Ten tried and tested ways to spend an otherwise boring summer interestingly*

Feels good to write after a sabbatical you know. You should try that. Maybe not now but sometime. It's a lot fun than, I don’t know, watching the worst movies ever made in the history of movies! Its summer again, the time of extreme heat, a lot less activities and a heck lot more time than ever! Good for you guys I’ve been thinking what to do in this heck lot of a time. These are ten best ways I decided would work for me. When it works for me you might as well try it out, after all you have all the time on earth to kill, bury and cut tall grass grown all over the place! And, by the way, the “*” sign you saw in the title means these may not work for you so don’t blame me if you are still bored! And, also, I have grown a special liking to these countdown stuff don’t ask me why ‘cause I have no idea why!

Thing to do in summer #10:

Sit back and relax in your bed. More sleep means less time awake. The lesser you are awake the lesser you need to worry about spending time.

Thing to do in summer #9:

Fight for the control of remote with whoever you may have competition with. That’ll take up at least half the day or something and the rest enjoy your victory with TV. Watch it even if it's boring. And if you lose, hard luck! Watch what the other person is watching.

Thing to do this summer #8:

Clean your table. Yes I said that! It takes up the whole day! I know so because I tried it. It really works. Yeah it's boring. But hey! You burn time!

Thing to do this summer #7:

Go to the nearest DvD rental store and get a good load of movies of your favorite star or your favorite movies. Get home take a cup of water and watch the movies!

Thing to do this summer #6:

Call up people you didn’t talk to in a long time. This conversation might get boring but it sure helps to kill time! And it also comes with an advantage; no one will complain that you never called them in a long time!

Thing to do this summer #5:

Go to that big cupboard that has those books you never read in all these years. They might actually turn out to be very interesting.

Thing to do this summer #4:

If you want to get shocked get ready to be now. Go to a fitness centre and work out there for about an hour. When you get back home you’ll be way too tired to do anything and you’ll want to just lay down and stare at the ceiling. Works well for me!

Thing to do this summer #3:

Call up all your friends and talk with them for as long as they say they got to go or as long as you get an idea of something great to do. There’ll always be at least one soul who is as bored as you are!

Thing to do this summer #2:

Get the computers started and surf the net for worthless stuff like some random movie read its plot go read about the actors who played a role in it. Go to one of their random movies and so on… works well!

Thing to do this summer #1:

I came up with writing this blog. You come up with something else. Do the thinking for goodness’s sake! Thinking really helps keep your mind active! So now go on and think!

Until next time,

Yours,

Arthi Appathurai.

What the rain can do to you...

There has been a cyclone formed in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in a particularly interesting country among the other many countries in the world called India. The cyclone, named Nisha (or is it Sabala?), created 5 days of complete havoc in the state. And on all these days one or more districts had their schools and colleges closed. The first two days of it, the city of Chennai didn’t have a holiday. And on the third day, or rather, the second day, the third day was declared a holiday for Chennai; I don’t know about you guys but honestly, I was very happy. It’s just too typical of me to be happy if school was called off even if it meant I would become really jobless and bored to an extent of, say hit myself or bang my head on the wall. Though such a trying situation has never had the guts to face me, I had not quite a problem.

 

Now, as the third day passed and the dreaded feeling of going to the school the next day struck me, I felt depressed extremely depressed. I was easily more depressed than Marvin. At least Marvin got to go all over the space and help the group of people consisting of earthman Arthur Dent, Trillion, President of the Universe and the intelligent hitchhiker Ford Prefect who came in handy at all times, I was left to sit in one bench all day long with another bored organism of the same species as me beside me and in fact all around me and not to forget the other organism of the same species as the all of us shouting his/her lung out explaining to us some very complicated thing in very simple language. This is what we, the people on earth, would call a classroom with children and a teacher.  Yeah so coming back to whatever I started off this paragraph with, I was depressed that we might have school the fourth day. And guess what surprised me? Yup! The government had been fair enough to us by announcing the next day as a holiday too!

 

As the fourth day was drawing to an end, again I felt depressed! The very thought of this week being the monthly test week and that I had to write a test the next day on portions I completely disliked was like asking me to read a clever pun of some unearthly language without any former knowledge of the existence of the language! Now again I prayed and hoped and sweated and sat in front of the TV without going to study because of the increased trust on the rains. It was mid afternoon. I had got sick of watching the same TV that spoke about the same news over and over and over and over again. And so I decided to go online and discuss why the next day should be a holiday with the other people who were jobless enough to come online too. I was doing the above mentioned task when suddenly I got this message from a friend of mine that said:

“Go check out the TV”

“Why? Anything important?”

“Just go check it out!”

“’Okay. Wait till I’m back”

And this creature, as usual, was very lazy and this time more so because the weather was a very laziness inducing type of weather. And so grumbling I made attempts to get out of the highly comfortable chair I was sitting on. But not long after I decided to do so and made the first ever attempts, I got a text message that read: “no school tomorrow also. The TV says so!”. And so the other obvious reactions such as expressing your happiness about the decision to the other friends you were discussing about this and to your Mom because she had always regretted your company when you troubled her instead of letting her take her afternoon nap. And so the soul was happy. Little did it know about the next major surprise that awaited it in not more than half an hour.

