8 ms·

How I lost my backpack with passports and laptop

131 points by eatitraw 1y ago

DonHopkins 1y ago
My late friend Hugh Daniel used to refer to his Bihn's backpack [1] as his "LSD", for "Life Support Device". Like when we were leaving the house he'd shout in his boisterous voice so all the neighbors could hear, "Oh no, I forgot my LSD! I'll be right back!" then run back in and fetch his backpack. But now my smartphone is my LSD. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687369
- ghaff 1y ago
  Except it's really not if you're traveling internationally.
  - LeafItAlone 1y ago
    >Except it's really not if you're traveling internationally. What do you mean?
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Not having a passport is a big issue that will take a lot of hassle to deal with. Probably a generational thing but losing my passport feels like a much bigger deal than my phone if I've taken reasonable precautions. In fact, my iPhone broke 4 or 5 years ago on a trip and I was fine.
    - mijoharas 1y ago
      I think he's saying you don't want to go shouting "I've got my LSD with me" in an airport.
      - DonHopkins 1y ago
        Jesus Mouse once told me about how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34405486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34405486
  - ta1243 1y ago
    I'd rather be stuck in an international country with only a phone than only a passport. Hell even when I've been in war zones if it's a choice between a working phone (sat phone for example) and a flak jacket, I'd go for the former.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Good luck getting home with just your phone.
      - ta1243 1y ago
        Phone back or family, get emergency funds. Phone embassy, get emergency travel documentation. Good luck getting home with just your passport.
        ghaff 1y ago
        You probably overestimate how easy it is to "just" get a replacement passport in a random location and get money wired to you. As I wrote, I have personally had a broken phone and it was annoying--mostly because of the replacement cost--but had no problem getting home. I didn't just have my passport but didn't have a phone.
        ta1243 1y ago
        But with no money, no phone, no contacts how are you going to even get to where you need to be where a passport is useful?
        root_axis 1y ago
        Memorize one phone number or email.
        ghaff 1y ago
        And/or ask the hotel. And if you're just casually backpacking, that probably means you know people (or are traveling with someone). Frankly, probably reflects my computer background, but it sort of annoys me that my passport is more or less the one thing when traveling internationally that there is just no backup for beyond going to the embassy or consulate. Domestically, you can have multiple forms of acceptable ID. One time I skipped that step on a last minute quick trip, I almost wasn't able to check into a hotel.
- nancyminusone 1y ago
  Should have called it a BOMB - Backpack Of My Belongings. Great for airports!
criddell 1y ago
I've never heard of phenibut before. It sounds interesting.
- arresin 1y ago
  I think it may cause cognitive decline. I mean longterm. It was rightly banned in Australia. Fuckwits had a tendency of buying it online and then taking huge doses without a break (sensitisation) and then posting essays on the sheer horror they go through when the drug leaves their system and they rebound. A nice reminder to libertarians that, yes you may be smart and careful with risk taking but there are many fuckwits who aren’t and shouldn’t have to suffer because of it unnecessarily.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
    Their body, their choice. Why should people who can use it responsibly be denied? And worse, why should they be punished if they choose to use it regardless of legality?
    - vkou 1y ago
      Surely there's some sensible ground between ruining the lives of addicts and putting heroin into elementary school vending machines. Libertarianism as an ideology does not have the tools to deal with the harms of the latter.
      - ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
        Libertarianism is stupid, but I also think GP is using it as an easy straw-man to justify prohibition.
    - HighGoldstein 1y ago
      > Their body, their choice. Why should people who can use it responsibly be denied? And worse, why should they be punished if they choose to use it regardless of legality? Because we don't live in isolated universes of individuality. When they cause massive damage to their bodies and minds, that cost is not only borne by themselves but by their close circle and society at large. You can argue that prohibition is not the right approach to preventing these problems, but doing the non-optimal thing is better than doing nothing at all.
theamk 1y ago
tl/dr how it was lost: > The last thing I remembered was leaving a party at my friend's café, very drunk. and how it was found: > I received a letter to my mailbox address in London. A man named Simon wrote: he had found my backpack and wanted to return it.
- rob_c 1y ago
  For London that's a shock. Source lived their, had friends that lived there and had friends who studied there... And by there I mean 4 of 6 nominal zones connected by the tin can on rails known as the tube.
