My final year I lived with engineering masters students. One night, I’m finishing up my final paper, I’m juuuust backing up my final copy, and my housemate’s cat knocks a vase over onto my laptop.

Which wouldn’t be a problem except my cable had been chewed on (thanks Kobe), so the wiring was exposed. Circuits short out, I fling myself back to avoid electrocution and by the time we get the situation handled, my laptop AND my external hard drive have been fried by the surge.

I mean, fried. Like, they-are-vaguely-smoking fried.

I start to cry, because there goes fifty percent of my final grade.

Ahmad just goes “it’s okay, we will fix”. I’m like “how the fuck do you propose that?” And he’s like “I have spare laptop.” “THIS IS DUE IN THE AM!”

And he looks me dead in the eye and goes, “I said I will help. Go get the laptop.”

So off I go. By the time I make it downstairs, there’s this chemical /reek/ in the kitchen. I go in and there he is, methodically crushing caffeine pills with the bottom of a glass on a ceramic plate, periodically dusting the powder into a cooking pot. Meanwhile, his coffee pot is chugging away on the counter.

As I watch, he takes the coffee pot, empties it into the cooking pot, lets THAT come to a boil and dumps in some of his Turkish coffee, AND the remaining caffeine pill powder, which by now is starting to look uncomfortably like coke.

He lets that steep, and by now the coffee/burning smell is so strong it’s woken up all six of the other housemates, who have all come downstairs and are vacillating between staring at my laptop and at this concoction with undisguised horror.

He pours this sludge into a mug, stirs in about four /tablespoons/ of sugar and slides it my way.

I figure that I’m probably dead either way regardless, so I suck it back, filtering the grounds through my teeth as I go.

I’ve had three sips when it hits, and I feel my heart trip on a beat. I must have gone white cause he nods, all pleased, and points me at his laptop.

Long story short, I got an week’s extension, didn’t sleep for five days, had a conversation with my BLINDS in SPANISH, and got a B+, with a note that it was an “engaging read and well-written, when intelligible”.

To this day, coffee any stronger than a pale off-beige makes my chest hurt.