 

Exactly half an hour after the above mentioned incident took place, the happy soul got another text message that read: “no school tomorrow AND on Saturday. So the tests that were supposed to be on Saturday are also postponed indefinitely!”. ‘Now that is news I could rejoice about!’ thought the soul and did so; she rejoiced calling a few of her friends sharing with them this happiness and singing and dancing and doing all the fun things in life and.. in a nutshell, having a frolicking time all together!

 

Then the soul decided it should also use the time a little usefully. She sat down to read, not the text books again for she had already done that for quite some time earlier but a very good book by a very good author called Douglas Adams. The book, as most of you would have now guessed was not “The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” but the fourth book of the series “So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish”. I must say, it was absolutely marvelous! And so the soul had a frolicking time reading a wonderful book and having 5 days of holidays from her classes. And when the same soul got bored of the wonderful book and of discussing to her friends who are online about the various new topics they made up together, she decided to spend, or rather waste, the time of hers and the poor people who chanced upon her blog on that day with this blog she decided to call… …well…um…. What is it called by the way? 

The Doomsday Conspiracy

One fine evening, really fine because the next day was a holiday at school and I don’t have to finish the “n” homework I should have completed otherwise, I was busy being jobless. That was when I got this message from a class mate of mine. That really interested fellow sent a message that asked me to go watch history channel right away for a documentary on doomsday. Hmmm interesting! As a person who basically loves mystery and learning more about the most mysterious and ambiguous things on earth, that message was heavenly! And the next thing I know, I am there in the living room watching that documentary.

 

It was a great documentary basically! The next time they air it and you come to know of it, people I am telling you it is a must watch! It was about time obsessed ethnic people of present day Mexico, the Mayans. And thanks to the Spanish people who first invaded their land, their scriptures aren’t completely in our hands. But with just what we do have it is quite obvious, after years and years of study, that doomsday is the infamous 12 December 2012. And you should know, those Mayans were a lot, a LOT, obsessed with time. So much so that their famous Chechen Itza, is actually an elaborate existing proof for the very fact of it (sorry guys… I can’t really explain it. I missed some 5 minutes of the showL).  So, many modern day humans believe the fact that doomsday is right at our door step (I am telling you, I can’t wait to see the looks of all these 24*7 news channels on December 11 2012!). And did I forget to mention the importance of this day? It has 2 really rare and wonderful cosmological happenings that just amazes man for the mere happening of it. The sun, on that day, aligns itself to the exact galactic center of the Milky Way galaxy and the earth completes the wobble around its axis. The thing is that these two happen once in 26000 years! Now that’s a long time!

 

So, after seeing this documentary and completely admiring the pains taking of the archeologists iconologists and other professionals involved in the de-coding of the Mayan scriptures, I was left to myself to answer one question for myself, “does this doomsday thing really exist?” and before any of you guys out there to just kill the others with their “mokkais” open their mouths to say that day exists but I don’t really know if its doomsday or not, let me tell you one thing the question lurking in my mind is if that existing day is doomsday or not. And as my usual self, I sat down to think instead of wasting time in the net googling for stuff I could have gone without knowing. And by the way, I think the verb “google” should become part of the English language, what say? Yeah so my long minutes of thinking has resulted in an answer I am so amazed of myself, ok I am not amazed at it but at the way I have spent so much time without googling! I think the doomsday conspiracy is utter bluff. The Mayans lived centuries ago and they deceived from existence a long back themselves. And why should man, as of now the greatest being on earth, believe statements of people like the Mayans.

 

Maybe I am wrong at this decision. But then no one can tell me so until they say that it is a fact and not an assumption of theirs. And that can be proved only when their so-called “doomsday” arrives. After which, no one would exist to tell me that I was all wrong and that doomsday did actually exist. But I wanted to give my opinion on something as important as this being a responsible resident of earth myself. So people the thing I learned today is some things are best left a mystery the more you try to prove your point in it, the more a relationship of yours could end in a disaster. And why? Because my recent conversations on the existence of God almost had a friendship of mine go down the drain. Doesn’t really matter now because we are good friends as of now, and hopefully forever. I also discovered that it is these little insignificant fights between friends that make you closer and closer and closer…..

 

So the ambiguity of anything that exists on this earth will pull the interest of one soul who badly wants all things to have a very logical reason, excluding a few stuff which are a mystery to me and that includes the mystery of this mystery. And here I am writing this blog that is so important for me to express my mind straight out to one person who just have to understand that our friendship stands on a thin rope but is not far from a bed of fur! And so our friendship rocks! And I really think I should go google about little countries that really matter to my general knowledge, my dear google awaits me so…

Until next post,

Yours,

Arthi Appathurai.