"Do I have a Choice??": The Dreaming Insomniac Part III

Preparing a seminar which should take a minimum of 30 minutes was certainly not an amazing thing to do. 30 minutes called for a minimum of 35 slides. Above all that, the most important element, without which the speaker would be prepared to speak hardly anything on the subject at hand- the source. The most severe of pains was getting the information; some articles, some diagrams, something... Without these, it would be close to impossible to blah blah. Of course, it must be kept in mind that to achieve success and acclaim for hi/her presentation, it is absolutely essential that he/she takes enough time to study the resources patiently with interest, dedication and most importantly, in a good frame of mind. And here I am! Impatient, flustered, disinterested, utterly frustrated and to top it all, very very sleepy. Thanks to the 5 hours of snooze I’ve had in the last six days, of course, put together.

Life in the temple of education has taught me, like every other wannabe techy, that crying over the milk that is anyway going to spill is simply a waste of time and above all, waste of tears. Hence the moral of the story is, acceptance is a virtue. Acceptance is the order of the day for mortals like me, who have only one choice, which sorrowfully, happens to be, no other choice. Again as Morpheus in The Matrix: Reloaded put it, “Choice is an illusion created by those in power for those without it.” Now that I’ve realized the essence of the road-to-engineering-degree life, it was time I pondered of what, how and from where to get my work done. To answer the first question- what? Well, all I knew about this one was that I was to speak on “Basics of LASER” and nothing more than that. It struck me then, amidst my strains to think of a possible way out of the enigma that I found myself in, that a complete and comprehensive solution to the question must lie in the answer to the next question- how? But strange enough, I saw myself facing the same dilemma as I was in before. Without breaking my head, I skipped to the next question, which turned out to be the best decision I had taken in the day. The answer to from where lay in the lifeline of the campus, the Octagon, the computer centre. But again, as always, we had a new problem posing before us. We have the Octagon to ourselves alright, and its open 24/7, however, getting a free terminal was something that even Mr. Hercules might find way too challenging. Sadly though, owing to the expansion policy of the college, an increased intake of students without expanding infrastructure of the college had created mayhem at all levels and Octagon was not spared either. Come to think of it, it is an amazing proportion, isn’t it, 40 computers in the internet lab for approximately a thousand students? Thanks to all these, the lab had become an arena where there would be an angry junta waiting for free terminals when all those people sitting on the computer, hooked onto some online dating sites with chat windows open and coochy-cooing some Rita, Mita, Tina, Lolita, Sasha, Laura, etc, etc. As and when someone logs off, all those who were waiting pounce on the system and a war of possession commences. I was in no mood for such gimmicks. Hence the most opportune moment had to be midnight, which in other words meant, seventh night of sleeplessness. Again, do I have an alternative?

Amidst all this planning, I meet Anil on my way from the canteen to hostel. “So what’s the plan? Taking the seminar?” he asks mockingly. “Do I have a choice? Darling, I want to stay alive!” was my reply. And the sadist remarks in a dramatic manner, a la Matrix, “It is not the choice, but why you made the choice that’s important.” Encouraging this conversation was not in my best interest; hence I put an abrupt full stop to it and set for my chores.

The day’s itinerary was not very different from the rest of them. After class there was practice till 10 in the night for my next play, Barefoot In The Park. After that an elaborate dinner of 3 Mountain Dews™ and a bread omelet at the night canteen followed by a nice a session of revising the play’s progress and planning for the next day’s action. All this went up till midnight. In short, I didn’t have to literally wait for the moment, it just came. After dumping my bag and notes in my room, I set out for the Octagon. As expected, the internet lab was relatively less populated. Of course, the slice of junta here was engaged in some sort of leisure that gave them immense pleasure and created a world of fantasy for them and their dreams. Can’t blame them, can I? After a certain level of frustration, man can’t hold it longer. They have to get engaged somehow. Hence, the visual medium was the most easily accessible. Call it misuse of technology, for all you care. I could not help letting out a chuckle, looking at these innocent yet immensely corrupted fellows glued to their screens. I wished I could just observe them longer and write something about them. Alas! That wasn’t my job. Besides, do I have a choice?

