Of Narcissists and Mice

Another month, another post. Yes, I think I have hit on the perfect post to month ratio. A 1 : 1 ratio leaves me enough free time to carry out my various machinations while also allowing me to write about them. And my machinations are better than all other machinations that other machinators carry out. As I type the word “machinators”, MS Word tells me that ‘machinators’ is not a legal word. And I ask it “What do you know?”, needless to say I do not receive an answer and my colleagues give me a strange look.

Back to the perfect ratio. Sticking to this limit will make sure I put out 12 posts a year. Just enough to keep the demand high enough in the future. Because at one point in time, I will print out all the posts and take this blog offline. The immediate result? A massive hue and cry for ‘John Pereira Originals’! I have included an imaginary conversation that might possibly take place in the future to conclusively prove that what I say will come about.

Bob 1: Hello Bob
Bob 2: Hi Bob.
Bob 1: I got a new original JP piece for my collection, old flower.
Bob 2: Begorrah! Don’t tell me you managed to get your mittens on that extremely rare piece from his Mahagedara period.
Bob 1: You got it right mate! I was walking my kangaroo past this old antiques shop when this framed parchment caught my eye. Turned out to be a genuine copy of a JP printout. Probably only 3 or 4 of that particular piece of writing.
Bob 2: Aye, well you’ll be one lucky son of a camel.
Bob 1: …
Bob 2: ehem. I love what you’ve done with your hair

In case you missed it, the above conversation is yet to happen and proves without doubt that my blog will be a literary treasure for future generations to come. And yes, all people in the future will be named Bob and will have different accents.

Apart from dreaming about the astronomical rise in popularity of my blog I haven’t been upto much. Any student knows that October to December is the busiest time of the year. And if you’re doing your best at trying to fail exams then you have to start not studying by at least July. It’s a hard life but you have to start being a disappointment at some point of your life.

A couple of pretty interesting things did happen during that time though. The first was that I took The Big Step and met up with some people. Meeting people might not seem like a big step, but I had met this bunch online. Specifically, on the now slightly derelict TNL forum. And more recently on the Lame-Duck forum. It was a fun meetup. Two things happened at the meet (aside from all the usual stuff that happens at meetups)

1. I stopped associating people with their avatars. I also realized that most people are different from their online personas
2. Bottle of beer exploded in my face when I opened it. Twice. Thankfully no one noticed the incident. It would have been a bit hard to live down.

The second interesting thing was TNL Onstage. One of the forum members, Lakmaal, was a finalist in the solo category. We went to root for him and I had a brilliant time there as well. Except when I was introduced to some new people.

New Person: Hi John ! I’m xxxx!
Me: … (Thinks “Oh SHIT!”)
New Person: (After being put off by the frantic staring on my part, looks around and moves away. Slowly)
Me: …

This happened a couple of times, and I came to the conclusion that it was the loud noise affecting me. If ever you meet me in a noisy public place, just keep walking. This will save you and me a lot of awkwardness.

Apart from those awkward moments I had a great time.

And something else I wanted to talk about was our forum.

Before I go any further I suppose I should give you some history. Take your mind back to those bygone days……. in October.

Read the post by the Queen of the Dark Asylum for details. Some people got kicked out of the TNL forum. People voiced their thoughts and then some more people got kicked. The end result of all this was that about 30 - 40 people suddenly had no forum to call their own so I (also being a member of the TNL forum) set one up. So now we have a home. It’s a fun place, if you want to join just fill in the form and register. I know for a fact that some of you would fit in there really well.

You might be wondering why I have been rambling on for a page and a half about these mundane activities of mine, well the reason is that a little bird told me that if you don’t post on your blog for more than two months you get taken off Kottu. So to forestall my imminent banishment – before I am able to put my “Plan for Literary Domination” into motion – I decided to put up this filler post. Anyone have any concrete information about this? About Kottu banning, not about plans for literary domination.

Await regular transmissions AFTER Christmas at which point I will again be living on 24 hours a day.

P.S. - The title “In the Future There Will be Bob” should be familiar to all you GTA lovers. It’s supposed to be “In the Future There Will be Robots”

Yes 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.

I have been marked. It is a heavy burden, but it is mine alone… Until I pass it on to 7 seven others. If you thought I am suffering from AIDS or some similar STD then let me tell you that the bushy part of the toothbrush goes into your pie hole. Rather, I have been tagged to write seven things about myself. Pissu Perera and Mia are the tagees and I am the tagged. Now you know who to flame in case you are bored to suicidal depression because of reading this post.
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I have a confession to make, a few weeks back my resolve weakened and I committed a dire mistake. I watched an episode of Mahagedera. Not the whole episode (My brain kicked in at that point) but just enough to get the gist of what was happening during the episode. In this post I will try to get through the trauma by recounting my experience with you. The story goes as follows.

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There are four people (three “women” and one guy) working in the same room as me, practically in the same department. I use the term “women” loosely. Although I do not doubt that their hearts are in the correct place, I sometimes doubt that their heads are screwed in the correct way. At times shrieking harpies that can rip a man limb from limb and sometimes as sweet as honey when they want something (usually cake). Anyway after working with them for 1 year I have come to realize that women have their priorities wrong.

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