Ah, April.
The first thing that pops into
your mind when you think of April: Poissen d'Avril, in other words, April Fool’s Day. That one passed
right by me this year; I had more pressing problems at hand.
Someone up in the government had
decided that the road that led to our home was far too narrow, and since it was
a borderline main road of sorts, it needed some widening.
Good news, definitely. Transform
a single lane into a double lane, and I’d personally find the chances of a head
on collision reduced by probably fifty percent when I get behind the wheel.
(I’m not a math guy, that’s a rough, uncalculated estimate).
In any case, I should have been
overjoyed.
I was, of course. Until I came
home and tried turning the laptop on. That was when I realized there was no
electricity. And of course, my laptop’s battery was pretty much expired; all it
could afford to give me was thirty seconds if the power cut out while I was
using it. Just enough time to hit hibernate and start thinking (yet again) about
saving up for a new battery.
Why no electricity? Simple. They
were widening the road, and all the streetlights and light posts needed to be
shifted to make room for the asphalt. Alrighty then, no electricity during the
day, and since we were promised lights once it began to get dark, I didn’t mind
it that much. One day without my laptop, maybe I could finally get a bit of
reading done after a long while.
Then, I was washing up after
lunch when the water started to slow to a trickle before stopping completely.
Believe it or not, some bozo had broken the water mains leading to our section
of road. Now, we and our neighbors had no electricity, nor water.
Still not that bad. Livable,
surely.
Then the final blow fell. As I
passed her on the way down to my room, Mum commented that the phone lines were
down, too. I said, “Bummer,” and continued on. No phone lines, not the worst
that could happen. We had mobile phones, after all.
But then, just as I stepped into
my room, the realization hit me like a cement truck doing 95mph.
No phone line meant no Wi-Fi;
and with no Wi-Fi, there would also be no Facebook, no Blogspot, no Wikipedia,
no YouTube… I was cut off from the world, cut off from research, cut off from
everything the Mathew in me held dear.
That, friends, was the
metaphorical feather that broke this metaphorical camel’s metaphorical back.
As of the 23rd of
March, I have not had access to internet other than through an expensive dongle
based on a mobile network. This thing was time rather than data oriented; it
gave me enough time to check out stuff, answer messages, post something here,
and that was it.
The work on the road is still
far from over, and rumor has it that it would carry on till the 10th of
this month. As of right now, I still have a week more.
I’m going to have to find some
way to survive till then.
But, believe it or not, I had
this unexpected realization. Without my laptop, it was suddenly… well,
peaceful. Quiet. I could really relax in the classic way of relaxing that was
perfected long before Edison started fooling around with his bulbs.
I should mention that this
epiphany only came to me after three days. Like any human deprived of basic
necessities, I needed time to have my tantrums and cuss the world in general
and the idiots who dragged down the lines. I have an explosive temper, and even
though I don’t vent as much as I used to, I do rather get carried away when I
get pushed over the edge.
And this time I was over the
edge, and with good reason.
But once I realized that complaining
wasn’t going to solve anything, I guess I resigned myself to having to make do.
With no power during the day, my writing was darn limited; and my mother isn’t
one to let opportunities slide. She knows (from experience) that she can’t pry
me away from my laptop during the day, so for the last one and a half weeks she
had me doing chores that had been lying around waiting to be done for a few
months.
It was fun, I guess. I probably
needed a break and some manual labor for a change. Lifting cupboards, painting
beds, that sort of thing. And it gave Mum and me a bit of bonding time. Since I
finally got around to cleaning up my room, she doesn’t yell at me anymore every
evening concerning the resemblance of my room to the home of a baboon with a
magpie’s disposition and a sloth’s care of physical hygiene.
That alone probably makes it
worthwhile. An annoyed mother is never a happy mother.
I’m on the said dongle now as I
post this, and no, still no sign of Wi-Fi in the immediate future. I’m hoping
they’re right and this problem gets sorted out ASAP. Maybe I’m enjoying a bit
of time away from the screen, but that doesn’t mean I’m embracing the idea of
doing it.
We still have no electricity
during daylight, and running water only for a few hours every few days. And
definitely no telephone, either. Probably the norm till the tenth.
But it hasn’t been as bad as I
thought, and I suppose I’m pretty okay with it. Does get maddening without
internet, but you just can’t fight the facts, now can you?
Things happen, and you just have
to deal with them. And now that I’m done here, I think I’m going to go off
again and cuss those morons who had to disconnect the phone lines and deprive
me of internet for eighteen whole days.
I’m dealing.
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