Everyday Adventures!

, , 5 comments
A whole week of fun and laziness getting over.
My recess week is getting over! :'(
Back to back breaking and irritating work, and getting up and running to the lecture theatres for 8-30 classes. Back to shivering in the cold LTs and labs.
Wwwoooaaaaaaaahhhhhhh....
Ohhhhhhh!
They just burst a bomb.
My university is situated dangerously close to the Singapore Firing Area and the Singapore Air Force Training Institute. So we get regular doses of firing, bomb and flight training exercise sounds. In the beginning it was irritating, and at times scary too. But now it has become a regular part of our lives and I tend to think what's wrong if I don't hear any of these sounds for a day.
Just imagine, hearing sounds like these for a whole day. Planes tearing across the sky, making a screeching sound, making sure you don't hear anything else as long as it's passing....It was good fun in the first semester here to go to the areas where my university hostels and Live Firing Area share the border. There'll be a lot of red signs showing a man with a gun pointing at another with his hands up, saying "Restricted Area", and we used to conjure up stories of what could happen if at all we went there. Now it's something we don't pay heed to, of course.
And now, as bombs burst at odd intervals, my room window panes rattle and my tubelight shakes.
I've always found my room warm and funny. It is effectively in the eigth floor from the road, though due to the *amazing* hilly terrain of the university, it is supposed to be in the third floor. By the time people reach my room, you'll see them panting and puffing, half dead, but alive enough to curse me for calling them up to this room, while some are nice enough to appreciate my perseverence and strength that has to go in for me to reach the room everyday.
I'm now glancing around the room. One roomie with a satin bed spread and pillow covers, and never coming to the room (good for me, my music is always blaring!), two beds, two tables...ok ok, let me look at just my side of the room. One softpin board crying to be left free, it's that full of holes and pin-ups...a three plank shelf on top of the pin up board full of random stuff. I look further left. Two huge A4 sheets full of "Work to be done during the recess" with just about a quarter of them ticked with a "completed" beside them. A photo of me and my sister and my class batch photograph with all of us beaming...(that photo is always amusing to me; it was taken on 14 Feb, 2004 with all teachers wearing green sarees ;) ), then a cupboard bursting with stuff inside. Ha! I forgot my desk! This is another object in my room crying for space to breathe, so full of stuff.... A huge television like looking flatscreen monitor(it's unfortunately a CRT, I wanted to get an LCD, but these Singaporeans.....oh my god, it wasn't fitting into my budget! If you are wondering why I'm groaning about Singaporeans if it was beyond my budget, it's just like that...) Then my bags, water bottles, clock, speakers, extension boxes, pens, books, and my plates! This table has an edhaiyum thaangum idhayam as it bears with patience all my activities. I eat, read and sometimes even sleep with my head on the desk.
But what steals the show is my amazing tubelight, above my desk.
Everytime a bomb bursts, I look up immediately to see how the tubelight is reacting. It shakes.
It's not fixed to the ceiling, but hangs from it; and that's precisely the problem. The delicate tubelight of mine shakes in the wind and is always moving to some rhythm, slowly (and looks scary too!)
As it precariously hangs over my computer monitor, I always feel like extending a hand to catch it in case it falls because of some vigorous shaking-to-the-beat. Not only the shaking, it's even getting lower by the day. That elastic like thing they've used to make it hanging has almost lost all it's swirls (I hope you get the picture, it now looks like an extended spring!) and I dread to think of the day when it'll lose even those bits of string (or whatever it is) and crash down into the table. I only pray it's after I shift so the hostel authorities will finally realize it's time to change the lights. At least it's ok for me, there are some rooms in which the light is slanting (because the strings haven't grown old together and one has lost more swirls than the other) with the result that one end of the table gets more light than the other. I'm thankful my tubelight doesn't give such kinda problems.
On the whole, my room is one of the really adventurous places to be in.
What does this show?
That rooms in Singapore can also be bad! ;)

5 comments:

Krish said...

The rooms in Singapore also can be bad!!!....BTW they do tend to obey the laws of truth..as in Satyathukku kattuppatu thongum..dont worry...

Vani Viswanathan said...

adadaa...
krish, tubelight-la sathyathukku kattupattu thongardhukku enna irukku?;) btw, that was a nice explanation!
sat, thanks for the prayers, they're keeping me safe!

Sriram said...

hmm...even i studied for 4 years in a college amidst a huge cantonment area. and i know that can be fun... :)
btw, ur tubelight or ur room's tubelight... :)
(no offence pls. just kidding...but just couldn't ignore ur usage)

Vani Viswanathan said...

hahaha...sriram,
ya, actually my room's tubelight...but since the room's mine, tubelight is also mine! ;)ya, see it's shaking even now! thankfully, my (room's) fan doesn't do anything slightly like the tubelight!!

Sriram said...

ha ha ha! good for you...but keep an eye on fan also, u never know... :)

and yeah, i know its ur room's. i am sure u dont need a tubelight... :)