In Boris Akunin’s Turkish Gambit, there is an episode: a group of journalists and officers bet whether Monsieur d'Hevrais, a French journalist could write a newspaper article about his old boots. An article published in Revue Parisienne three days afterwards reveals that these boots accompanied valuable memories of 10 years’ time – a very beautiful episode, a very beautiful, although mock, article, and a very valuable proof that at the end helps to discover who the real villain of the piece is.
The day before yesterday my old flash drive (removable disc) broke down. Thus, there came an end to our friendship of almost two years’ time. Although this flash drive was pretty old, and not of a good manufacture and design, and had a capacity of 512 megabytes only, it also accompanied very valuable memories of two years’ time.
When I bought that flash drive for an astronomic sum of money at that time – two years ago, it was only the third flash drive in our university group. The first flash drive (capable of 128 megabytes) belonged to my friend E. It was given to him as a handout in a workshop in a Khazar University. The second flash drive belonged to me, and was an identical twin of E.’s, and I got it from the same workshop in Khazar University. However, I gave that my first flash drive as a gift to my friend Z., who before helped me to type (actually, who typed) my papers when I still did not possess a computer.
I remember that once he not only deprived himself from his sleep, but also deprived his friend E. from his sleep, and they typed my paper [about Iran’s nuclear program] all the night! Because the next day was the deadline for submitting the papers and I had made an inaccuracy of delaying it. (A friend in need is a friend indeed – no need to recall).
Thus, the flash drive that I purchased for an astronomic sum of money was only the third, but yet the most powerful then. When I started to use that flash drive, I could hardly fill half of it every time, but at the end of its use, it could hardly contain all the needed information. However, it was still that old dear friend, which not only helped you in urgent situations, but also did not let you down in most emergency ones.
Moreover, what passengers it took onto its board, starting from pirate MP3s to all kinds of files that we could not attach to our emails because of our 50 kbps dial-up modems! How many times stowaway viruses, Trojans, worms and spywares made their way into it until an inspector with a surname Kaspersky could detect them and purge the ship!
At first, not only me, but also many my friends used to use it until other students started to buy flash drives one by one. And there come a day, when everybody had a flash drive at least capable of 1 gigabyte, and my dear old friend stood lonely and orphan amongst its other colleagues, and it was no more needed by anyone except me. (A friend in need is a friend indeed – no need to recall).
I used to carry it in the right pocket of my trousers, where I also used to put my wallet and my pen. By the way, my wallet is slightly older than my now deceased old dear friend was, and my pen is at least four years old (from time to time I only fill it with ink)! Altogether, we resembled to D’Artagnan and the three musketeers…
As one sage once said, the best part of our life is our friends, then this my old dear friend was two years of my life, and as Monsieur D’Hevrais’s boots, it accompanied valuables memories that no paper and blog can portray, how long we try to write. Therefore, the last thing I can say is “Journey well, my friend…”
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