Thursday, March 11, 2010

Dear Mr.Boring Pompous Lecturer!

Warning: This is a rant post. I couldn't rant about this one on Facebook or Orkut or Gtalk or any of the hundred and one social networks out there for fear of hurting someone or something. I ranted about it to one of my closest buds and that helped but lets just say I'm still simmering! Since my blog is also my space to rant out, here you go to get the full flow of it. If you are not interested, please stop at this point and check the next post. I might be in a better mood then!

P.S to the warning: If you know me in person, please please do me a favor and not ask anything about this post!! Atleast to save your head and our friendship... Rest assured that the person in this post doesn't know about my blog at all... (one of the saving graces!)

In person, I'm a very friendly person who loves doing things with friends all the time. By 'all the time', I literally mean all the time. I'd be happiest if I can be with friends and have fun 24x7x365. My weekends are busier than weekdays and every weekday has something new at the end of it to spend with friends. So, I have a large social circle with myriad intertwinings in it. I try my best to keep the circle good and happy (being the Libran I am, I want everyone around me to be happy! It might sound silly to some... but then that is what I aim for, every single day. I would go out of my way to really make someone atleast temporarily happy. In that process, I've caused some permanent damage and felt bad for it later but that is a story for another day). I try and share my time and resources with everyone in it sometimes giving up what I want out of it all.

Now, there is a certain person in my circle who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. I don't even want to hint about that person. So lets go with the generalized he. If you want, you are totally welcome to think the person is a she. But I digress...
Going back to the story, for lack of any other word, our relationship can be termed as friendship. And that is a rare one for I welcome and love making and maintaining friends (look at the looonnnnggg intro at the top). I think he is a scum rat but civility demands I be nice and friendly to him. So, going with civility, I'm civil with him but barely so...

I've known him since college but met him a few weeks ago at a party hosted by a common friend and he started jabbering away to nonsense. I couldn't even feign interest in whatever he said. Finally, a friend rescued me and we left the place. Then I met him again in some mall and had to bear some really boring lecture on women's bill. Please, Mr.Boring Pompous Lecturer! I don't care even an iota about the bill for it is not going to affect me in any way. I know I'm not being the best of citizens by saying this but I personally DON'T CARE about this one. I think its a total sham and that people are politicizing the entire issue. If everyone can make sure that they treat the women they meet in daily life with respect and love and help develop confidence, then that is the path for true liberation. I think everything else is a coverup for getting more votes. Do you know that I realized that you had spoken the same thing to me in the party only when you asked me questions on it in the mall?? Sheesh! You are even worse than my eighth standard Geography teacher, who asked questions without teaching anything! Atleast then I knew she was asking something from the book!

The main reason why I didn't even tell you my views on it was because I wasn't even that interested enough in you or your thoughts on it. I didn't even want an argument, for argument's sake(that, from a person who loves debates! Sigh! See how bad you are... ). I thought that if I just nod and say yeah right for everything, you'll lose steam and run out of things to say. But how am I to know that you considered that as the major motivation to continue??? Please understand that if someone keeps looking at her watch, makes her friends call her just to rescue her from your aruvai, says she has some work to do at home, etc etc, she is just itching to get away from you, even if you are the world's last remaining person!!

Then, as my bad luck will have it, I met him in the Indian grocery store with a long queue in front. It took all my patience to not drop my basket and run from there as if a hundred hyenas were after me. I had to stand and grin and bear the lecture again. Dude!! did you forget that I told you that I don't give a sh!t about the bill? Why bore me with the one topic you know on earth? And, how exactly did you manage to subvert my attempts to change the topic and get back to this one? What exactly is the connection between our company's tech fest and women's bill? I have to give it to you on this one! You are one of the very few that I've met who doggedly refused to change topics even when it was glaringly obvious that the other person wanted it. And that is not a proud thing, you dumbo! It is something you lack; To top it all, you managed to stand near my car driver door for half an hour preventing me from getting into my car and escaping from your clutches! I had to stand in the cold and listen to your whines! As a result, I missed spending more time with my roomies and S and A. You totally suck!!

So, here you go! Here is what I wanted to say on my Facebook status, my Gtalk status and even my office communicator: To save everyone's sanity, please GET LOST!!! Please please don't get anywhere near to me till I get myself back to normal. I know that losing sleep for a stupid like you is totally unnecessary. But then, your lectures and encounters get me to such a worked up state that I'm typing this away at 2 am in the night. I couldn't even update my Gtalk status or Google buzz since you have the indecency to ask me if I blocked you if you don't see me online for a few days. Yes! I blocked you and yes, I've had to unblock you again just to escape that yucky question everytime! This time though, I'm blocking you permanently... I've reached the ends this time. Mind you, this is not something you should be proud about. I did the unblocking only because I didn't want any kind of conflict with you. Its more because of my nature rather than you...

