Monday, December 24, 2007

So...that's that.

It's been ages since I wrote anything that did not end with a semi-colon. Excepting, of course, the e-mails that were follow-ups to things that ended with a semi-colon.

Life has been pretty mundane and normal - not something that goes down well with me, but then most of us don't have a choice. If we had our way we would probably want something radically different from what our respective lives are at the moment. I for one would like to have lots of fast cars, fancy sleek laptops (both the electronic variety and the other) and cocktails at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then again, I am not James Bond or Vijay Mallaya. And, Mallaya has an airline and a yatch to boot.

Somethings are scary. And sometimes they screw up the head. I was at this party drinking beer and thinking about bootloaders and memory management looking and feeling totally lost and at home, like I normally do at any party. Then suddenly this cute woman whom I have been seeing walk in and out of my field of vision come to me.

[Afraid]

After getting done with the usual introductions and pointless things she proceeds to park herself next to me. By which time the people hanging around have vanished. At this point, I would like to make a point which is I don't know to handle women. Especially ones that are tipsy. Very tipsy. It was as this instant, I would at least like to believe, that a couple of nice ideas in my heads about how to optimize memory accesses and improve computing were forever lost to mankind.

[Scared]

" ______ has left you all alone and wandered off, eh?"

"Umm...yeah! But, that is normal. He does that very often but I am used to it."

"He is so frustrating. I just can't understand him! Argh...!"

"Umm... yeah. I write code for a living. I know how it feels."

That line did not have the required effect. The required effect being the are-you-completely-mad-or-hard-of-hearing-look.

"I dated him until last week. It was so frustrating..."

[Minor heart attack]

And she starts to sniffle and then cry. Now, mind you, I can't stand crying women. They are like Fermat's Last theorem - it is believed that a proof existed but it took a really clever guy to come up with a 200 page proof to actually prove it. And even then, someone found a couple of mistakes in it.

The enterprising and clever witted fellow that I am, I had a line for the occasion. Bang out of Pulp Fiction.

"It's ok. You can't really help it. Shit happens!"

She said something else which I didn't really catch, but it is something that I don't think was very nice. And then she went to get another beer for herself.

Now, this woman is really cute, intelligent and will be an investment banker someday. As they say, a bomb. I would have asked her out if I was someone else and wasn't furiously hunting for my little nitro-glycerine tablets.

My cousin, when I told her, thinks that I should have risen to the occasion and offered a shoulder to cry on. Been a gentleman and prised away the beer from her. Offered her comforting words and all. At least offered her a tissue. I was a fool, she said from her apartment in the USA. But in my defence, they did not teach me all this in college.

"When things go the way you want in Linux you kill the processes and start all over again. If you are using Windows, " my professor gave an evil laugh, " you are pretty much dead. You should switch off and switch on your machine and pray to God that you won't have to reformat and re-install Windows."


P.S: I am waiting for my electric mandolin. In a couple of weeks.







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