  - dijit 1y ago
    London is like three (or more) cities stitched together haphazardly. Lose your bag in Lewisham? Good luck. Lose your bag in the touristy districts (Westminster, Leicester Square)? It's possible, but I doubt it. Lose your bag in Clapham North or Kensington? You're probably fine.
jrochkind1 1y ago
i'm trying to figure out if the laptop and passport were still in the backback when found? I think so?!
- codingminds 1y ago
  Based on this: > Simon gave my backpack back to me intact. I'd say yes.
  - ted_dunning 1y ago
    That reading skill you have is really impressive. I can't even imagine a world in which everybody could do it! (sarcasm intended for the grand-poster, not you)
    - jrochkind1 1y ago
      OK, perhaps there are regional differences in language, or perhaps I'm just a moron, to me the "backpack being intact" does not obviously say anything about the contents of the backpack, to me it's a synonym for "undamaged", and neither are phrases I would use to describe the original contents of the backpack all still being present. Either it's an American English thing, or if other Americans did not share my confusion then I guess it's just a me thing, and the appropriate response is for you to make fun of me and tell me I don't know how to read, so nice work.
rob_c 1y ago
Couldn't finish. This is less about losing a laptop and more about comparing oneself to eccentric billionaires in the valley. For every jobs dying of vanity remember there's probably a thousand multi-millionaires living very happily making rational decisions.
StrandedKitty 1y ago
> sleeping on phenibut is very restful Is this just you subjective experience or is it backed by some data or research? For me personally, sleeping after phenibut doesn't feel healthy at all -- in fact I often end up sleeping for 12+ hours unless I have something important to do in the morning, and it's extremely hard to get out of bed every time.
- ddtaylor 1y ago
  I don't know if it compares to Ambien at all, but my wife takes that and every once in a while I take one to help get to sleep. It gets me to sleep and I stay knocked out, but a long 8 hour sleep with Ambien never seems as good as a "real" 5 hour sleep without it.
  - randerson 1y ago
    Ambien drastically reduces the restorative deep sleep and REM phases of sleep, so you are correct in your assessment. Your brain needs those phases. Long-term use can cause cognitive issues and cancer.
NamTaf 1y ago
I had my backpack - with (work) laptop, both passports, wallet, house keys, etc. - stolen from a pub in Euston a couple of years ago. All that remained in my pockets was my phone & power bank, and airpods. It was stolen by a guy who went into the pub we were at, sat at an adjacent table, pretended to study the menu, deposited a dummy backpack to the communal pile under our table when we were standing to greet people, then picked up the heaviest one (mine) and walked out. Unlike the author, I wasn't black-out drunk, we were just distracted and someone was able to do a sleight of hand when we weren't paying attention. The author is very lucky to get theirs back. I had to replace it all. As they say, replacing the UK one wasn't too bad - though I hadn't been in the UK for 2 years by that point so I had to get extra guarantors to sign photos and write a declaration. The other one was a nightmare, and by pure luck the embassy could look up my last application and pull the birth certificate reference number for me. Again, 2 guarantors and I was very lucky to have a friend from that country visiting. I reported it as stolen, hoping that they'd steal the laptop and wallet and then ditch the rest. Unfortunately, either nobody found it or nobody turned it in. Of course, the CCTV that was in the pub was 'too blurry' to be of any use. CCTV has a funny tendency of being useless in that regard. In my case, I crashed at a friend's place that evening, and then went down to my local makerspace for lack of wanting to pay a locksmith £fuckloads to unlock my door on a Sunday. By pure luck, there was a lockpicking nerd there and they came and slipped my door for me. Thankfully, that was enough to help offset a lot of the negativity of the whole affair. I felt like I got off lucky a bit, and didn't dwell so much on it as a result.
- robaato 1y ago
  20 years ago I had a somewhat similar experience - a pub off The Strand in central London. My bag/briefcase was under a (high) table, and in that case the pub was able to view CCTV and work out the guy who sat nearby and hooked his leg to grab my bag - while I was distracted. Luckily for me, while it contained laptop and passport, I got a call 20 mins later from my wife, who had been contacted by someone 100m away in a different pub. The thief had taken my bag with laptop, not realised there was also a passport in there, gone to another pub, stolen another bag, switched my laptop into said bag, and gone off. The owner of other lost laptop had found my (empty) bag/passport, rang my wife, and we met and at least I got bag (and passport) back... Net result, lost laptop, but not lost passport. Much less hassle, although still a wake up call...
LeafItAlone 1y ago