Alright! So this was the plan. I’ll browse How Stuff Works website as well as Wikipedia and try getting some stuff downloaded transfer to the intranet using my flash drive. Sounds simple enough, I thought. Well, to my amazement, it was damn simple alright. I was elated. Took just an hour to acquire the required pieces of info and voila! Here I have my resources. A look at my watch said 1:25am. That was very encouraging. As per the POA, I dumped the stuff from the net lab to the user lab where we access the intranet. Now that acquisition was over, it was time for assimilation. In other words, the material has to be properly organized, put into slides, order them according to the sequence of presentation and then do the final touches such as inserting the pictures and the reference links. This was the tedious part of the job. Because before I do all these, had to study the material and make myself well aware of what I was supposed to speak and what should be kept as back up to answer questions raised by my “cooperating” classmates and perhaps, even by the lecturer herself. Without wasting time, I got myself going through all the pages I had just downloaded and studying the graphs carefully with the closest detail. Thanks to some basic fundamentals that I was acquainted with, getting the concepts into my gray matter didn’t seem all that taxing. Thanks to the amazing illustrations, the principles were there on my screen and required minimum strain for comprehension. The entire process was time consuming. But that was pardonable since I didn’t feel the pressure at all, for I was all to myself in an empty user lab at 4:50am. I was free to let out grunts and yawn noisily. I even sang at moments of joy and clapped in frenzy when something I did worked out! Thanks to a very understanding guard sitting at the entrance of the Octagon, who was fast asleep and snoring away to glory. Now that’s what I call a “sound sleep”.

For a change, I was beginning to feel that the cosmos is indeed smiling at me in this early hour of the morning. I mean, come to think of it, everything I had planned on doing was simply just happening in front of me and guess what? I have had to put minimum effort. Well, I realized that optimism was not rally alien to me. It’s just that, things don’t work out the way it should at times and we tend to keep reminding ourselves of only those instances every time. And the result? We grow to think that nothing good can ever happen to us. Even if they really happen, that’s just a bonus. Not anymore for me. We have to be optimistic about our stuff. All we need is a little bit of planning and most importantly, sticking to the plan. If we do that, then there is nothing that could go wrong. Absolutely nothing.

The watch said 6:05 when I heard the birds chirping and crying to welcome the first rays of the sun. A look outside the window and I saw the night sky is slowly turning blue with streaks of dark pink and purple. That’s what made me look into my watch. I had every reason to smile, for here I was, with 38 slides in my presentation which included 4 graphs, 6 pictures of LASER equipment and 10 detailed step by step illustrations of the actual process of LASER generation. The sense of triumph was such that I didn’t feel tired anymore. A bit fine tuning was all that was left, i.e. giving the animations and things like that. It was 6:10 now and people had started coming into the lab slowly and taking their seats. One of them looked at me with sympathy, thanks to my sunken eyes and dark circles. But I wasn’t bothered.

For the final revision, I put the presentation on slide show. One by one, the slides came and left at the click of the mouse. Important points faded in and expanded. The illustrations swiveled and expanded. The layout was strictly professional and the colour scheme was in conformity with the whole mood of the presentation. At the end I wanted to save “the thing” and transfer it to my flash drive. And then it happened amidst the slide show. The screen went blank. I waited as though the system had slowed down. But no! The screen would simply not come. I pressed every button possible! Alt-Ctrl-Del, Esc, Alt-Tab, everything, but the screen simply refused to come alive!

“I’m really sorry! It was a mistake! I kicked it by mistake” said someone. I turned in the direction of the voice. And there was this guy with a pleading look, sitting at the last system that was close to the switchboard. “Beep!” said my computer and then the Windows Xp™ Loading screen came alive.

And so did the reason for this post.

PS: This post was made on the 28th of September, but due to technical reasons, uploading it was not possible on time. The delay is regretted.

"Why on Earth Me": The Dreaming Insomniac Part II

After a pathetic breakfast of aloo bonda or deep fried potato balls, which feels like heavy lead in your stomach, Vinod and I parted ways to our classes. Not particularly interested in attending them though. If it hadn't been for the attendance requirement per semester, I would've spent my time in more productive and fruitful ventures. I believe I'm not the only one who believes so...

It simply beats my wildest imaginations and the entire lot of reasoning faculties that I possess, how is it possible, of all the things in this universe, to sit through fifty minutes of technical discourses, which is filled with grammatical errata and wrong usage of the English language, than anything that is remotely technical. Oh! Did I forget to say that the medium of instruction is English, which of course is often interspersed with the popular idiomatic expressions , sighs and emotional calls in the local vernacular language. Indifference to this environment might lead you to be caught in situations resulting consequences described in my earlier post What is Froth flotation? Now doesn't all this make a congenial and healthy environment for supreme technical education?

