Hours swirl by, days whizz past, nights whoosh into history and soon you are a month older, without anything significantly interesting popping up for you to savour this recent past. You wonder `where did all that time vanish'?? Sounds familiar?? My question has no scientific shades of the relativity theory, but is something much more fundamental. Do you recall what you did yesterday in your life?? We have been told time and again that chores, even the mundane and mindless ones kinda expand themselves to fill the time we have on hand. Still, I bet that if you sit down to tabulate the stuff you did on any particular day, you struggle to barely fill up even half a page of a A4 size paper. My suggestion is that you don't venture back too far because all of us are seriously susceptible to forget the eminently forgettable things we do and this will complicate the already problematic and distressing exercise, frustrating you even more.
Recently, on a relatively hectic day by my high standards (which means I could laze around only for half the usual quota) I had received crystal clear instructions from 'you know who' to blunder through some tasks/errands and submit the banal `Action Taken Report' by late afternoon. Evening is usually reserved for Judgement time, a rehearsal for that day when we are finally in front of our creator. The solemnity of such occasions makes me fidget, standing on one leg for a while and then the other; wringing my hands frenetically and mumbling inaudible excuses (let me tell you, it pays to be unclear in this context). Hoping that you get an air-conditioned room and two square meals in the easier segment of hell - a la the criminal politician lodged in Tihar jail, who failed to share the booty with powers that be and is therefore heavily out of favour.
Her Majesty's commands are usually unambiguous, and blemishless, to the extent that she actually demonstrates once to show me how to fulfill the mandate!! The perceptive and perplexed ones among you may ask why she does not take the final half-step to just compete the job herself and let me applaud heartily from the sidelines. Go ahead, ask. To me, it is not a mystery at all. This is a diabolical plot through which she can chuckle and reassure herself periodically that neither time nor experience has improved me in any way and there is still that yawning gap between her expectation and my execution. It was deja vu again on that fateful day and she rounded off with a plaintive `how could you have forgotten to do that'?? Some error of omission on my part, let me hasten to confess unabashedly, which has unsurprisingly resulted in nothing short of a cataclysm. It always does. Suitably admonished, I did a clinical session of catechism to identify root causes for my lapse (also did a fish bone analysis) and began with a list of things which engaged me on that calamitous day. And the outcome made me ask the question appearing above as the title of this blog.
*Bought air-ticket for my dear wife. An astute review of the result revealed that there was an almost fatal flaw. Had typed Mr instead of Mrs as the title. Apart from incurring her mild rebuke (it never is severe, just to make you feel worse!) for the mistake itself, the resultant situation would have seen her being disallowed boarding. Would have been disastrous and immediate reparation was warranted. The actual booking took 8 minutes and the fixing of the problem consumed 135 minutes, with multiple calls to almost 80% of the people in the call centre, who were adept at passing me and the problem on to the next guy. I was bleating like a lamb, when a sympathetic soul corrected the ticket for me. I was all the more nervous because it was not the first time something like this happened with her booking. I had once booked her mother, herself and brother on a flight exactly 3 months after the date on which they wanted to return from a trip; a genuine error but it came out as if I was eager to keep her entire tribe out in the boondocks for longer.
*WiFi at home has been playing truant for a few days. Every 30 mins, it developed an itchy desire to drop off and went off wandering for a few seconds and then resurrected itself, causing agonizing disruption in browsing. I can empathize with the people in Kashmir, who are suffering a lot without internet. The technician from the provider company had become a frequent visitor anyway -- probably he liked our home, its ambience and the cuppa coffee he got? He came happily again for the umpteenth time to dissect the system. For a good two hours, I winced and struggled to watch him wrestle with the problem without a hint of a solution on the horizon. In my desperation, I finally told him to reset the WiFi settings and voila, everything was fine. This seems to be the solution for all problems with gadgets of all hues nowadays. RESET. I wish this trick would work with the people too, but we have to discover the specific buttons to push!
