My girlfriend and I went canoeing. We fell in. $600 of electronics joined us in the water - two iPhones and an SLR camera. In a moment they went from being modern marvels of technology to expensive paperweights.

A couple of hours later, we were paddling down the river and my iPhone rang. The phone worked. There was another stroke of luck when my SLR camera pulled a Lazarus on me and miraculously came to life after sitting in rice for three weeks.

My girlfriend wasn't so lucky - her iPhone refused to recover, and she eventually bought a replacement for $220. I contributed nothing, despite it being me who had forgotten to properly close the bag with her iPhone in.

I haven't even mentioned that the day before, I'd spilled water on my laptop (worth $600), damaging the keyboard. I was upset at the time, but managed to fix it myself with a replacement keyboard found on eBay.