I am now free, relatively speaking, of school for the next 20 days. It feels nice, very relaxed for now. I do know that I have to get back to work very soon to complete my thesis in the next 30 days (My own timeline, noone else is to blame), but I know that after another day of this, I will crash and burn to get back to work. Alas, the life of a workaholic.
Finals week was super hard, not just because I had the dreaded four hour final, but also because we had no electricity. Yeps, you heard it right, no electricity in the US of A for one whole week. It was a test by fire, or rather a test by lack of it!
We had this glorious icestorm..which is essentially rain that converts to ice as it hits the ground. Power was down, obviously there was no heat and no hot water and no cooking. I havent felt this handicapped for a long time either! In india when you have no power, some semblance of life goes on, you can still cook, read some, the house is cold anyways. Here you start getting internet withdrawal symptoms. You crave all the blogs you read on a regular basis. Crazy people who have power still keep emailing you, ofcourse students do too. You dread a pile-up of those.
Once you successfully deal with the withdrawal symptoms, you are yet touchy to the sound of windows, a keyboard can bring tears to your eyes, the best cure, in my eyes, is group therapy, you huddle with a bunch of friends and gossip. Create and pass around some gossip. Best thing ever, to cure the desire to chat with people halfway around the world and not say a word to your next door nieghbour.
I am specially blessed in the gossip area. I have roommates with juicy secrets, who also dont talk to me, which makes life smoother on the whole. Gossip without guilt, ah blisss.
Once you are done gossiping, you can go beg friends with power for some food. Again, I feel blessed, I have friends who had electricity in this time of crisis, and they opened their front and refrigerator door for us. I have never eaten so much good food in a long while now.
All this togetherness should by now cure you of your symptoms, if not, there is no hope for you and you can now stay in your office and lovingly hold your computer, hoping to breathe some life into it
All this togetherness also gets to me…I get restless, I want to be alone. I dont want any company, just my own bed and my books and music etc. I begin to get crabby on lack of sleep and aloneness, the lack of contact with the roomies begins to pinch too. And that is when the electricity finally comes back and we heave a sigh of relief. We , as in ,those with the cold houses and those with now empty refrigerators.
Things dont come to a stop here, a new bond is formed. We will all remember, this time, this place and this togetherness, we rarely have it these days. My eyes get bleary these days due to staring at the monitor too long and not from staying up too late playing mafia. We have all changed, but hopefully this experiment with no light, will remind us of how we used to be and how we should be, happy, surrounded by friends and waiting for the next party to happen.
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wow! week long power cuts? Where in the united states do you live, Alcatraz or Guantanamo?
hey hey! power cut in the US of A! Times like these make good ol India seem rosy 😀 Come what may, life goes on there! Hoping the new year brings you good health, glorious times with friends that you cherish and progress with the PhD!
@ depps : I wish I were in Alcatraz, atleast might have been a bit warmer! It wasnt a power cut, power lines fell down because of the weight of the ice on them. BTW this is a frequent phenomenon in the US with the storms and all.
@bf: A very happy new year to you too!