*Periodically we have been noticing an unapproved intrusion in our home-- a sedate procession of hordes of ants from one of the bathrooms to a balcony outside through crevices in the woodwork. For the lives of us, we could not tell why these creatures could not bypass the interiors of our home and take the march through external routes. The tantalizing question has always been `how can we divert this unwanted traffic' without harming the marchers themselves? Took over two hours to find a benign solution, with inputs and interventions (some of that unsolicited) from a dozen people, including my mother on phone from Madras, my mother in law, gardener, our resident housekeeper, maid, driver and a few other special invitees. By the time we finished, there was a queue of disappointed do-gooders at our door, all craving admission to visit the problem and provide a creative solution. But, I somehow feel that we will see the disruptive ants again soon and therefore can call on the disappointed good samaritans again.
*Of late, I have repeatedly been stymied to find that favourite CDs don't work properly. After a couple songs, they stubbornly refuse to deliver any sound, not even a screech. I ignored this phenomenon for a while but then realised that it was getting to be the new normal - almost like an infection spreading fast, which was just not acceptable. So, I sat down patiently to copy the CDs to the desktop and use a tool to burn them on new CDs (actually 20 year old unused CDs, stocked for such eventualities). Should have taken all of 15 minutes but like a lot of other skills, this one was forgotten too and I had to re-learn the whole stuff; to begin with, I could not even locate the Windows Media Player and rediscovering that took an enormous amount of time. Had to retrieve it from some corner where it had taken refuge. Every step was a struggle, but finally got done and the the process took over three hours, end to end. Why not use USB stick, somebody is asking derisively. No fun and more importantly, not compatible with my player!
*I have taken to ordering some repetitive stuff online and am already regretting that. Neither easier nor faster because of the plethora of clutter displayed unnecessarily. In the neighbourhood store, you look at a couple of options and pick up one and quit post-haste. Now, once the order is placed, there starts a series of updates to your phone, about the origin, route and other horoscopic finer points of the items and tracing their two-day journey to your home, all the way mile after mile - which information is egregiously superfluous for most of us. Deleting those messages is an arduous task and takes a chunk of my time till after the delivery. Then we find that the order is not delivered in one lot - our fault, because the items do not form a homogeneous bunch. They come in multiple lots and the delivery guys make it a point to ring the bell when you least want them to. If I order 14 items together for scheduled delivery on the same day, I have to go up and down the stairs 5 times to receive the bounty in dribbles. If want to return an item received, then make it 6 times, because the return item is handled separately.
I know I have not accounted for the entire, waking twelve hours available to one but after describing the above with seriously tiresome effort, I am not even sure if I will be able to. Listing all the activities along with time spent is going to be absolutely impossible and I suspect it is not prudent either to create such records for posterity. It is easier and practical to take the rap from the dear wife on the seasoned knuckles and prepare for a repeat in the future stoically.
Recently, on a relatively hectic day by my high standards (which means I could laze around only for half the usual quota) I had received crystal clear instructions from 'you know who' to blunder through some tasks/errands and submit the banal `Action Taken Report' by late afternoon. Evening is usually reserved for Judgement time, a rehearsal for that day when we are finally in front of our creator. The solemnity of such occasions makes me fidget, standing on one leg for a while and then the other; wringing my hands frenetically and mumbling inaudible excuses (let me tell you, it pays to be unclear in this context). Hoping that you get an air-conditioned room and two square meals in the easier segment of hell - a la the criminal politician lodged in Tihar jail, who failed to share the booty with powers that be and is therefore heavily out of favour.
Her Majesty's commands are usually unambiguous, and blemishless, to the extent that she actually demonstrates once to show me how to fulfill the mandate!! The perceptive and perplexed ones among you may ask why she does not take the final half-step to just compete the job herself and let me applaud heartily from the sidelines. Go ahead, ask. To me, it is not a mystery at all. This is a diabolical plot through which she can chuckle and reassure herself periodically that neither time nor experience has improved me in any way and there is still that yawning gap between her expectation and my execution. It was deja vu again on that fateful day and she rounded off with a plaintive `how could you have forgotten to do that'?? Some error of omission on my part, let me hasten to confess unabashedly, which has unsurprisingly resulted in nothing short of a cataclysm. It always does. Suitably admonished, I did a clinical session of catechism to identify root causes for my lapse (also did a fish bone analysis) and began with a list of things which engaged me on that calamitous day. And the outcome made me ask the question appearing above as the title of this blog.
