According to Bastings the perpetrator had probably been standing watch. “We had brought some things to the car around eleven thirty. When we arrived at the car once again an hour later after having said to goodbye to the guests, there was an awful lot of storage space for all the gifts all of a sudden.”The theft is inconvenient for the brand new doctor, even more so considering this Friday she’ll be leaving for Nepal for a month, after which she’ll be starting at Harvard University. The situation would have been even worse had her passport and visa been in the car, because that would have jeopardized her trip. “You can’t arrange a visa in just a matter of days.”The stolen MacBook Pro contains data, graphs and analyses that Bastings used to prepare part of her dissertation for publication. The sad thing is the data’s backup –stored on an external hard drive– was also in the car. “I brought it along just in case my presentation would fail me.”For Bastings, losing her scientific data is more painful than her stolen laptop, wallet with bankcards, and cell phone. “Those are replaceable. The data is of no use to anyone else but me, and I won’t get it back.” Among the stolen goods were a beamer and laptop of TU/e as well.Bastings spent hours at the police station to report the crime and have her cards and phone blocked. They also checked if the tracking software on her MacBook had transferred any location data. “Unfortunately, I had disabled Wi-Fi to prevent pop-ups from appearing during the presentation. I guess we’ll have to wait until the new owner turns it back on.”With any luck, the thief dumped her laptop bag, a striking olive green Crumpler backpack (pictured), with the external hard drive still in it. “I really hope someone will find it. Hopefully this publicity will make that happen.”