Weary Eyed and tired, here I was, in this ventilated chamber with the other wannabe tech numskulls; a good section of whom were interested in only getting into the good books of these pseudo gurus. I guess that's what they all do anywhere and everywhere. That wasn't my concern anymore, thanks to the last three years of indifference; I am neither in any mood nor in a position to change. All I knew at the moment was that I had three sets of forty minute sermons to bear, of which two were by the same person. This particular character was known for her passion for anything supersized, including herself. She craved for breathing spaces, which were, by and large hogging spaces. Every small time interval she could find for herself, she would perform the Houdini. The next instant she could be spotted in the canteen. Back to the class, our lady comes up with some of the most innovative ideas to explain certain concepts; different matter that she fails miserably. She is an expert in the English language. One could have said that she speaks the Queen's English, the catch being, had she been the queen.

Amidst her rendition, I noted down some of her pearls of wisdom...

"I have a 20ampere current in my hand (yeah rite! If it were true, you'd have a charred hand!! ) and a 30Volt voltage...."

"No photodiode will not conduct.."

Some amazing new concepts too..

"Output/Input = Loss"

She also has this commendable habit of substituting the unknown with "the thing". And since her knowledge of the subject is far and wide, her sentences are filled with "the things". Towards the end of her two straight stretches of rendition, she proposes that the last unit of the syllabus be seminar series, which of course, means that the unit would be divided into topics with a chosen few of students taking a topic each for at least half an hour.

The moment she announce the good news, the junta went into a state of frenzy. Confusion filled the room. Chaos as though an elephant had run amok. There was panic in the air. The fear of genocide was making the rounds, for deterrence and defiance meant treason, which was a cardinal sin and meant facing extermination. The mystery continued, who is it going to be? Chinki? Shagan? Veeru? Shanky? Tarun? Ram? Chatley? Who is it going to gong to be? Amidst all this, the elephant lifted its trunk and in a loud trumpet rattled the classroom, putting an end to the suspense. The loud thud that I received woke me up from my classroom slumber!

"You! Allfi (that's how she calls me)!! You will take the first seminar. Basics of Lasers!" ME?? What? Are you sure? Me? Why on earth me? Didn't you find anyone else? I mean, I didn't even disturb your class! I didn't laugh at your stupid comments and pathetic language! What on earth have I done?

"Tomorrow 1:30 you have to gave the thing and if you wanted the LCD thing get the consensus from Sampath." A Jew could never speak against the Fuhrer, could he?

The Dreaming Insomniac

Definitely not my kind of a night. I mean, think about it, after a tiring day of hectic business, you come back to your dwelling with the hope of a nice and sound sleep; however, the wretched night has something else in store for you. The heavenly boon of slumber was simply being denied to the mortal who craved and pleaded for nothing but just eight hours of sleep. Alas! There was none to hear the woes of this hapless soul.

The day was jam packed with work. Attending two exhausting lectures on Biomedical Instrumentation had induced enough sleep in me that I dreaded even looking at anything that was horizontal, flat and measuring six feet in length. Besides, I was tired of yawning and yearned for the freedom. The man did leave us after watching heads fall down, one by one, while he went on rendering his soapbox oration on the intricate details of a CT Scan and MRI scanning machines. I surmise that even he was bored with this portion of the syllabus. However, the bottomline is that he did leave us after two hours of his boring rendition. Just when the fruits of freedom were to be realized, Vinod calls me up to accompany him to a nearby mess house in order to order food for the Mallu junta of the college, which planned to get together on the coming Tuesday to celebrate the harvest festival of Onam. Being a good Samaritan and a responsible Mallu myself, the Mallu in me refused to refuse Vinod's request. Hence complied and walked to this nearby place. The walk wasn't very interesting. Thanks to the scorching heat of the sun coupled with the high humidity, we were boiling on earth, like tomatoes in microwave oven.