I realized how bad GTalk invisible status is today. I didn't know if that guy was truly online or not. I couldn't even rant peacefully! For all the people out there who are on invisible mode on Gtalk, please please be online (for its only your friends who know you are online) or please sign out!! Being invisible and pinging only when you want to is plain high-handedness.... do you think you are so busy that the world can't ping you when it needs but you can ping others when you want help? Please!! Everyone is as busy as you are.. just because someone is on GTalk and in available mode doesn't mean they have nothing at all to do. It just means that they don't mind spending a few minutes talking to friends. And the fact that you can ping me since you see me online, but I can't ping you since I think you are offline??? That falls in "Yuck!!" category!

When I type into someone's chat window that shows they are offline(when they are invisible), I trust that the person is actually offline. Please don't kill the trust I place in you. If you are busy, please change to busy status and tell your friends that you shouldn't be disturbed when you are busy or have a particular status message on it. And process the messages you get when you are on busy status once you are done with work. Being invisible is so damn sheesh!! Be courageous enough to say that you are somewhere when you ARE actually there. Please be grown up about it.

If you think there are morons who expect immediate response from you even when you put a busy status, then its high time you start thinking about your GTalk friends list. And please please don't be on busy status ALL THE TIME. Social networking is fun as well! So give some of your time (time that you spend facebooking or playing with new stuff or reading on google reader) to be on green and available, atleast once a month!! If you are on red all the time, there is no meaning for that status after that. People would surely disrespect that message. Its all in your hands buddy!

Though this rant hasn't cooled me down, I'm happy to have vented it somewhere! Oh, I think I should have asked that guy to just shut up instead of torturing mankind! Now, how good it would be if I can really tell a person that in real life situations... Sometimes, being a Libran is a bother! I guess I better learn how to tune out such morons when they blah blah blah!

PS - for the 0.001% probability case: Moron! If you are actually reading this blog post and know that I meant you, you'll know who I am as well. In that case, please don't come and ask me if I meant all this. Yes! I mean every word of it. Though I doubt if you will listen to it. I can already imagine you standing in my way and boring me with one of your endless lectures... Yikes!

9 comments:

MsRulz said...

Ha ha.. This has to be one of your best blogs.. :P thoroughly enjoyed it.. and yeah I'm one of those morons who is invisible on gtalk all the time and yes I stay invisible coz I don't want to disturbed by random people.. I wish I could trim my gtalk list, but social networking has grown so much that sometimes you have to run away from it.. people who are close to me know exactly when to ping me..

P.S: I wish the gtalk client had an offline feature too.. I hate to be "online" or "busy" when I voice chat with my parents :D

Alpine Path said...

Madhan, if you are disturbed by random people when you are in busy status, tell them that you can't talk for some reason or the other (talking to parents is a good one :P) But being invisible and pinging others is definitely in the Sheesh category, all said and done! Btw, what are random people doing on your GTalk list? It is more for friends rather than for adding one and all to it. So, trimming is the way to go, if you can't din sense into your GTalk contacts' list.

P.S: Glad you like this post! Ha ha! :P

Lava (Sanskrit: लव) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lava (Sanskrit: लव) said...

Alpine,
If i were you, i would have gone and told the person on his face not bug me again. Makes life simple as after that!
Not easy as it sounds, but worth a try!

Lava

Anonymous said...

Hey Alpine, Sorry to hear about your misadventures with this dude. Sure sounds like a pompous ass. But you know what, we all meet such people and they do not require us to waste time thinking about them (as they are not thinking about us). Anyways, enjoyed your post and though it was a rant it was a fun read :-)

Hopefully, you come back to your element soon.

Annie Theogaraj said...

Hi Harini, I also would say this is one of your best posts. I do stay invisible most of the times, just not to be disturbed by certain friends at times to avoid discussing some topics. I do agree abouu what you are staying. Also, good you ranted out your feelings, this feels real good.(I've done the same :) knowing the other person would read my blog)

Arun said...

while back with bunch of others, i built an app for this over a day.
for your resuce :D
escapemydate.com

Arun said...

I think, busy/invisible are needed many times. Normally ppl use it for these (mostly), imo:
invisible = if you want to talk to some person, but dont want others pinging u.
busy = its just a signal for others. doest mean to be taken literally based on the way everybody seems to be using it. for eg, when my status is busy, my close friends know it, and they just ignore it. it cud mean to others that im not ready for smalltalk, but if we want to something little bit important, they are going to ping anyway.
esp at work, this sort of seems to be implicit.

Nirmal Gunaseelan said...

Ouch! It was a fantastic rant, I must agree :) I hope that he reads this and stops being (a) a non-audience talker (b) a person whom others cant stand.