Frustrated, I take a browse on the web for full size laptops as my poor faithful old Toshiba is actually full to the brim (literally) and the fan is charging away like a jet engine whilst I'm working.  You could still fry an egg on it after a couple of hours.

I see this amazing spec in a fully warranted reconditioned Asus machine in Argos Outlet - costing a little more than a 5th of the price of the tooth - 1TB hard drive, 6GB ram, nice blue aluminium, so not the dust magnet like my current patent black machine...  Put it that way and within a couple of days I'm typing this blog on my new machine! :-)

It's a matter of perspective, you see.  Cracking good machine and I get to play with Windows 8, which has, I find, a split personality. I can use 'new ways of working' and/or seamlessly switch to the old.  Even (as Jon points out) swapping between both with the touch of a button. For a computer junkie like me that is pure heaven.  I can wile away many happy an evening after work fiddling with this silent, non-overheating (boy, did my Toshiba get HOT), HDMI screen, 2 second 'Instant On' (the equivalent of stop-start technology) machine.  The dual-core Celeron processor means it probably isn't great for gaming but what would I want with one of those?  I write lectures, blogs and posts on Catchat, manipulate statistics, wade through electronic marking, read and respond to mail, sort photos and browse the web for information - whilst keeping precious kitties company, of course.  From my perspective it's absolutely Purrrfect.

In fact Jon likes the perspective of my new laptop so much he is now having one as well...