Brain Freeze

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Disconnect!

This is the heart-wrenching and underwhelming story of the disconnects in my life...
There's the usual internet disconnect , it usually happens when my neighbour makes his nocturnal appearance on the web scene at 10 pm... I get disconnected. Then pops up the dreaded "Cannot find server" page, and I am left watching my cable modem blink into existence... This is the usual scenario.
Shruti: (busy typing into yahoo window/blog/whatever else)
Computer: (on slow freeze... slowly all browser windows turn white and the screen excruciatingly turns white...)
My eyes drop down at the connection icon, no blinking lights! Argh!! "Blink, damn you.You can't die on me NOW...NOOOOOOOOOOOO" Then, I shift my attention to my ugly Coresma (who knows) modem, which is apparently capable of delivering 100Mbps of raw data transfer... technically! The Power LEDwould be on, but the Cable and LAN ... off or slowly blinking, and the RX light.. non-existent. Then begins the wait till, like an almost-expired person, my connection comes to life, coughing and sputtering.
I KNOW I have had enough people tell me, "Call Asianut and scream at them." But, I've never got over the basic problem of procrastination, a concept I shall explain on another day. Thanks guys... your concern is appreciated, especially when we've been discussing the subtle nuances of philosophy! (ah.. as if!)
Then, there's the verbal disconnect, aka "foot-in-mouth" disease. It's caught up with me quite often. Some of these situations were so bad, I never heard the end of it for a LONG LONG time! (I am still wondering if to tell you about my worse experiences, but let's settle down for safer ground, eh?)
We had this really short sir in school for XIIth Biology, whom we called Tinku master. My friend and I, the class "monitors" were supposed to look after the welfare of the class and maintain good teacher-student relations. The latter was rather hard because all my classmates were such angels. So, one day, after a particularly frustrating visit to the Biology lab, L.H and I were walking down, muttering about our teachers, and I said very loudly, "Our class teacher, that Tingu, will never learn, will he?" Guess who was wending his way upstairs? Yeah! You guessed it right. I just wanted the ground to swallow me up alive....
Another kind of disconnect I discovered was the mental disconnect. This is very common to Engineering students, and especially to students who attended tuitions at Venugopal sir's Chemistry Shack and the Institute of Physics (abbreviated as Aiyo-Physics!). Your truly found the new tack.. sit right in front and sleep with eyes wide open. Our chemistry sir, especially, was a very dedicated man. 3 hours tuition and he took an additional half an hour. He used to get wild if we
1) were not paying attention
2) sleeping
3) playing
4) wrinkling his precious notes!
I did the first three right under his nose, while he used to be busy catching the guys sitting at the back for disturbances!
Then, there was this interview I attended, where I had a clear case of BOTH mental and verbal disconnect.
Self (entering): "Good morning sirs."
Chairman: (looking pointedly at watch) "It's 1 pm..."
Self: "Uhm... I am sorry, sir"
*long awkward pause*
"May I sit?"
Chairman: "Yes you may.."
After some awkward small-talk...
Physics interviewer: "What would you like to do when you grow up?"
Self: "Electronics Engineering..?"
PI: "What is a PN junction diode?"
Uhhh... I was in 10th STANDARD, for god's sake!
Self: "I don't know"
More inane talk later.
Social Sciences Interviwer: "What is the importance of 1853?"
Self: "The Battle of Plassey" (We had heard about his affinity for that year!)
SSI: "Talk about multipurpose river projects"
Self: "They are the temples of modern India."
SSI: "Who said that?"
Self: "Nehru. He thought multipurpose irrigation..."
SSI: "Multipurpose IRRIGATION?..." *struck up disinterested feet on desk pose*
*long awkward pause when I took the opportunity to look at my watch...*
Chairman (taking pity on the clearly disturbed young woman): "Are you interested in Civil Services?"
Self: "Uhhuh, my folks are." *long involved story*
Chairman: "What's Article 365 stand for?"
Shruti Number 102 (the one responsible for the sarcastic retorts in mind): "Yeah, do I look like the constitution to you?" *Striking a Lady of Liberty pose internally* "Uh, the Emergency?"
Case dismissed... the whole ordeal took 10 minutes of my life, felt INFINITELY longer!
Finally, there's the emotional disconnect, when I feel I am floating in the air looking down at Shruti going through all the crazy emotions... oh wait, that's everyday, everytime everyplace!

Copy-write Shrutz :: 9:17 PM :: 14 Sneaky Remarks:

What would you like to do?

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