my first mp3

we've come a long long way together...through the hard times, and the good. I have to  celebrate you baby...I have to praise you like I should!

okay, that wasn't it. but first, the story. and before that, thanks to @anishasharma10 for nudging me into this trip down memory lane :)

it was 1999. I was just out of school. I had never heard of mp3s before. and I had this cool, geeky friend joel who was ranting and raving about this awesome new thing called "napster". and consequently, music that was small enough to fit on my pc's (tiny) hard disk.

I'm not sure if the problem was that I couldn't believe him or that I couldn't understand him, but he took it upon himself to demonstrate what the hype was all about.

so one evening after our evening games of cricket (summer vacations were on), he brought his cpu over, and we sat down and figured out how to disconnect my pc's hard disk and connect it to his.

halfway through the adventure, there was a twist: my brother, who was fooling around with the electricals somewhere in the house (yesh, he was all of 12 years old, and messing with live wires. don't ask.) blew our mains fuse and plunged the entire house into darkness.

joel was kinda freaked out (he had taken his pc without permission, I'm sure :D), but my dad bypassed the fuse with some regular electrical wire, and we had light again.

so we then set about transferring stuff.

I remember, he was supposed to give me a c compiler and visual basic (I was interested in learning and vb), and finally my hard disk was almost completely full (I had a 500 mb hard disk back then!)

his parting gift was one mp3.

I didn't choose it.

I didn't even know which one it was till he left and I started browsing the stuff he gave me.

I know for sure that it didn't play the first time I tried loading it (my pic was below the minimum spec of most mp3 playing software).

but I do remember which one it was.

a live performance of eric clapton's "tears in heaven".

and that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first ever mp3.

five days

i've always had this weird problem with staying at home. forget weekends, i usually never take more than one sick day off, because i'd feel sicker the second day due to the sheer monotony of being at home. somehow office doesn't feel that way to me.

so my record so far is a a day and a half at home.

until last thursday.

wednesday was a holiday, that i actually spent at home cos i couldn't think of anything better to do, but thankfully, i did go to work on thursday morning, and only fell sick in the afternoon.

so there i was, high fever et al, under house arrest for atleast 2 days. followed by the weekend.

i thought i was cured, but it turned out i wasn't. and to top it all, it's been raining every evening (daily rain in november? it didn't rain this much in frikkin *JULY*!), so i haven't even been able to step out onto the terrace in the evenings.

and then i was still feeling weak and unwell on monday.

i've reached the point where, i'm scared that if i stay home for one more day, i will just lose the will to work, eat or do anything else. and just sleep myself to a deathly hibernation.

yes, that's how bad five days can be for me.

back to school

i had two recent dreams about being in school. one last week, and one today morning. today's had a lot more known people though.

cast: me, my brother, jeet, deepti, aditi, mrs lata.

to start off, i was in an examination hall. more like a classroom, actually. the desks and benches were exactly like those in my stats practicals (the terrace classrooms on xaviers, to be specific). sorting my stuff and all.

it was a science examination. i'm not sure which standard, but it was school. everyone looked like how they do right now though (i.e. in their late twenties :D). few familiar people in the class, one of them being deepti. (can't recall anyone else's face now)

the prof handed us our answer sheets and told us to start drawing margins, write our names and seat numbers, etc.

the prof also handed us an extra sheet, and drew a table full of text on the blackboard, and asked us to copy it down on the sheet. it wasn't anything related to my science exam.

when i protested that it wasn't part of the exam, she said that it was an assignment that she wanted us to do. no marks involved, but we couldn't start writing our exam till we finished. i took my time, did the table and wrote neatly, and finally submitted the assignment.

that's when i realized i needed to pee.

excused myself, went to the loo (what i thought was the guys loo, actually), and went in.

only to find that it was occupied by girls. who, strangely enough, were standing at the urinals.

they screamed when they saw me, and i ran out, embarrassed.

i swore in my dream that all the girls were using the guy's loo...after all, this is my school, and i know which one is the guy's loo!

anyway, i had to pee, so i went to the girls' loo. there was nobody there.

and just as i finished, a few girls entered the loo, led by aditi, and apologized, cos they realized they were in the wrong loo!

i passed jeet somewhere on the way back from the loo to the examination hall. told him which one to go to.

and then, was informed that i had to sit on a desk outside the hall as my seat had been taken while i was away.

so i had to write my exam at a desk under a tree, which somehow looked suspiciously like the tree that's in my building compound at home. sitting on a plastic chair that collapsed to half its height when i sat on it. and the desk was to be shared with my brother, who was also writing an exam.