>A couple of years ago, I would have panicked at this moment. I'm pretty neurotic: my mind is constantly occupied with producing negative scenarios that "need" to be considered and anticipated. I eat myself from inside out with endless "what ifs", calculating worst-case scenarios and failures — all that sort of thing. I can relate strongly to this. ADHD and OCD tendencies made leaving for even a vacation frustrating. I think part of that was growing up in a situation where losing something important like a phone or laptop was a financial hardship that meant real, lasting pain. Now, as I am older and more financially stable, I only really worry that I have my phone and wallet. And really I only need one of them. All of my IDs are scanned and backed up online. I just need a device and internet connection and I can recover enough of my life to get home, where I can get back on track and order new items. When going over our final leave-list, my partner and I typically just end with “and we have a credit card, so it doesn’t matter if we’ve forgotten something”. When traveling to more remote places with less of a chance of being able to replace a phone at short notice, I do bring an old phone as backup.
- et-al 1y ago
  > I just need a device and internet connection and I can recover enough of my life to get home How do you deal with 2FA? Do you memorize a few of your backup codes?
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    I use 1Password as my 2FA app. They have a recovery kit you can print out and store in safe places, or if you have a device that you've previously set up, you can authenticate to your vault. https://support.1password.com/emergency-kit/ https://support.1password.com/emergency-kit/
  - skrebbel 1y ago
    Not GP, but my solution is to just not use 2FA if I can at all avoid it. After all, 2FA is 99% security theater anyway (if you have a randomly generated unguessable password in a decent password manager).
sixhobbits 1y ago
I have airtags in my backpack, briefcase, wallet, luggage and keys now. One of the best qol improvements I've done. I'm careless and forget stuff a lot and even just saving the few minutes it regularly took me to find stuff misplaced at home is great. It also let me recover my bag when I forgot it on a train (I watched it go to a holding station overnight and travel all over the country the next day, and could then anticipate where it would be and go take it back) I also have a similar experience to that described in the article (nearly 10 years ago, pre airtags) of having my wallet drop out my pocket while cycling in the Netherlands. A German couple found it and took it back to Germany with them as they weren't sure what to do. They found me on Facebook, asked if it was ok to take some cash from the wallet, and put it in the post back to me in NL. Coming from South Africa which probably has similarities to Russia in terms of return rates for lost valuable belongings it was quite a defining moment of "Europe" for me.
libraryofbabel 1y ago
I have a similar story, one that also took place in London. I had my bag stolen from under a chair outside a pub near UCL. It contained various important things including my passport, a journal with about six month’s of writing in it, critical notes for a project I was working on, etc. I was devastated. A week later I had mostly made my peace with losing all my stuff and was about to apply, for a new passport, when I received a very posh letter in the post with an imposing coat of arms atop it; it was from the Duke of Bedford’s estate, which owns most of the land all around Bloomsbury. They told me they had found my bag in the locked garden in the middle of Bedford Square. The thieves must have thrown it over the railings, and fortunately there was a letter addressed to me inside it that gave away my address. I went to their very grand estate office to collect it and, amazingly, everything was still there, including the passport which the thieves apparently did not want.
throwawayffffas 1y ago
See given this is hackernews. I was hoping for software bug shipped it to Saint Kitts or something, but was disappointed.
hungryhobbit 1y ago
Don't do drugs kids. There, I just saved you from having to read the long ramblings of a drug addict who did too many drugs ... and lost his backpack.
- xp84 1y ago
  That’s a bit harsh. Dude did one thing that’s legal where he lives plus alcohol and besides this one occurrence hasn’t had anything negative impact on his life. I’d hardly call that an “addict.”
PokemonNoGo 1y ago
Honestly. When I was a kid 20 years ago backpacking around i was worried about this. Now I'm also worried about it but honestly there aren't very many issues. I've had temporary passports issued, cancelled cards, new phones setup on "new sims". One thing I did carry back then was keys. I don't anymore. The rest is just so easy to replace these days. My laptop is insured and so is my work one.
jdalgetty 1y ago
Fun story
MarkusWandel 1y ago
Super entertaining read, in exactly the way that LLM-generated pablum isn't.
gwbas1c 1y ago
Alcohol makes my stomach very upset, perhaps because I can't burp. Stories like this make me thankful that it is very painful for me to drink more than 2 beers, even though I very much enjoy beer.
- arrowsmith 1y ago
  You can't burp?
  - munificent 1y ago