*Bought air-ticket for my dear wife. An astute review of the result revealed that there was an almost fatal flaw. Had typed Mr instead of Mrs as the title. Apart from incurring her mild rebuke (it never is severe, just to make you feel worse!) for the mistake itself, the resultant situation would have seen her being disallowed boarding. Would have been disastrous and immediate reparation was warranted. The actual booking took 8 minutes and the fixing of the problem consumed 135 minutes, with multiple calls to almost 80% of the people in the call centre, who were adept at passing me and the problem on to the next guy. I was bleating like a lamb, when a sympathetic soul corrected the ticket for me. I was all the more nervous because it was not the first time something like this happened with her booking. I had once booked her mother, herself and brother on a flight exactly 3 months after the date on which they wanted to return from a trip; a genuine error but it came out as if I was eager to keep her entire tribe out in the boondocks for longer.
*WiFi at home has been playing truant for a few days. Every 30 mins, it developed an itchy desire to drop off and went off wandering for a few seconds and then resurrected itself, causing agonizing disruption in browsing. I can empathize with the people in Kashmir, who are suffering a lot without internet. The technician from the provider company had become a frequent visitor anyway -- probably he liked our home, its ambience and the cuppa coffee he got? He came happily again for the umpteenth time to dissect the system. For a good two hours, I winced and struggled to watch him wrestle with the problem without a hint of a solution on the horizon. In my desperation, I finally told him to reset the WiFi settings and voila, everything was fine. This seems to be the solution for all problems with gadgets of all hues nowadays. RESET. I wish this trick would work with the people too, but we have to discover the specific buttons to push!
*Periodically we have been noticing an unapproved intrusion in our home-- a sedate procession of hordes of ants from one of the bathrooms to a balcony outside through crevices in the woodwork. For the lives of us, we could not tell why these creatures could not bypass the interiors of our home and take the march through external routes. The tantalizing question has always been `how can we divert this unwanted traffic' without harming the marchers themselves? Took over two hours to find a benign solution, with inputs and interventions (some of that unsolicited) from a dozen people, including my mother on phone from Madras, my mother in law, gardener, our resident housekeeper, maid, driver and a few other special invitees. By the time we finished, there was a queue of disappointed do-gooders at our door, all craving admission to visit the problem and provide a creative solution. But, I somehow feel that we will see the disruptive ants again soon and therefore can call on the disappointed good samaritans again.
*Of late, I have repeatedly been stymied to find that favourite CDs don't work properly. After a couple songs, they stubbornly refuse to deliver any sound, not even a screech. I ignored this phenomenon for a while but then realised that it was getting to be the new normal - almost like an infection spreading fast, which was just not acceptable. So, I sat down patiently to copy the CDs to the desktop and use a tool to burn them on new CDs (actually 20 year old unused CDs, stocked for such eventualities). Should have taken all of 15 minutes but like a lot of other skills, this one was forgotten too and I had to re-learn the whole stuff; to begin with, I could not even locate the Windows Media Player and rediscovering that took an enormous amount of time. Had to retrieve it from some corner where it had taken refuge. Every step was a struggle, but finally got done and the the process took over three hours, end to end. Why not use USB stick, somebody is asking derisively. No fun and more importantly, not compatible with my player!
*I have taken to ordering some repetitive stuff online and am already regretting that. Neither easier nor faster because of the plethora of clutter displayed unnecessarily. In the neighbourhood store, you look at a couple of options and pick up one and quit post-haste. Now, once the order is placed, there starts a series of updates to your phone, about the origin, route and other horoscopic finer points of the items and tracing their two-day journey to your home, all the way mile after mile - which information is egregiously superfluous for most of us. Deleting those messages is an arduous task and takes a chunk of my time till after the delivery. Then we find that the order is not delivered in one lot - our fault, because the items do not form a homogeneous bunch. They come in multiple lots and the delivery guys make it a point to ring the bell when you least want them to. If I order 14 items together for scheduled delivery on the same day, I have to go up and down the stairs 5 times to receive the bounty in dribbles. If want to return an item received, then make it 6 times, because the return item is handled separately.
I know I have not accounted for the entire, waking twelve hours available to one but after describing the above with seriously tiresome effort, I am not even sure if I will be able to. Listing all the activities along with time spent is going to be absolutely impossible and I suspect it is not prudent either to create such records for posterity. It is easier and practical to take the rap from the dear wife on the seasoned knuckles and prepare for a repeat in the future stoically.