Negotiations regarding the rates were followed by a short lunch at the mess house, which Vinod had elaborately while I stuck to the basics of steamed rice and the South Indian lentil dip (read as Sambar), thanks to a tummy that was stubborn on going for a hunger strike. On our way back, I gave everything what I ingested back to Mother Nature. It was, undoubtedly and very much terribly, embarrassing when you are throwing up on the roadside and the entire monde is staring at you. At the end of the ordeal, I finally staggered to my room, gulped down the one litre bottle of water at one go and sat on my bed with hopes of taking a short nap before proceeding with rest of the day's itinerary. Not five minutes passed when my mobile started crying out that it was time to go for practice. A helpless and hapless me, victimized by time, punished for reasons that were known to none, lifted myself up and proceeded to practice for Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park, which is to be staged on Friday, 23rd September, 2005, in the EEE Auditorium of NIT Trichy at 5:30pm. After the practice session, I accompanied the team going from hostel to hostel canvassing for the same and putting up posters at strategic locations of the campus to attract junta. It must be understood that this group activity is no shorter than a cross country race. Running across 20 acres of the lithospheric portion was no joke. But there was some fun in this obstacle race and the very thought of crashing into the bed for a sound sleep kept me going.

After completing the job at hand, and of course, celebrating the placement of Darshak Parmar and Salem Amrutesh in Sasken Communication Technologies Limited with bumps and a small treat, I finally made it to my room. Without switching on the lights, to ward off some flying pests which were waiting to receive enlightenment to attack my room, I grabbed my lungi (Trivia: The lungi is a garment worn around the waist in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) and quickly changed. The next instant of time I was lying on my bed and sent a 'goodnight' to Feba, who had been messaging me from Banglore. I closed my eyes with the excitement and passion for that leisure of slumber. All I could think of was going into hibernation for the next eight hours, suspending my animation, being dormant all the while. There was this cool breeze that blew into my room which was being effectively circulated by my most valuable possession, my Hitachi Table Fan. Thanks to Physics and convection, the setting of the room was simply apt for the perfect siesta. And slowly.... very slowly.... very very slowly, I could feel I was floating, flying high, soaring higher, traversing the skies to the land of fantasies and dreams, when suddenly that happened. My worst fears had become a reality. What I have been writing off as a minor problem had grown into a major menace. It was getting intolerable, unbearable and unpardonable.

Just when I was at the threshold of attaining temporary oblivion, I have this terrible feeling itch my knee. As if something was there. As if something was... biting me. Before I could think any further, my reflexes got into action and my hand landed heavily on my knee. Next moment I hear a buzz close to my ear. And before I knew what was happening, I was up battling against a battery of bloody blood sucking mosquitoes. All I knew was I was slapping myself everywhere and anywhere. Right from my forehead to my heels. I bet the US Air Forse that raided Iraq and Afghanistan had more mercy.

I remember a small prose piece that I came across in the Reader's Digest. To quote in my own words,

"If you feel that you are too insignificant to make an impact in the world, try being locked up in a small room with absolutely no ventilation and no inmates except a mosquito!"

By now, I knew what the author meant. All my acts of self defense were simple futile because there were always more mosquitoes. In the end, I realized, all I was doing was just slapping myself. Feeling cold and irritated, and of course not to forget, very itchy too, I realized that there was not much of sleep left for me. Rest had become close to a fantasy by then. I decided to venture out in the night for staying in the room would be suicidal. Changing back to my cargoes, I left my room and took a look around, only to find every damn mortal enjoying their sweet forty winks. I set out, weary, tired and irritated, to the Octagon, the computer centre.

On my way, I stopped by the coffee stall which was unusually open though it was past 2 in the night. Well, actually, our man was going to shut the stall down when I approached him. The nice guy that he is, got me 4 cups of coffee. A silly thing to do though, drinking coffee when you are actually yearning for sleep. But one must understand, that I had given up on sleep and staying drowsy would have only spoilt the mood. I continued my walk, reached the Octagon and entered the internet lab to find some really frustrated souls breaking their head to jump firewalls and proxies to get their share of late night fantasies. I was in no mood for such adventures, and hence I chose to simply ping into my MSN Messenger and open The Melting Pot Of ICE, to check for any new comments and my hit counter. To my pleasure, Praveena was online from New Jersy and hence bugged her for the rest of the time and simultaneously started keying down my unfortunate attempts at getting at least a snooze. I had bugged her last night also, around this time only. And the night before last, my victim was Gutgut who was online from Ann Harbor, again around this time. It struck me just now.

And now as I'm tired and feeling the extremes of fatigue, I receive an SMS from Vinod, "Hey, whr r u? coming 4 breakfast?" I guess I better join him now.