    "Abelchia" is the charming medical term. Interestingly, there is a relatively new treatment for it that involves injecting botox into the cricopharyngeus muscle. While the botox wears off relatively quickly, in many cases the cure is permanent. It's like the muscles needs to learn how to relax and once they have, they retain that capability.
    - gwbas1c 1y ago
      Yeah, I found out about that recently after a very painful plane ride. I periodically see an ENT, so I'm going to ask about it the next time I go. BTW, my current trick is to basically (almost) trigger myself to vomit. The burps come out but everything else stays in.
gumboshoes 1y ago
This is a dream I have a few times a year. The panic! The horror! Everything gone. Just the feeling of personal loss and devastation every time I have the dream.
kshacker 1y ago
Story of a recovered passport - no alcohol and 21 years back. Was visiting Toronto labor day weekend 2004 with a freshly minted green card and India's passport with family (wife+2kids). Was in Eaton center, we were trying to take a train/metro to somewhere, kept my waist pouch (that I used those days) on top of the stroller's canopy to pay at the ticket counter and when I was done, of course the pouch was not there. The realization of theft was immediate. I could not have dropped it earlier since I just took the money out. It disappeared in the last one minute. BTW, not just the pouch, even the wallet was gone as I had taken only the cash and put everything on top of the stroller's canopy. Wallet, Passports, Green Card - all gone. Talked to the Mall security, they did not do much except write a report and make me call credit card companies to cancel the cards. Then went to police, but police said they can not do anything without an ID and asked me to get an ID (temporary or whatever from my embassy). Of course it is a Sunday and the embassy is closed. Could go back to hotel, still had access to rental car (that we decided not to use for this trip), but that was it. Tried to think through this but nope - this was so unchartered I did not know what to do. What will happen to work, how will I get passport, how will we get green card reprocessed, how will we pay the hotel (since the cards were canceled) - complete (but not visible) panic. Thankfully my company had offices in Toronto, so found some connections and trying to talk to them on what will happen if I got stranded in Toronto like this. They started looking into this. Also talked to my landlord back in US and ask him to be prepared to go to our apartment and pull out the green card files. Told him I will call back if I need help. By now it is 2+ hours. We are walking back to Hotel, and I get a call (thanks cellphones) from someone saying they found my pouch with passports. It appears my checkbook was also in the pouch and that had my phone number. They are not nearby - "oh I found it on the train as I was leaving" and now you will need to come here, about 45 minutes west from there. I say sure I will be there as soon as I can. I call my company's contact and they provide me an escort since it was an unknown area to me (and them). I get the car, my wife does not want me to go alone so it is all of us, we pick up my "colleague" from his home, and land up at the place we were asked to. Thankfully a person comes down from a tall building and hands me the bag. The bag had 300-400 when I lost it, but now it is just 20 bucks. He says that's how it was. And then he asks me for a finders fee - I give the 20 bucks to him, and move on. Except the money, got back everything else. Phew. [ Edit - Trying to remember the scenario more since I came back here to respond to a question. My wallet was definitely gone. How did the mall security get me to cancel the cards? As I recall, we called 2 credit card companies ... and canceled those cards based on the social, but at that point I was sure the mall security was not going to help, so I said those were all the cards I had and left from there. ]
PaulHoule 1y ago
It used to be somebody would slip you a Rohypnol and roll you. Now you slip yourself a Phenibut and get rolled. I wouldn't characterize Phenibut as a "nootropic" as it's arguable that such a thing (nootropic) exists. I'd say it is "Русский for Valium". When I was in college there were forums like "alt.drugs" where people shared stories like "I smoked weed and had a lot of fun" and Erowid was like that for a while but pretty soon it was full of stories that the Partnership for a Drug Free America couldn't have made up, often people who took way too many downers and got into trouble.
ltbarcly3 1y ago
TLDR; He got blackout drunk and left it.
abetancort 1y ago
Deserved to loose everything.
ptspts 1y ago
The title of the post is misleading, because it is not revealed in the story how the backpack was actually lost. The short summary: ``I don't remember how I lost my backpack, because I was heavily intoxicated during those hours when I lost it.''
andrekandre 1y ago
> A man named Simon wrote: he had found my backpack and wanted to return it. He’d spotted the bag in Camden and at first thought of walking past, but someone had recently returned his lost phone, so he decided to do the right thing. pay it forward ftw. that is so cool; i hope society does this kind of thing more and more, i think its desperately needed (especially in the crazy timeline we are in)

