A Geek tragedy
I am a geek at heart.
It’s my blessing. It’s my curse.
Born with all the trappings, from an interest in astronomy, to the even more esoteric passion for learning strange and difficult languages like Snobol — all those who think French is a language are non-geeks. Period– I am a geek through and through. This being the case I have frequently been teased, hit, chased and once even come close to being lynched by my very own family.
Somedays the geek in me reveals itself as a rather heavenly aura filled with random bits of geekish knowledge like the configuration parameters for an FCO card, or the exact mind numbingly large command to type out to install boot loaders on a remote network machine; while some other days, it lies just dormant making people (especially young pretty girls), believe I in fact am human, if they shut their eyes rather tightly and exercise their imagination to the fullest ( N: do you recognize the symptoms?). Of course, I refrained from exercising my imagination to the fullest, lest I do something indecent, but then again at most times it was/is evident that I am a geek.
Somedays it doesn’t take much to see the geek in me. Like today. I had to call up a rather distinguished “Ah”merican firm to get them to give me reset my password and they very properly asked me my login id, which was my name.
“R-Anant”, I went.
“Kenurepeethat?” he went.
“R, hyphen, A, N,A,N,T”, I went.
“I’msorrybutisthatan…. Arrr as in Romeo”, he went.
Well, that was rather dumb of me. I should have used the phonetic alphabet.
“Yes” I replied, “and an A as in Apple”.
“I’msorry”.
“Try A as in ermmm…”, I finally managed. Damn! I couldn’t for the life of me remember a single English or British name
“OK”.
“N as in…”.
Flummoxed!! I couldn’t really remember any name with N. Not even the obvious Nancy or Nicole or Next or Nasty or Never came to mind.
“I’msorryisitannoranem”.
Damn! Desperate now, I decided to speak the one name I could remember which started with an N.
“Nynquist”.
Long and contemplative silence, then he went.
“I’m sorryit’s what?”
So how do I explain, to an American liberal arts student that Nynquist is the only English name I am reasonably familiar with?
The next choice was highly ermmm… Revealing.
I chose Nimrod, not for it’s Biblical connection, because that was the name of a British Aircraft.
Damn!
Then came T.
I couldn’t for the life of me remember any name starting with T. Not Ted, Timothy, Todd or Thomas.
Guess, what I chose?
Go on, guess?
I choose Tannenbaum. Yes! Our very own and famed Tanenbaum of the Network Theory fame.
The shame!
Like I said, I am a geek at heart.
It’s my blessing. It’s my curse.
P.S.:
The call center chap actually put down the phone on me. Which was very good, because I couldn’t have taken more of that Luddite’s company, as he couldn’t obviously put up with mine. I did have the supreme satisfaction of writing him an email ticking him off for his rather rude behaviour, and of course I did get back my login. Thankfully, I didn’t get lynched. So I guess it wasn’t a tragedy after all.
April 20th, 2005 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 1 Comments
a long long time later
It’s been a long long time since I blogged. I know. To while the time away and as a kind of ceremony I have been involved in a number of creative ventures, which, to quote the inimitable Douglas Adams, “are extremely brilliant, but will never see the light of day”. I see what he means. Then again, maybe they will see the light of day.
Life has been intresting otherwise. I am teaching myself Lisp and boy!, I do have a lot to learn.
Btw, why are most Linux distributions so screwed up? I have spent an exhausting Sunday just trying to get rhythmbox to install in Linux and failing quite miserably, for a variety of reasons.
Sigh! Maybe Linux distributions will catch up; and a long long time later I may even install one in my system.
P.S:
Anybody has a cheap sound card that they are willing to dispose, just call me up. I need to go and dot chipmakers VIA on the nose.
April 17th, 2005 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
the ties that bind
this is something that happened to my friend amit. I hardly have a clue if he will put it up in his blog. But I am putting it up in mine. I hope somebody reads it. I really hope somebody does
A typical tiring day at office. Deadline is dancing on my head and I am slogging to come over it. I left office around 9 p.m. and am still writing the report in my thoughts. I am not very sure that was report I was thinking about, I stressed myself to quite an extent to figure out what I was thinking and was lost in, but nothing helped. Did not realize when did I reach Victoria, got into the right platform, got down at Stockwell and then was standing at the right platform waiting for the tube. I wonder how was I doing things right, which I seldom do when I am to my senses.
I almost lost my balance by a wind gust and then I woke up and realized that the tube has arrived. The door opened with the same regular voice and I saw the door blocked by some n number of luggage items. Being sure, I searched for an Indian around and saw a beautiful young Punjabi girl standing at the back of the pile of luggage items. I somehow made my way jumping over the luggage items and managed to get into the tube. She smiled. I passed a baffled smile back. I saw an old lady and another middle aged lady sitting inside and trying to avoid the spilling of the stuff from polybags they had. I felt pity and the old lady passed a meek smile. Only seat empty was the one next to middle aged lady and I captured that without any hitch.
The youngest and the oldest were talking in Punjabi/Hindi and I could hear some filmy dialogues going on. Some maa-beti scene was going on probably. I could barely make out what the issue is and the middle aged lady next to me puked !!! Right on her feet, inside the almost air-tight, underground tube and immediately all white skinned left their seats and went to the other side. Before my reaction time could made me respond, my side of tube was empty and I did not know what to do? The lady puked more and more and that seemed endless. The damsel seemed to have a faster reaction time than me and I do not know when but she put in lot of tissue papers on the floor and almost cleaned everything. I grabbed my wits and finally offered some help. I asked if they have any medicine for her and she asked the same in return. I said I have just the pain killer which might not work here. “Jo bhi goli ho de do” and just in a fraction of second the young lady offered the pain killer and medicine to the patient. I guess she belongs to the school of thought that any medicine can cure any illness. Whatever, the sick lady looked up with watered red eyes and denied to take the medicine and sat back in terrible pain.
The real story starts now. We came to talking terms and oldie told me that they are coming from the Heathrow airport and are going to Tooting Broadway. I asked how will you go with so much of luggage, is anyone coming to pick you people up. She looked up with dried eyes, raised her hand to join the palms in air and said “Upper wala he kuch karega ab to”. Humm .. situation was pretty filmy and before I could turn to the younger one, Tooting came. The youngest and the oldest started pushing the luggage out of the tube to the platform and I said, “Mein aapki madad ker deta hoon” and did the same. Finally the bold and the beautiful took the command and we pulled everything thru the escalators to the ground floor. I proudly used my Oyster card and came out of platform barricades and she got struck as probably she did not know the same travel card cannot be used again at the same station. A cop came and helped her with that and somehow we all finally came outside with all the luggage. I asked “London pahli baar aaye ho” ..and she replied …”nahin ..mein to pichle 17 saal se yahi rahti hoon …tooting mein”. I got stunned. To this the old lady came to me .. took my hands in her hands and with motherly voice she said “bahut bahut meherbaani beta … upper wala aapko bahut barkat de” … The beautiful also looked at me with praising eyes and the whole filmy scenario pushed filmy dialogue from my mouth “nahin nahin aunty, ek hindustani he ek hindustani ke kaam aata hai” ….and the oldie replied with a glitter in her eyes with no break “beta hum to pakistani hain”.
April 14th, 2005 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 2 Comments