AN UNEXPECTED FIND (5 march 2004)
My elder daughter sometimes displays a tendency to mix sweet drinks and electronics.
As a child, she poured a cup of Yoki (a yoghurt drink) on the keyboard of my laptop computer. It looked nice and pink, but - needless to say - the keyboard didn't survive such a treat.
Now that she is in secondary school, she often carries a sophisticated calculator in her bag. One fateful day, she had a sweet beverage in the same bag.
Unfortunately, the container of the beverage did not perform the task it was supposed to do. Some of the drink leaked into the calculator. Since that day the calculator has been less reliable than before.
One day, my younger daughter asked me to engrave her name into her calculator. But in her impulsiveness she had taken her sister's calculator. So for a year or so she has been using the calculator her sister had ruined.
Fifty yards from our home there is a shop that sells second-hand articles. I regularly have a look at their stock, and this week I saw the kind of calculator that has managed to give so much displeasure to my daughter.
So today I decided to buy a substitute for the calculator that has tortured her so long. But the gods obviously decided to reward me for this good deed. For what did I see next to the calculator?
Yes indeed, a chess computer. And as you may know, I collect chess computers.
If you want to see a better picture of the new addition to the collection, click here.
And if you are Dutch, you will no doubt want to know how much I paid. Allright, if you insist, here's the bill:
