What goes around REALLY comes around

So, last week I found this wallet on a bus on campus. It was wedged in the space between two seats. The student card in the wallet indicated that it belonged to a student of the same university but from a different department. The wallet had plenty of cash, his IC, some credit/debit cards and other miscellaneous stuff that people usually put in a wallet. My first thought was to call and hand it over to the campus security or the lost and found section in the university. But then I realized if I did that, it would probably take a long time for it to get to the owner. He must be frantically looking for his wallet. So I plumaged through his wallet and found this receipt for a badminton court booking, and in that I found his telephone number. I called the guy and told him that I had found his wallet. He said he would come to my lab and pick it up.

After a while, the guy turned up at my lab. He told me that he had in fact lost his wallet a week ago and he had decided that he would not get it back. It was lying in that bus for a week. Since it was stuck in between the seats, no body had noticed it. He thanked me profusely for returning his wallet and left. After that, my day was really busy and I forgot all about the incident.

That day evening after I left the lab, R and I went out for dinner.  Since it had been a long day at work, I came home and went straight to bed. At 11:30 p.m., my phone rang. The guy on the phone introduced himself and asked me if I had lost a laptop, a Mac book pro. It was then that I realized that I had left it in the restaurant after dinner. I had not even realized that it was missing. At that moment, I had a panic-attack. He told me he had found my laptop at the restaurant and he did not want to give it to the police, as he was not sure if I would get it back. He asked me to come and pick it up whenever I could. I left immediately and went to get it. On my way to meet him, it struck me, how had the guy found my number? When I asked him, he said he had used my computer to log in to my face-book account (it doesn’t need a password as I am the only one who uses it). He had instant messaged one of my friends who was in Australia to get my number and called me. Later my friend messaged me to tell me “ I can’t believe you lost your computer and a weird guy just asked me for your number”. It seems that the guy had pretended to be me, to ask for my number and only later admitted to being someone else.  God bless that guy for returning my laptop. I shudder every time I think of the consequences if I had not got my Mac back. So much of my work would have been at stake among other things (I don’t back up very frequently).

Lessons learnt at the end of an eventful day:

Be more careful with your stuff

Back up your computer more regularly

What you give is definitely what you get in return!