Geek-it

And no, I do not mean the lovely books written by J.K.Rowling (Joanne, i love you so much that i want to have your baby but since neither of us are willing to change our sex…) but the uninspiring movies supposedly inspired (!) by the books. If you notice, quite a few screen adaptations of famous novels have fallen far short of the original. The reason - when you read a book you also sit down and visualize the characters. You have your own interpretation of how Ron looks, how Hermione speaks, how Malfoy sniggers, how Neville sniffles…

Of course, I have absolutely nothing against the actors in any of the above roles – they are all young but act decently and having been soaked in the atmosphere of the books, they come across as very believable. They are anyway major improvements to the terrible ham handed emoting which everybody except me in my school plays used to do. But lots of little details are lost in the adaptation and the treatment of minor characters is that they are not present. The movies are just one long series of adventures and are also not as humorous as the books.

Compared to this series, I really liked the adaptation of Lord of the Rings, except in quite a few stretches where all they show is the New Zealand scenery and depict Aragon and company running through Middle Earth. A classic placement for promoting tourism in the country, but seriously, would have been happier to see some more of the story rather than the scenery. I mean, come on, would i be here if i could afford to tour New Zealand??

So I have come to a great conclusion – if I really really like a book, I will give the movie a miss unless it wins an oscar or another equally rabid fan of the book comes out smiling. Guess I will test this with the screen version of Da Vinci Code. And yea, when my blog is syndicated and I become a famous best selling author, I will hold on to the movie rights and will never sell them and will never spoil other people’s imagination of my books

What a noble being, what great thoughts, Ahh…

Or rather, it should be Time Management trouble. I have recently taken a vow to catch up on pending tasks and read all the 1876 emails in my GMail account and phone up three college friends and help in preparing breakfast and attend a yoga class.

The only problem with such a noble list of deeds is the time involved. For the uninformed, this is a primer of my daily schedule:

Wake up – 9:00 hrs
Stare glassily with the paper in hand – 9:15 hrs
Stare glassily with the tooth brush in hand – 9:30 hrs
Brush teeth, have bath, gulp some cereal – 9:45 hrs
Leave for work – 10:00 hrs

I shall not give my daily activities while at work since I do not want my boss to find out how much time I waste every day at work when he stumbles on this blog. Of course, by the time he learns of the existence of this blog, I may have been promoted to his position and he may have been demoted since he didn’t learn the existence of my blog earlier

Come home from work – 20:00 hrs
Become a couch potato – 21:00 hrs
Remain a couch potato – 22:00 hrs
Eat a frozen dinner as a couch potato – 23:00 hrs
Vegetate as a couch potato – 0:00 hrs
Shift scene to the computer and vegetate further – 1:00 hrs

As you can see, I am very busy at home in the evenings. Quite often, such dedicated hours in the front of the TV will be replaced by shopping expeditions, shopping binges and shopping sprees, not to mention the occasional times when I decide to socialize and morph into a party animal and continue partying till 06:00 hrs.

So when I got a daily planner as a gift from a well-meaning “enemy”, I decided to ink all the items in my To Do list. Then I filled the current schedule page as given above, religiously going on to give additional details like which programs did I watch at which hours, etc. When I came to the next section in my planner, it instructed me to make time for the To Dos and if needed, cut down on “repetitive tasks that add no value”. Come on, try saying that television viewing is a mindless task that adds no value to BBC and they will kick you! Since I agree with BBC on this, I have also kicked the planner.

Of course, frenemy (friend who became an enemy after presenting me with the planner) still doesn’t know about this. An alternate schedule has been give to him which includes all the items in the To Do list and the day that idiot realizes that I am scheduling for 27 hours per day, I am DEAD!!

And a BIG thanks to Ed who took the trouble to actually count the ‘I’s and got it correct. For this you get the pleasure of reading my blogs Actually, when all the predictions i have made about this blog comes true, you will be feted and paraded for finding and nurturing such a great talent

Now that i have a bonafide audience of atleast 1, (come on guys, do you think i counted the ‘I’s and commented on my post???), i shall switch often to the conversational style - its easier to pontificate to an audience.

You all know my penchant for big words and my philanthropic interest in spreading knowledge to this world. Have you wondered on my identity, have you thought - What is it that drives Geekgirl? What are her likes and dislikes, her passions and prejudices… Even if you haven’t wondered, you ARE getting a dose of them - why do you think i am blogging?