131 points by eatitraw 1y ago

My late friend Hugh Daniel used to refer to his Bihn's backpack [1] as his "LSD", for "Life Support Device". Like when we were leaving the house he'd shout in his boisterous voice so all the neighbors could hear, "Oh no, I forgot my LSD! I'll be right back!" then run back in and fetch his backpack. But now my smartphone is my LSD. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687369

ghaff 1y ago
Except it's really not if you're traveling internationally.
- LeafItAlone 1y ago
  >Except it's really not if you're traveling internationally. What do you mean?
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Not having a passport is a big issue that will take a lot of hassle to deal with. Probably a generational thing but losing my passport feels like a much bigger deal than my phone if I've taken reasonable precautions. In fact, my iPhone broke 4 or 5 years ago on a trip and I was fine.
  - mijoharas 1y ago
    I think he's saying you don't want to go shouting "I've got my LSD with me" in an airport.
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      Jesus Mouse once told me about how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34405486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34405486
- ta1243 1y ago
  I'd rather be stuck in an international country with only a phone than only a passport. Hell even when I've been in war zones if it's a choice between a working phone (sat phone for example) and a flak jacket, I'd go for the former.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Good luck getting home with just your phone.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      Phone back or family, get emergency funds. Phone embassy, get emergency travel documentation. Good luck getting home with just your passport.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        You probably overestimate how easy it is to "just" get a replacement passport in a random location and get money wired to you. As I wrote, I have personally had a broken phone and it was annoying--mostly because of the replacement cost--but had no problem getting home. I didn't just have my passport but didn't have a phone.
        ta1243 1y ago
        But with no money, no phone, no contacts how are you going to even get to where you need to be where a passport is useful?
        root_axis 1y ago
        Memorize one phone number or email.
        ghaff 1y ago
        And/or ask the hotel. And if you're just casually backpacking, that probably means you know people (or are traveling with someone). Frankly, probably reflects my computer background, but it sort of annoys me that my passport is more or less the one thing when traveling internationally that there is just no backup for beyond going to the embassy or consulate. Domestically, you can have multiple forms of acceptable ID. One time I skipped that step on a last minute quick trip, I almost wasn't able to check into a hotel.
nancyminusone 1y ago
Should have called it a BOMB - Backpack Of My Belongings. Great for airports!

criddell 1y ago

I've never heard of phenibut before. It sounds interesting.

arresin 1y ago
I think it may cause cognitive decline. I mean longterm. It was rightly banned in Australia. Fuckwits had a tendency of buying it online and then taking huge doses without a break (sensitisation) and then posting essays on the sheer horror they go through when the drug leaves their system and they rebound. A nice reminder to libertarians that, yes you may be smart and careful with risk taking but there are many fuckwits who aren’t and shouldn’t have to suffer because of it unnecessarily.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
  Their body, their choice. Why should people who can use it responsibly be denied? And worse, why should they be punished if they choose to use it regardless of legality?
  - vkou 1y ago
    Surely there's some sensible ground between ruining the lives of addicts and putting heroin into elementary school vending machines. Libertarianism as an ideology does not have the tools to deal with the harms of the latter.
    - ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
      Libertarianism is stupid, but I also think GP is using it as an easy straw-man to justify prohibition.
  - HighGoldstein 1y ago
    > Their body, their choice. Why should people who can use it responsibly be denied? And worse, why should they be punished if they choose to use it regardless of legality? Because we don't live in isolated universes of individuality. When they cause massive damage to their bodies and minds, that cost is not only borne by themselves but by their close circle and society at large. You can argue that prohibition is not the right approach to preventing these problems, but doing the non-optimal thing is better than doing nothing at all.

theamk 1y ago

tl/dr how it was lost: > The last thing I remembered was leaving a party at my friend's café, very drunk. and how it was found: > I received a letter to my mailbox address in London. A man named Simon wrote: he had found my backpack and wanted to return it.

rob_c 1y ago
For London that's a shock. Source lived their, had friends that lived there and had friends who studied there... And by there I mean 4 of 6 nominal zones connected by the tin can on rails known as the tube.
- dijit 1y ago
  London is like three (or more) cities stitched together haphazardly. Lose your bag in Lewisham? Good luck. Lose your bag in the touristy districts (Westminster, Leicester Square)? It's possible, but I doubt it. Lose your bag in Clapham North or Kensington? You're probably fine.

