The Perennial Withdrawal Symptom

I rue the day I went out on a whim and subscribed to Campus Wifi. As it turns out, the college has now taken it upon itself to dangle the Internet carrot in front of our eyes and then charge an exorbitant amount for subscription. Well, a futile attempt at a 'carrot and stick' analogy. But the thing that annoys me the most is how they blatantly put up notices at every hostel from time to time with the words "Wifi is temporarily disabled" or "Wifi is being extended to other parts of campus", both of which mean we have to suffer a good week of internet withdrawal before the retards finally fix the consarned' thing. To top it all off, all notices inevitably and inexplicably end with "Inconvenience is regretted". Now it makes sense to intimate the students about their heartfelt sympathy when the net is inaccessible on account of Wifi malfunction, but when they start putting up notices like "Cut Off Ragging! Inconvenience is regretted" or "The Chinese students of Vit are are holding their annual Chinese celebrations' day at Foody's. Inconvenience is regretted", you know it's time to pack your bags and start heading home. I mean what the hell does 'Cut Off Ragging' mean anyway? To add to that, drawn skilfully below the notice is this little caricature of a man in a green shirt seated on a branch with a saw in his hand and, get this, sawing off the very branch he's sitting on! I wonder what their idea of a Chinese festival would be like. Too bad they didn't try to express their wonderfully artistic ideas regarding that on the notice board.

Coming back to the point, I think the college has now found a way of sneaking into our servers and monitoring the sites we visit. Call me paranoid, but a few days ago is when it started happening. Facebook takes an eternity to open, Youtube refuses to load videos, avn-awards refuses to renew my subscription, imdb tells me House didn't win an emmy and somehow mininova has begun to respond to my torrent searches for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus with sentences like "Sorry, no search results found. Did you mean - The Imagine of Dr. Pornstar?'. I half expected to read the words "Inconvenience is regretted" below it. But God is kind. He saved me the future humiliation of having put an indignant fist through the laptop screen.

As it turns out, I really spend a lot less time on the net than I had myself believe. Subscription to Wifi doesn't seem worth it. I may have to reconcile my differences with the Sify administrator after all, whom I may have asked politely but threatningly to 'shove it'. In my defence, he had stretched me to breaking point with his "This computer not working, anna. Come tomorrow". In return, I taught him the word 'motherfucker'. Maybe, as I now think about it, I have yelled that at the laptop screen more number of times than I have at the Sify administrator. Maybe, as it now strikes me and I mope, I was not meant to have net at all! Well...I guess I can get used to not having net anymore....Although I think I can feel the pangs of that perennial withdrawal symptom acting up again..

P.S. - Wireless Fidelity, my ass...