If one wants to, he’d probably be able to excel in anything. With the right amount of inspiration and oodles of perspiration, nothing should be unachievable to anyone. However, they say, it’s always lonely at the top. Once you have exceeded yourself with your last ditch attempt, people tend to think that you have still not realized your potential and they start expecting greater things from you. Someone told me, “Taking into account the pitiable conditions you have been through during your University days and considering that as a handicap, you write as well as Somebody”. Now, that line, kick-started a chain-reaction, filling my mind with lots of dread and panic. Do not get me wrong – I do not hate adulation, in fact I dwell on them. I loathe praises, wouldn’t I be considered abnormal or hypocritical if I said, I am the Buddha – happiness or pain, fame or loathing – nothing affects me. Remember the words of the Joker – “I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just... do things.” That’s what we are – as long we can see the zenith, we strive and strive – risking everything that we care for to reach it – to achieve it. However, as soon as we reach the top, we are confused – we do not know what to do- whether to endeavour more (to attain what?? Cause we have already reached the peak) or to sit tight (which fills us with fear cause we know someone might soon catch us up.) So coming back to the point – It is indeed lonely at the top.
People who have read my earlier posts, are probably thinking by now – what the heck happened to this guy? Did he go nuts? Did he drop his funny bone in the gutter where he was lying drunk last night? Did he forget to do the only thing he excels at – Fooling around? NO NO NO, People – Have no fear, I am here. This elaborate paragraph I typed out above was just a platform to sweetly curse this phenomenon called Google. I can vouch for a fact that I can point out at least a 1000 people who would swear that Google has indeed changed their lives. I would never have been able to submit my projects in time (considering the fact that I had to do fifty 25-30 pager projects over a span of five years) without the assistance of Google. There is a junior of a friend of mine in Bangalore, who has been in the first year of college for the past 3 years. When we tried to counsel him and ask him what he does the entire day, whether he was having problems coping up – whether seniors were ragging him (that was a remote possibility, since by then, he was already way older in terms of age, experience as well as years spent in the college than even the Final year people- that’s the best thing about flunking thrice – you can boast to others that you are the only guy in first year not to be ragged by seniors)- he appeared pretty cool. “No problem, boss – it’s just that I do not have any time to study” No time to study!!!! He was not having an affair, he was not forming a company like Microsoft, he was not even into terrorism – any kind of decent explanation would be welcome – but someone who stays cooped up in his room the entire day, saying “No time to study!!” – Yeh baat kuch Hazaam nahi hui. Well, then he explains – he is addicted to G chat and Orkut – the two biggest phenomenon of Google. See- didn’t I tell you ‘Google changes lives’. Add to this Blogspot (now coming from the Google stable), Google Maps, Picasa, Youtube, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Chrome, Google Talk (though I hate it cause it doesn’t have an invisible mode) and what not- Google has indeed been a phenomenon. It first showed us how to surreptitiously chat in office, while posing that you are simply checking your mail. Out of a hundred extremely plausible ways I could have met my girlfriend (for example, we both have skydived from two different skyscrapers and in the midway we meet each other OR like we are attempting to cross the English Channel – me from Dover and she from Calais and we both lift our head midway to suck in oxygen, bump into each other and still end up sucking air, though from a slightly different source – I could go on and on about more such plausible yet exotic ways of meeting, but that’s for another day), I finally get in touch with her through Google!!
That is why my expectations from Google are sky-high and I am always confident that it will always accede to my idiosyncrasies and invent a new tool every quarter which will help me kill time in an exciting manner. Also I always expect G mail to provide me the best of services, even better than my paid office mail service (come on, ain’t I talking about Expectations here? What does it have to do with paid or free service?). Thus I was shocked and flabbergasted when I enthusiastically opened G mail the other day to mail this girl and every time I tried to log in, Google mail would log into my account, but would show – ‘Temporary Error(500)’. What does the 500 stand for? Does it mean there are 500 errors or whether this temporary error shall remain for 500 days (then, how would it be ‘temporary’ in the first place?) Why do they give an error number?? As if I care? Well, after cursing Google for a long time, I finally opened up my yahoo account- I have had this account since 1999, but after the advent of Google, this has been terribly neglected – Poor Baby – tch tch – come to me – Who says I don’t use you – See, haven’t I logged into you and sending mails through you just now? (TO everyone – If you ever disclose the exact circumstances as to why I logged into my yahoo account and sent mail through yahoo, you are dead meat!! I do not want to hurt my trusted old friend – yahoo mail). Well, so I sent the mail through Yahoo!!