jrochkind1 1y ago

i'm trying to figure out if the laptop and passport were still in the backback when found? I think so?!

codingminds 1y ago
Based on this: > Simon gave my backpack back to me intact. I'd say yes.
- ted_dunning 1y ago
  That reading skill you have is really impressive. I can't even imagine a world in which everybody could do it! (sarcasm intended for the grand-poster, not you)
  - jrochkind1 1y ago
    OK, perhaps there are regional differences in language, or perhaps I'm just a moron, to me the "backpack being intact" does not obviously say anything about the contents of the backpack, to me it's a synonym for "undamaged", and neither are phrases I would use to describe the original contents of the backpack all still being present. Either it's an American English thing, or if other Americans did not share my confusion then I guess it's just a me thing, and the appropriate response is for you to make fun of me and tell me I don't know how to read, so nice work.

rob_c 1y ago

Couldn't finish. This is less about losing a laptop and more about comparing oneself to eccentric billionaires in the valley. For every jobs dying of vanity remember there's probably a thousand multi-millionaires living very happily making rational decisions.

StrandedKitty 1y ago

> sleeping on phenibut is very restful Is this just you subjective experience or is it backed by some data or research? For me personally, sleeping after phenibut doesn't feel healthy at all -- in fact I often end up sleeping for 12+ hours unless I have something important to do in the morning, and it's extremely hard to get out of bed every time.

ddtaylor 1y ago
I don't know if it compares to Ambien at all, but my wife takes that and every once in a while I take one to help get to sleep. It gets me to sleep and I stay knocked out, but a long 8 hour sleep with Ambien never seems as good as a "real" 5 hour sleep without it.
- randerson 1y ago
  Ambien drastically reduces the restorative deep sleep and REM phases of sleep, so you are correct in your assessment. Your brain needs those phases. Long-term use can cause cognitive issues and cancer.

NamTaf 1y ago

I had my backpack - with (work) laptop, both passports, wallet, house keys, etc. - stolen from a pub in Euston a couple of years ago. All that remained in my pockets was my phone & power bank, and airpods. It was stolen by a guy who went into the pub we were at, sat at an adjacent table, pretended to study the menu, deposited a dummy backpack to the communal pile under our table when we were standing to greet people, then picked up the heaviest one (mine) and walked out. Unlike the author, I wasn't black-out drunk, we were just distracted and someone was able to do a sleight of hand when we weren't paying attention. The author is very lucky to get theirs back. I had to replace it all. As they say, replacing the UK one wasn't too bad - though I hadn't been in the UK for 2 years by that point so I had to get extra guarantors to sign photos and write a declaration. The other one was a nightmare, and by pure luck the embassy could look up my last application and pull the birth certificate reference number for me. Again, 2 guarantors and I was very lucky to have a friend from that country visiting. I reported it as stolen, hoping that they'd steal the laptop and wallet and then ditch the rest. Unfortunately, either nobody found it or nobody turned it in. Of course, the CCTV that was in the pub was 'too blurry' to be of any use. CCTV has a funny tendency of being useless in that regard. In my case, I crashed at a friend's place that evening, and then went down to my local makerspace for lack of wanting to pay a locksmith £fuckloads to unlock my door on a Sunday. By pure luck, there was a lockpicking nerd there and they came and slipped my door for me. Thankfully, that was enough to help offset a lot of the negativity of the whole affair. I felt like I got off lucky a bit, and didn't dwell so much on it as a result.

robaato 1y ago
20 years ago I had a somewhat similar experience - a pub off The Strand in central London. My bag/briefcase was under a (high) table, and in that case the pub was able to view CCTV and work out the guy who sat nearby and hooked his leg to grab my bag - while I was distracted. Luckily for me, while it contained laptop and passport, I got a call 20 mins later from my wife, who had been contacted by someone 100m away in a different pub. The thief had taken my bag with laptop, not realised there was also a passport in there, gone to another pub, stolen another bag, switched my laptop into said bag, and gone off. The owner of other lost laptop had found my (empty) bag/passport, rang my wife, and we met and at least I got bag (and passport) back... Net result, lost laptop, but not lost passport. Much less hassle, although still a wake up call...

