Inertia

2:00 AM (gawking at the monitor at home)

Inertia is a non-quantifiable property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.

Newton when he established this wonderful principle would have been so overjoyed if he’d had the good fortune (:D) of meeting me! I landed on this chair 3 hrs ago with the intention of wrapping up my work (not that I had any!) in an hour at max. It so happened, my ever-so-reliable broadband connection refused to work up the magic and I spent some time playin “tumblebugs”, in the hope that it’ll start working sometime.Work it did, ultimately... and the next two hours were spent ingeniously doing nothing! 

And I’ll be most obliged to give you a brief account of the ‘complexity’ of the situation.An hour after I was done with ploughing through a legion of accounts, my brain began the usual debate over whether I should call it quits or while around a bit longer. I could almost imagine the “good-me” and the “bad-me” pondering over the issue, ponder because both the 'me's were way too overcome with lethargy to have the ardor to argue. The good-me continued to whine about how late it was getting, as it supported its arguments with graphic memories of a livid mom, lousy days and a mocking clock. On the other hand the bad-me appeared to be doodling listlessly on some imaginary table saying nothing. The mere sight of her screamed out in my head “the bed is soooo faaar awaayyyyyy, I’ll die a million deaths before I ever get there! You can’t just go off to sleep, you have to shut down the PC, switch off the light, brush your teeth… And where will you sleep?!? Who’ll clear all the clutter?!” I thus spent another hour, an indolent, purposeless wanderer on the colossal planet of the Internet, waiting to be taken where my sleeping destiny beckons (I have my doubts on that one, but anyways…)

And now I have successfully spent another hour jotting down this pointless post in the futile search of some inspiration to get me out of my chair. In fact, even my chair has started protesting now..

I have therefore reached the conclusion that when Murphy adopted me, Inertia too was a part of the family I was adopted into. She has ever since protected me from any kind of stimulus that’ll throw me into “active mode”. And I, like a committed disciple have proved myself worthy of her blessings. My worthiness shows when I keep walking even if I have to take a turn, when I keep sitting in some room even though I can’t keep my eyes open, when I keep playing Snakes in spite of having a zillion things to do, when I keep sitting in my bed in spite of being awfully late for college…

And it is showing now…

The Graveyard Shift

“saturation region…”, “12.54”, “infinity”, “Lorentz pri….” Zzzzz…….

“Yes, Miss Samant, do you enjoy maths?” ZAP!!
“Sirrr..??! Yes, sir..” (Whew..)

Every morning, the dismal ordeal begins with our despotic gurus making their entry one after the other, as they fill the lecture hall with their ghoulish chanting. 10 minutes into the lecture, you feel like Calvin taking off on his journey into outer space, fighting the sadistic advocates of education. Except that in this case, the entire atmosphere is so somber, it seems more like a trip to the graveyard than outer space :-S
Any attempt to catch up with the proceedings of the class is met with blank stares from fellow zombies (if lucky!), as they gently nudge you back into your alien world with the “how-dumb-can-you-be” look. A few more minutes, and the world of the dead gets segregated into two:
(i) the living-dead (read ‘rendered lifeless due to excessive studying’)
(ii) the brain-dead (read ‘dumb mortals clinging on to hopes of surviving on extra-curriculars’)
An insight into the psyche of the first category reveals no theory is too *convoluted to be comprehended and no query is out of bounds for them. And as their steady drone of answers reverberates through the class, the second-category members feel themselves being steadily sucked into the black hole of incomprehension, to a point of no-return (not that u can come back from black-holes, just a silly attempt to play around with Stephen Hawking’s theory counter that of Einstein :D).
And thus continues the graveyard shift till the daylight arrives (the ‘daylight’ for the brain-dead is end of college) and the living-dead crawl back into their coffins, nestled there till its time for another shift…


>> * the use of convoluted here is not out of the necessity to use a synonym of ‘complex’ but as a tribute to the principle of ‘convolution’ as all communication engg. students will (hopefully) agree, is by far the worst ‘theory’ we’ve ever experienced in the course of communication 0:-)

When something has to go wrong…

8:00 PM (Applied Power Electronics Lab – IITB)
This is probably the most bizarre place or time to jot down a post, but then joblessness and lack of ardor can do funny things to you :-S Today is the second-last day of my summer training and I have made all plans of doing a Houdini tomorrow evening, so ideally speaking I should be giving finishing touches to my project work… so I wish! Over the years I have actually come to realize that when I was born, Murphy was really bored, so he decided to adopt me as his blessed angel… By which I mean, every time I venture out to do something (regardless of importance in this case), Murphy and his law hound me till I actually start thinking of dedicating a temple to him (hoping that’ll keep him happy for the rest of ‘my’ life). In fact, if you look at me carefully, you’ll see this tiny figure jumping on my head (with joy, when things don’t work out for me). Yes! That is Murphy… So if you ever think life has been good to you, and is not challenging enough, you might want to come and shake hands with this lousy li’l rogue and shake him off my tail
Now, coming to the point, this arbit piece of prose is actually the result of a certain component of my circuit refusing to work, because of which I can’t go ahead with my work. And I sit here waiting for my poor perpetually-tied-for-time senior to officially send me off for the day and I sincerely hope that happens before I faint with hunger.
As I said, today’s the second-last day of my training… So today morning when I woke up (i.e. 10:30 am, in case you have any earthly, preconceived notions about morning hours) I had all plans of slogging it out, cutting short my lunch-break and get my hardware up and running. Murphy didn’t sleep too well last night it seems, so today when I reached the lab, full of resolve and brimming with energy, he shooed Electricity away… And so Electricity went stomping off (in quite a rage, I must say) and I didn’t actually mind given the state of my growling stomach and sleepy-for-no-reason eyes. As it turned out, Electricity was too angry to come back on its scheduled time i.e. 3 pm and Murphy, obviously had no intentions of calling it back. Basically, I spent the next 2 hours eating people’s heads and their phone bills, guzzling a coffee and waiting for the pesky Electricity.
Finally, Electricity arrived in all it’s glory, all charged and refreshed after a 5-hour break. And, one hour into my work, I realize there is no way I can get the abysmal component to work (basically Murphy needed something to entertain him after Electricity was back). I have now spend 2 hours waiting for my send off, prolifically utilizing my time playing FreeCell till my eyes threatened to spring out of their sockets and subsequently I chose to scribble (electronically :D) this post instead.
It’s actually quite an interesting sight if u see… The M.Tech. people have their presentations coming up. It’s like this bunch of people running after Time, stumbling and falling to catch up with it; while I drag myself aimlessly and wait for Time to catch up with me, but its just way far behind. And now, I have reached my wit’s end (not that I have too much of it) so I’m planning to go and give Time one good whack and stomp away like Electricity did :D

PS. The post wasn’t meant to sound like an Enid Blyton story but its just my state of mind talking. And in situations like these, you tend not to have too much respect for time and electricity :D
Finally, any grievances against the disrespect of time and electricity should be duly taken care of by Murphy and I should not be held responsible for any of the comments made above 0:-)