The week that was. I am so sued
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007Yes I know that this title is from Cricinfo. This seemed a much better title than ‘The past two and a half weeks’ or ‘I and the fortnight. A journey through two weeks’. At any rate I’ve chosen the title and I’m sticking with it, come hell or high water or litigation. The past couple of weeks have been an amazing experience, I doubt I have ever been through this many highs or lows in such a short time period. All this happened during exam week of course. Bad things always happen during the worst possible time. Otherwise they wouldn’t be bad things, they would just be ‘rather a nuisance’ or ‘such a bother’ things. It’s a law of the Universe like electromagnetism or gravity. Mid terms went well, which means I showed up at the exam hall and actually submitted a few answers. You can never measure my exam results by an absolute measure; it’s always relative to myself. Exam marks are for other people. I know I’m a hopeless academic.
A couple of days after the mid terms were the dreaded Mid Review Presentation. Contrary to all logic and semantic rules in the English language we were supposed to have completed 90% of our project by this time. It was all good except for one hitch, we had nothing at all to present during our presentation. As team leader, I naturally absolved myself of all blame and put it squarely on the other members. Like all good team leads I delegated the blame equally among the other members with just a hint of bias against our lead programmer. The gentleman in question had been courting a lady friend during the time he was supposed to have built the simulator. True to form a great enterprise devised by Man had been bought crashing down by Woman. Eden, Troy, Superman and our project, all have one thing in common. We were all bought to ground (or in our case, never got off the ground) due to the instructions hardcoded into our systems to dance around the (supposedly) weaker sex. I seem to have drifted off in my narrative, back on track again. Anyway after some late night coding on the part of the developer guy we had just about nothing to show.
After some monumental team leading on my part, in which I moped about prophesying doom and gloom, we consoled ourselves to an extended stay at SLIIT. But, and this is a huge but, we had a guardian angel!! Our supervisor came through for us like a knight in shining armor. I have no idea why he did it at all, but during the question part of the presentation he asked us questions that made our disaster look like the elixir of everlasting life. The rest of the panel had nothing to add when we finished. The presentation was over and we had come through unscathed. Our supervisor had helped us package our mole hill into a mount Olympus look alike. We were so happy we were shouting and high fiving outside the presentation hall!
Even more good things were in the offing. We had to submit our mid review report but since we had not done anything up to that point I had nothing to create the report with. Handover time was approaching fast and I had still not got any information to complete the report with. Then suddenly, surprise surprise, the deadline got extended! Having gotten a second wind I started work on the report but again fell short because I had nothing to work with. Deadline reached. Deadline extended. Again! I finally got the application and in two days created a fifty page technical report with no real information about our project in it at all. And this time we handed it over before the deadline was reached. I have no idea why the lecturer in charge of projects decided to extend the dead line twice; maybe a lot of people were having the same problem, only the lecturer knows. All thanks to my superb leadership skills. Yes, I know I’m brilliant.
During that time, the highs were really high and the lows were really low. I don’t think I‘ve ever been through a period like this. It was really cool! The two earlier posts were also written during this time. I have no recollection of why I complained about Smallville. It seemed important at the time. Apologies to the Smallville fans. I should have complained about Charm. Stupid series that it is.
I also pissed off some of my friends during this time. So if you have been wronged by my snappy responses or general tetchiness, my apologies. The period of ‘trial by fire’ is now over. I will return to my generally fuzzy and lovable self now. Sarcasm extra.