LeafItAlone 1y ago

>A couple of years ago, I would have panicked at this moment. I'm pretty neurotic: my mind is constantly occupied with producing negative scenarios that "need" to be considered and anticipated. I eat myself from inside out with endless "what ifs", calculating worst-case scenarios and failures — all that sort of thing. I can relate strongly to this. ADHD and OCD tendencies made leaving for even a vacation frustrating. I think part of that was growing up in a situation where losing something important like a phone or laptop was a financial hardship that meant real, lasting pain. Now, as I am older and more financially stable, I only really worry that I have my phone and wallet. And really I only need one of them. All of my IDs are scanned and backed up online. I just need a device and internet connection and I can recover enough of my life to get home, where I can get back on track and order new items. When going over our final leave-list, my partner and I typically just end with “and we have a credit card, so it doesn’t matter if we’ve forgotten something”. When traveling to more remote places with less of a chance of being able to replace a phone at short notice, I do bring an old phone as backup.

et-al 1y ago
> I just need a device and internet connection and I can recover enough of my life to get home How do you deal with 2FA? Do you memorize a few of your backup codes?
- haiku2077 1y ago
  I use 1Password as my 2FA app. They have a recovery kit you can print out and store in safe places, or if you have a device that you've previously set up, you can authenticate to your vault. https://support.1password.com/emergency-kit/ https://support.1password.com/emergency-kit/
- skrebbel 1y ago
  Not GP, but my solution is to just not use 2FA if I can at all avoid it. After all, 2FA is 99% security theater anyway (if you have a randomly generated unguessable password in a decent password manager).

sixhobbits 1y ago

I have airtags in my backpack, briefcase, wallet, luggage and keys now. One of the best qol improvements I've done. I'm careless and forget stuff a lot and even just saving the few minutes it regularly took me to find stuff misplaced at home is great. It also let me recover my bag when I forgot it on a train (I watched it go to a holding station overnight and travel all over the country the next day, and could then anticipate where it would be and go take it back) I also have a similar experience to that described in the article (nearly 10 years ago, pre airtags) of having my wallet drop out my pocket while cycling in the Netherlands. A German couple found it and took it back to Germany with them as they weren't sure what to do. They found me on Facebook, asked if it was ok to take some cash from the wallet, and put it in the post back to me in NL. Coming from South Africa which probably has similarities to Russia in terms of return rates for lost valuable belongings it was quite a defining moment of "Europe" for me.

libraryofbabel 1y ago

I have a similar story, one that also took place in London. I had my bag stolen from under a chair outside a pub near UCL. It contained various important things including my passport, a journal with about six month’s of writing in it, critical notes for a project I was working on, etc. I was devastated. A week later I had mostly made my peace with losing all my stuff and was about to apply, for a new passport, when I received a very posh letter in the post with an imposing coat of arms atop it; it was from the Duke of Bedford’s estate, which owns most of the land all around Bloomsbury. They told me they had found my bag in the locked garden in the middle of Bedford Square. The thieves must have thrown it over the railings, and fortunately there was a letter addressed to me inside it that gave away my address. I went to their very grand estate office to collect it and, amazingly, everything was still there, including the passport which the thieves apparently did not want.

throwawayffffas 1y ago

See given this is hackernews. I was hoping for software bug shipped it to Saint Kitts or something, but was disappointed.

hungryhobbit 1y ago

Don't do drugs kids. There, I just saved you from having to read the long ramblings of a drug addict who did too many drugs ... and lost his backpack.

xp84 1y ago
That’s a bit harsh. Dude did one thing that’s legal where he lives plus alcohol and besides this one occurrence hasn’t had anything negative impact on his life. I’d hardly call that an “addict.”

PokemonNoGo 1y ago

Honestly. When I was a kid 20 years ago backpacking around i was worried about this. Now I'm also worried about it but honestly there aren't very many issues. I've had temporary passports issued, cancelled cards, new phones setup on "new sims". One thing I did carry back then was keys. I don't anymore. The rest is just so easy to replace these days. My laptop is insured and so is my work one.

jdalgetty 1y ago

Fun story

MarkusWandel 1y ago

Super entertaining read, in exactly the way that LLM-generated pablum isn't.

gwbas1c 1y ago

Alcohol makes my stomach very upset, perhaps because I can't burp. Stories like this make me thankful that it is very painful for me to drink more than 2 beers, even though I very much enjoy beer.

