So, yesterday at work, a colleague of mine basically blew my mind. He also solved a little mystery that has been puzzling me for quite some time.

As all you avid readers and fans of my blog will know, I’ve had quite the rocky relationship with technology (and for those of you who don’t know, click on the “Technology” tag in the tag cloud on the right to read about the South Korean toilet incident, the library incident, the ceiling fan that tried to kill me, the clocks, the digital blood pressure machines, and the many many computer incidents…)

In other words, I kill technology. To date, I have: crashed countless computers (including 3 separate incidents where I crashed an entire room full of networked computers), killed a brand new electric lawnmower, a microwave, a large number of clocks, not to mention the toilet and fan incidents….

Anyhoo, I’ve always assumed that I have some sort of weird, slightly abnormal electro-magnetic energy that throws off technological machines. Nothing too superstitious, and yet also completely logical to me. Plenty of nay-sayers insist it is all in my head, and not “scientific” but I fail to believe that so many unconnected incidents are all just coincidences….

But since moving to Oxford and starting my new job, I have had weirdly good technology karma. It’s been almost 3 years, and I haven’t crashed a single computer. In fact, I’ve been learning to use all kinds of different software, and have become known as a bit of a techno-whiz in the office (weird I know!).

So today, I was chatting away to a colleague of mine, and I happened to mention my history of electro-magnetic issues, and how weird it was that I haven’t had any problems since I started working here. He looks at me in surprise, and said that he actually has the opposite effect on technology. He used to work in IT support, and quite often when people had computer problems, they would miraculously be fixed all by themselves whenever he came over and got near them. He would literally fix computers just by being close to them.

So in other words, he has the opposite effect on computers that I do, and his karma/electro-magnetic field must have been cancelling out mine since I started this job – leaving me able to operate machinery safely while at work!

So clearly he’s the ying to my yang on all things electronic, which solves the mystery of why I haven’t accidentally crashed anything in quite some time. Naturally I was thrilled about this turn of events, as he now sits at the desk next to me, spreading his positive technological energy in my direction, although he was slightly less thrilled to be sitting next to me absorbing all my negative electro-vibes.

Anyhoo, you can call it crazy, weird, utterly unscientific mumbo-jumbo bollocks if you like, but it makes sense to me, and I simply tell it like I see it.

Also, while we’re on the subject of mumbo-jumbo, I recently re-deployed conkers around my home after a particularly busy autumn invasion of so-massive-they-must-be-mutant spiders. And even though I know there is no logical or earthly reason for it (…other than the very logical explanation one of my friends gave me about how conker season happens to coincide with the exact time of year that massive spiders go into hibernation…) it worked again! Haven’t seen a single terrifyingly huge spider since!

Old wives everywhere are once again rejoicing at the triumph of complete nonsense over fact.

🙂