Bryson's Law of Repairs
- Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.
- If you fool around with a thing for very long you will screw it up.
Sorry for not being there for a while. Been quite busy lately. If you are very famished, then lets not keep your stomach waiting.
A treatise - Part II
Course II
Time : 7:35pm
As I got down from my house, I couldn't help but get paranoid. I became very conscious of the fact that many people were staring at me. I proceeded very fast to the nearest yellow and black autos. And the autodrivers in the half drunk stopor cast a pale shadow from the gloomy orange sodium vapor lamp.
I was not liking this. I wanted this to get over as fast as possible.
The reason behind this - lets go for a bit of history lesson.
In the beginning, there was the hot, molten earth. Then the lava cooled down. Then slowly due to vapor condensation, great oceans formed, where the first life forms evolved....
Oops, I went back too much. I wanted to go back just a few years, not a few eons.
10 years ago.
I liked the three wheeled contraptions. They were zippy, fast and cheap. And fair. And were a very good way to get around the city.
Then things changed. And the nature of autos changed. Their original fairness changed into treachery and fleecing. Their zippiness baceme more and more violent, as they started terrorising all the passengers. Then it became really bad. Now, they are the dirtiest lot of people in the world - Chennai automen, that is. And I am not proud of that. Autos are always the last resort for me. It seems that everytime I go in the autos, my BP increases from a steady 120/80 to what I feel to be 200/120. It seems that my blood and emotions have started writhing with anger. My normally cheerful mood goes to the foulest possible. Even haggling with the autos about the price gives me the sweats.
I would have taken the bus today, had it not been the huge cash prize I was carrying. With that much cash, I am a walking time bomb. Anywhere. Anytime.
To the present.
Thankfully, nothing happened today. I reached safe and sound today, without any untoward incidents. At 7:45pm.
Course III
Time : 8pm
I confirmed the reservation at the hotel.
I had drilled all the recruits. They had to be punctual. Their ETA was in 15 min. I proceeded to wait.
Time : 8:15 pm.
The troops arrived in slowly, choosing whatever mode of transport they could commander. Final count revealed a total of twenty nine. Too bad, 6 other people missed all the action. (Including
Sudhon (who was furious later)).
The first round of ammunition was the clear vegetable soup, which everybody, gunned down very scrumptiously. The second round was the starters, which yours truly pirated a lot - they were very delicious.
The other recruits already blended themselves into the restaurant, by decorating themselves with food. A lot of things happened. Lets just say that we were winning the battle. Almost.
I myself couldnt survive beyond the third round (inspite of my preparation of not eating from 12 noon). All I could manage was a measly ice-cream.
Just Desserts
Time : 9:30pm
We finally finished eating. The bill came. It was decent amount. Not one that would make you put the foot in your mouth. It was 6695 bucks. Shared equally, we ended up paying 3.4k. Very fair. And after everybody's thanx - a lot of it: Apparently, amny had not eaten in this place at all before. I left soon, and got dropped by a classmate. (I didnt have to worry about the 1.6k cash I was carrying :)
I got myself a Geforce FX 5200 graphics card with 128MB DDR memory. (yeah - no new computer. This was a wiser investent. More about it in the next post.