If any of you thought the story ends here – am sure you haven’t read enough novels and hence do not understand the concept of an epilogue. Next day I find out, that the mail had gone to a complete stranger, who shares the name with this girl whom I was sending mail. I blame Google for this too – since the time it started guessing e-mail ids as soon as I typed the first few alphabets of an e-mail id, I have stopped memorising e-mail ids – Thus when I had sent the mail from yahoo, I had missed a dot here and a hash there and lo and behold, mail went to someone else, who just sent a polite reply “Am flattered, but I guess this mail is not meant for me.” I thank my stars that I wasn’t being too explicit in the mail, or else I was done for. Phhoooh! What a relief!! Well, finally next day Google mail was up and running and even though I cursed G Mail for making me so dependent on it, I once again happily started typing out mails to one and all .
People who have read my earlier posts, are probably thinking by now – what the heck happened to this guy? Did he go nuts? Did he drop his funny bone in the gutter where he was lying drunk last night? Did he forget to do the only thing he excels at – Fooling around? NO NO NO, People – Have no fear, I am here. This elaborate paragraph I typed out above was just a platform to sweetly curse this phenomenon called Google. I can vouch for a fact that I can point out at least a 1000 people who would swear that Google has indeed changed their lives. I would never have been able to submit my projects in time (considering the fact that I had to do fifty 25-30 pager projects over a span of five years) without the assistance of Google. There is a junior of a friend of mine in Bangalore, who has been in the first year of college for the past 3 years. When we tried to counsel him and ask him what he does the entire day, whether he was having problems coping up – whether seniors were ragging him (that was a remote possibility, since by then, he was already way older in terms of age, experience as well as years spent in the college than even the Final year people- that’s the best thing about flunking thrice – you can boast to others that you are the only guy in first year not to be ragged by seniors)- he appeared pretty cool. “No problem, boss – it’s just that I do not have any time to study” No time to study!!!! He was not having an affair, he was not forming a company like Microsoft, he was not even into terrorism – any kind of decent explanation would be welcome – but someone who stays cooped up in his room the entire day, saying “No time to study!!” – Yeh baat kuch Hazaam nahi hui. Well, then he explains – he is addicted to G chat and Orkut – the two biggest phenomenon of Google. See- didn’t I tell you ‘Google changes lives’. Add to this Blogspot (now coming from the Google stable), Google Maps, Picasa, Youtube, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Chrome, Google Talk (though I hate it cause it doesn’t have an invisible mode) and what not- Google has indeed been a phenomenon. It first showed us how to surreptitiously chat in office, while posing that you are simply checking your mail. Out of a hundred extremely plausible ways I could have met my girlfriend (for example, we both have skydived from two different skyscrapers and in the midway we meet each other OR like we are attempting to cross the English Channel – me from Dover and she from Calais and we both lift our head midway to suck in oxygen, bump into each other and still end up sucking air, though from a slightly different source – I could go on and on about more such plausible yet exotic ways of meeting, but that’s for another day), I finally get in touch with her through Google!!
That is why my expectations from Google are sky-high and I am always confident that it will always accede to my idiosyncrasies and invent a new tool every quarter which will help me kill time in an exciting manner. Also I always expect G mail to provide me the best of services, even better than my paid office mail service (come on, ain’t I talking about Expectations here? What does it have to do with paid or free service?). Thus I was shocked and flabbergasted when I enthusiastically opened G mail the other day to mail this girl and every time I tried to log in, Google mail would log into my account, but would show – ‘Temporary Error(500)’. What does the 500 stand for? Does it mean there are 500 errors or whether this temporary error shall remain for 500 days (then, how would it be ‘temporary’ in the first place?) Why do they give an error number?? As if I care? Well, after cursing Google for a long time, I finally opened up my yahoo account- I have had this account since 1999, but after the advent of Google, this has been terribly neglected – Poor Baby – tch tch – come to me – Who says I don’t use you – See, haven’t I logged into you and sending mails through you just now? (TO everyone – If you ever disclose the exact circumstances as to why I logged into my yahoo account and sent mail through yahoo, you are dead meat!! I do not want to hurt my trusted old friend – yahoo mail). Well, so I sent the mail through Yahoo!!
If any of you thought the story ends here – am sure you haven’t read enough novels and hence do not understand the concept of an epilogue. Next day I find out, that the mail had gone to a complete stranger, who shares the name with this girl whom I was sending mail. I blame Google for this too – since the time it started guessing e-mail ids as soon as I typed the first few alphabets of an e-mail id, I have stopped memorising e-mail ids – Thus when I had sent the mail from yahoo, I had missed a dot here and a hash there and lo and behold, mail went to someone else, who just sent a polite reply “Am flattered, but I guess this mail is not meant for me.” I thank my stars that I wasn’t being too explicit in the mail, or else I was done for. Phhoooh! What a relief!! Well, finally next day Google mail was up and running and even though I cursed G Mail for making me so dependent on it, I once again happily started typing out mails to one and all .
Posts
0 feedback:
Post a Comment