Let's hear it for the boy...

Picture the scene. NewMan and I are sat in a departure lounge in Gatwick airport moments away from boarding a flight that will take us to the other side of the world on a long, exciting six month long adventure. I am not scared of flying. Nor am I overly thrilled by it as I do suffer from cabin fever and an irrational paranoia of getting deep vein thrombosis on long haul flights. So it was at this stage that I checked I had my flying survival kit ready and to hand. This kit consists of my iPod, my Kindle and a warm pair of socks. My iPod was fully charged and I lined up a favourite Camera Obscura album of mine to listen to, my socks were freshly washed and rolled up in anticipation of use once on board, however, my Kindle was a less than happy sight. My screen saver didn't look right, in so far as there was a huge chunk of Virginia Woolf missing and there were random lines through the bottom half of the display. Inwardly panicking I did what everyone does to a technological device that isn't working properly, I switched it on and off again. No change to poor old Virginia, she never did have much luck.

This was not looking good. Kindle's aren't like computers, the electronic ink paper display is not going to recover once it has been damaged or in my case ruined. I ashamedly showed NewMan the Kindle, almost painfully disappointed in myself as this Kindle had been NewMan's Christmas present to me.

"Oh dear," he said, taking the device from my hands and looking closely at the screen.

"It doesn't look good. Does it?" I am ever the optimist.

"No, it does not," Defeatism doesn't suit NewMan, especially when it comes to technology. The pit of guilt in my stomach expanded. "How did it happen?"

"I don't know, I guess I must have packed it badly," Oh how the irony of this statement stank considering I've just polished off a series of blog posts about preparing and packing for this trip.

"Hmm, well looks like we need to get you a new Kindle," NewMan's smile and new positivity relit my flames of excitement. We didn't answer the "How?" "Where?" "When?" questions which silently followed but I was able to put these questions on hold as I focused on making the most of Emirates' extensive in flight movies. I watched Submarine (an odd once to watch when you've not slept for nearly 20 hours), Brighton Rock (all style and no substance as the characters lacked credibility and depth but it was very beautifully shot), Senna (fascinatingly haunting and sad), The Tree of Life (I can't possibly comment as I was half asleep through most of it).

When we got to Malaysia the full extent of lacking a Kindle hit me. I had no books to read, and more importantly no spare baggage weight or space to allocate to a stash of novels I was being teased with by the kind people we are staying with. Knowing that I've been so looking forward to all the reading I would do on this trip, NewMan wasted very little time in making strides to replace the Kindle. Not only can you not buy any type of e-book reader, in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur airports but Amazon does not deliver to Malaysia. Getting another one delivered to the UK then courier-ing it over to south east Asia presented a logistical headache and other options were similarly complicated.

And so it came about that NewMan and a Google search saved the day. I'm fairly sure there is an element of "dodge" about the transaction but we found a young Malaysian man who imports and sells US Kindles to the Malaysian market and after a 30 minute taxi ride (for £4!!) the other day we arrived at a shopping centre in the middle of nowhere and a deal was done. My new Kindle is in perfect condition and I have been enjoying being reunited with my extensive collection of ebooks that I had stocked up in preparation for this trip; you have got to love this cloud computing age where things are stored remotely online rather than gone forever once a device is lost, stolen or compromised in an awkward packing situation.

Of course this was far from a serious or life threatening problem but it was our first challenge in a new country and it was also one that I am both proud and embarrassed to say NewMan automatically took upon himself and he succeeded with all the skill of a man who knows his way around the internet. Thank you NewMan!