anyway, once i sat and finished drawing margins, writing my name etc on the answer sheet, i realized i was hungry. and bro had carried lunch for both of us. so i fished out the lunchbox and had half the tiffin. bro wasn't too sure if the food was fresh because of "the way the curry leaves stuck to the potatoes", but i assured him it was.

lunch over, i asked bro the time, as i didn't have a watch. it was 12:28. i had spent an hour and a half without writing a word of my exam.

he started telling me what we could do to help me finish on time.

he said he could dictate the answers to me (he was probably solving the same paper as i was).

but while saying this, he started gesticulating rather visibly.

i told him he'll get caught for copying if he made signs or spoke audibly. showed him how to speak without moving his lips.

and then told him i'll just write fast, without caring about my handwriting. 6 minutes for every 10 marks worth is how i'll time myself. they won't cut marks for handwriting in a science exam.

that's when the invigilator (mrs. lata, my science teacher from school, btw) caught a guy at the next desk for copying.

and that's when the doorbell rang.

i woke up at the same moment as bro did. we were facing each other when we were asleep, so the first thing i saw when i woke up was him looking at me.

feverish thoughts

I had a rather bad fever till a few minutes ago. temperature nudging 104°F. extreme weakness.

the doctor gave me medicine that he said will get rid of the fever in 2 hours.

so I had a bowl of soup, and downed the tablets, praying for the best.

I was out like a light, in a deep sleep.

till I started dreaming. or rather, hallucinating.

I started feeling like multiple people. I felt like everyone. and I felt like I had to do strange things.

I had to clothe everyone. I had to feed everyone. then there were too many clothes. there were too many people. I just had to feed myself. and a few more people. I had to give them work. the people in me. they wanted to do something. they were feeling hot. they didn't like the work. they were me. I was sweating. then, I was feeling cold and they were feeling hot. I was uncomfortable but they were ok. they wanted me to sleep this way, I did not. we tossed and turned, trying to remove clothes, put them back on, gave ourselves work.

and then I woke up.

and thought to myself: what am I doing here?  what am I supposed to be doing here? who are these people? why are they unhappy?

and then I realized it's just me.

I opened facebook on my phone, and suddenly, I felt like myself again.

I shall go to sleep now. hope I wake up fine!

the sardar joke

there's this old sardar joke (okay, before i begin, i have nothing against sardars - and you will know why shortly) that i remembered recently:

a sardar entered a bus, and when the conductor asks him the destination for the ticket, he opened his bag to check his tiffin.

a co-passenger asked him what he was doing. he replied: "i'm checking if i'm going home or to work."

and i was reminded of the joke because...

last sunday, while showering, i was so lost in thought, that i had to smell my armpits to figure if i was starting or finishing with my shower.

ps: sunday holds the record for maximum number of times i've carefully smelled my armpits on any given day. and the number is two. but the rest of that story is for another post, another day :)

absence makes the heart grow unFonder

some time last week, i decided i'll stop tweeting till i speak to @bitchwanti. and since i wasn't really feeling like calling her, it was quite clear to me that i'll have to wait for her to call.

so there i was, off twitter. almost.

i must admit, the first day was kinda tough. i got a couple of @replies that i had to ignore, and it felt very alien to me.

by the second day, i didn't really feel like i was missing anything.

on the third day, @bitchwanti promised me she'll call.

she didn't, but i decided i might as well make my reappearance now. a promise is a promise, right? and besides, i was packing for a camping trip to kashid at that time, and i sure as hell didn't want to be breaking my twitter-break while lying under the stars and listening to the waves. didn't want to adulterate *that* sort of a trip.

so i decided to tweet.

frankly, i don't even remember what my first tweet was. only that @hiway happened to be online, and he incorrectly figured that @bitchwanti had called :D

other than that, there was no fanfare whatsoever. and that felt just about right with my perception of twitter.

the weekend at kashid was awesome. and i did speak to @bitchwanti while under the stars and listening to the waves. she didn't adulterate the experience much, thankfully :P

i got back two days later, on saturday night.

and on sunday afternoon, (i slept till 3pm :P), i realized that my thoughts don't fit into 140 characters any more.

which brings me back to my blog.

and which is why, i'm literally pouring blog post ideas out of my ears.

so ladies and gentlemen, here's my lesson: if you want to blog, stop tweeting for a while. let your brain get re-used to thinking big.

and thanks, bitchy! ;)