Certain thoughts i want to share, certain ideas i want to nurture…

Geekgirl - isn’t that almost an oxymoron? When was the last time you knew or sat next to a geek and a girl?

OK - Start of Rant…

When I was a bookworm in middle school and had thick glasses to go with my braces, i was just called four eyes (in my music class), worm (by my cousin), bookish (by my parents). Once I got to the age when one wants something more substantial than a book to carry on a conversation, I realized that my peers regularly looked through me and even going buck naked or wearing a tutu inside out wouldn’t make me visible in their eyes.

So I took to hiding in the library and that was where i met IT. IT was an Apple Macintosh, looking beautiful, sexy, gorgeous, cute, sweet, radical, intelligent, passionate… Since i was a novelty to my librarian (name one high school senior who spends four hours a day in the library), i was encouraged in all my activities and soon took to clacking on the Mac.

When the world discovered Personal Computers, I was already a veteran in running it and soon enough, ok in college, my neighbour started coming to me whenever she wanted some hardware to be installed or even to help her with her Accounting Software. Word spread like wildfire - here was a SHE - who didn’t blink looking at wires but actually knew how to stick them together, someone who could actually buy 25 different parts and assemble a PC at End of Day, someone who actually had Surfed something called Internet, and who actually had a weird id called Email ID, who had bought something using her Credit Card online… All the firsts, except this blog - which omission has now been rectified.

Done - End of Rant

Wasn’t all that bad, huh? I often run unique exercises to enhance my understanding of this world, especially human behavior. A few instances like locking up the only loo in the hostel and getting out by a window and observing the behavior of the gentler (HA!) sex come into mind. Of course, a few such exercises involve technology - I remember the time when i accosted anyone with an IPod and went on my knees begging them to donate it to me - shows exactly how passionate people are about technology.

So this blog shall be one more exercise in this endeavor of mine, apart from being a chronicle of my life and times.

As I read through the post just before i publish it, all i can think of is:

Will the disk containing all this be sent to Andromeda in a space capsule and recorded for posterity?? For the ENTIRE UNIVERSE???

Or rather, a few mornings after…

Number of comments to MY post: 1 – can you believe it – 1? Well world in general and a few people in particular (you all know who you are), since you have behaved in the rude way which i generally reserve for people like you… Come on people, all you had to do was fire the link and give a single comment - guess this is some backend alley on the net and all that traffic mentioned by Pew will never come this side.

Hmph! Well, Content is king atleast the last time i checked it was. So here’s my answer to all those people who ignored my post - in a few days… weeks… months ok ok years… when the world is beating a path around my blog and when BLOGSOME has to invest in newer machines to handle the traffic to my blog and when my blog is featured in the best of web and when… Until then, i shall persevere in my task of enlightening the world of my existence by pontificating through this blog. And I accept, I used pontification because its a big word and makes me sound intellectual.

I am refining my plan of action slightly.

Task 1 – Make a post every single day.
Task 2 – Mail everyone abt the particular post.
Task 3 – Repeat Tasks 1 & 2.

What are the subjects on which I shall pontificate?

Life as it was, Life as it is, Life as it will be - Wow!! Geekgirl, I love you.

So what shall this post be on? For your kind information, all the above stuff wasn’t a post but a RANT.

Quizzing, Quizzer, Quiz, Quizzes - there, that should take care of the search engine results One of my favorite activities right from school was quizzing. All you have to do is catch 1 or 2 people and form a team and can then blame them when you lose. As long as you get even one answer right, you can turn up your nose at jocks, nerds, teachers, janitors, the entire school, not to mention your fellow team mates. And if they get even one answer wrong and they contributed 4 answers out of the 5 correct ones, you can still crib saying we would have tied for 6th place if you hadn’t answered that question wrong and lost us the bonus

Ok a small quiz to all of you who will be reading this post - either now or some other time in the future from Wayback Machine (they always store cult classics) - how many times have I used I?

And there I was, thinking that people who used I in their blog and eschewed (my second look intelligent word) the third person were megalomaniacs (the third). Guess its rather tough to stay away from first person singular.

Task before next post - Practice writing in First person plural. We instead of I, looks royal