arrowsmith 1y ago
You can't burp?
- munificent 1y ago
  "Abelchia" is the charming medical term. Interestingly, there is a relatively new treatment for it that involves injecting botox into the cricopharyngeus muscle. While the botox wears off relatively quickly, in many cases the cure is permanent. It's like the muscles needs to learn how to relax and once they have, they retain that capability.
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    Yeah, I found out about that recently after a very painful plane ride. I periodically see an ENT, so I'm going to ask about it the next time I go. BTW, my current trick is to basically (almost) trigger myself to vomit. The burps come out but everything else stays in.

gumboshoes 1y ago

This is a dream I have a few times a year. The panic! The horror! Everything gone. Just the feeling of personal loss and devastation every time I have the dream.

kshacker 1y ago

Story of a recovered passport - no alcohol and 21 years back. Was visiting Toronto labor day weekend 2004 with a freshly minted green card and India's passport with family (wife+2kids). Was in Eaton center, we were trying to take a train/metro to somewhere, kept my waist pouch (that I used those days) on top of the stroller's canopy to pay at the ticket counter and when I was done, of course the pouch was not there. The realization of theft was immediate. I could not have dropped it earlier since I just took the money out. It disappeared in the last one minute. BTW, not just the pouch, even the wallet was gone as I had taken only the cash and put everything on top of the stroller's canopy. Wallet, Passports, Green Card - all gone. Talked to the Mall security, they did not do much except write a report and make me call credit card companies to cancel the cards. Then went to police, but police said they can not do anything without an ID and asked me to get an ID (temporary or whatever from my embassy). Of course it is a Sunday and the embassy is closed. Could go back to hotel, still had access to rental car (that we decided not to use for this trip), but that was it. Tried to think through this but nope - this was so unchartered I did not know what to do. What will happen to work, how will I get passport, how will we get green card reprocessed, how will we pay the hotel (since the cards were canceled) - complete (but not visible) panic. Thankfully my company had offices in Toronto, so found some connections and trying to talk to them on what will happen if I got stranded in Toronto like this. They started looking into this. Also talked to my landlord back in US and ask him to be prepared to go to our apartment and pull out the green card files. Told him I will call back if I need help. By now it is 2+ hours. We are walking back to Hotel, and I get a call (thanks cellphones) from someone saying they found my pouch with passports. It appears my checkbook was also in the pouch and that had my phone number. They are not nearby - "oh I found it on the train as I was leaving" and now you will need to come here, about 45 minutes west from there. I say sure I will be there as soon as I can. I call my company's contact and they provide me an escort since it was an unknown area to me (and them). I get the car, my wife does not want me to go alone so it is all of us, we pick up my "colleague" from his home, and land up at the place we were asked to. Thankfully a person comes down from a tall building and hands me the bag. The bag had 300-400 when I lost it, but now it is just 20 bucks. He says that's how it was. And then he asks me for a finders fee - I give the 20 bucks to him, and move on. Except the money, got back everything else. Phew. [ Edit - Trying to remember the scenario more since I came back here to respond to a question. My wallet was definitely gone. How did the mall security get me to cancel the cards? As I recall, we called 2 credit card companies ... and canceled those cards based on the social, but at that point I was sure the mall security was not going to help, so I said those were all the cards I had and left from there. ]

PaulHoule 1y ago

It used to be somebody would slip you a Rohypnol and roll you. Now you slip yourself a Phenibut and get rolled. I wouldn't characterize Phenibut as a "nootropic" as it's arguable that such a thing (nootropic) exists. I'd say it is "Русский for Valium". When I was in college there were forums like "alt.drugs" where people shared stories like "I smoked weed and had a lot of fun" and Erowid was like that for a while but pretty soon it was full of stories that the Partnership for a Drug Free America couldn't have made up, often people who took way too many downers and got into trouble.

ltbarcly3 1y ago

TLDR; He got blackout drunk and left it.

abetancort 1y ago

Deserved to loose everything.

ptspts 1y ago

The title of the post is misleading, because it is not revealed in the story how the backpack was actually lost. The short summary: ``I don't remember how I lost my backpack, because I was heavily intoxicated during those hours when I lost it.''

andrekandre 1y ago

> A man named Simon wrote: he had found my backpack and wanted to return it. He’d spotted the bag in Camden and at first thought of walking past, but someone had recently returned his lost phone, so he decided to do the right thing. pay it forward ftw. that is so cool; i hope society does this kind of thing more and more, i think its desperately needed (especially in the crazy timeline we are in)