The religious rite of rearranging room

Life presents humans with several occasions where they can change themselves, turn away from the 
things they have always been with, and start afresh. Such occasions make a wandering beggar want 
to turn to a good hard-working Samaritan, until the NewYork Police accuses him wrongly and outs him to prison for six months, they can turn a thief to a good person who will never resort to his old tricks and tools again, except when his fiancée’s sister/cousin gets trapped inside her father’s Very Secure bank vault, so that he has to break in to it to save her, or make a scientist out of an idiot. The religious and highly revered activity of Rearranging The Room/Apartment is also one of such occasions.
 

The process is initiated when a roommate feels that the old setting is boring and wants to procrastinate doing actual work, even though he probably has an important interview or an advanced maths test. He collects his roommates/flatmates, and if they are unwilling, keeps on annoying them by singing out-of-tunes songs loudly or turning the TV to a channel that is not appropriate to be viewed while writing an essay on 'Morality: Is it subjective to one’s beliefs or do universal standards exist?' The roommate, with no option but to tag along in the process of Rearranging The Room, agrees, and then begin a series of discussions and compromises on the best possible alternate arrangement of the room.
 

After several what-would-otherwise-have-been-productive hours of pointless discussions, and meaningless compromises that are not really compromises but giving up discussion on the topic entirely once one realizes the triviality and the pointlessness of the argument, the physical shifting begin. The chairs have to dragged around and not carried, so that the noise disturbs everyone living in the vicinity of your room. Once they come to check what-the-f-is-wrong-with you and shouldn’t-you-be-completing-your-important-essay-right-now, they have to be asked for help in shifting the room. They will agree, because that will be the only way the cacophony will stop. However, no matter how honestly they try to help, they will be more of a hindrance than help, moving the tables a few inches way of the intended place, and putting the bed in such an angle that you cannot catch the rising and the setting sun from the same position from your bed.
 

The shiftings will take several hours more than that should take, because the ‘helpers’ keep complaining about ‘wounds’, ‘thirst’, and ‘tired’. As the process is finally complete, the dwellers may open the locks with the heavy chains to let the so-called ‘helpers’ go their way and do whatever they want to do.
 

Unfortunately, not all will be well. The new arrangements would probably come with their own sets of problems, like the bunk beds completely blocking all the windows, or the tables positioned the furthest from the light source. Even though the settings will appear to be better for the first few days, the dwellers will realise soon that the original setting was better, and revert back. After a few weeks, one of the roommates will again be bored of the settings, and the process continues till eternity, or the day human civilization is wiped out due to the mistakes of complaining losers who don’t want to help you because they have ’finals from the day after tomorrow’ and tell you to these things ’when you have more free time in your hands.’ 

Visit: done

Babies are cute and stuff, but when them grow up, all hell breaks loose, without exception.

Case in point: The kids we took to the visit last week. On the micro we hired, they fought, teased all the passer-bies, tried spitting into the cars behind us, and threw shoes at each other--all from inside the jeep. Thankfully, their teacher reprimanded hem, and they were relatively docile after that. At the Patan museum, the caretaker even told us they were the one of the least-rowdy school kids they had come across.

Anyways, MIE is almost coming to end (Finally?) and I am glad too many bad things did not happen to us. The teachers were really helpful, the kids were (generally) cooperative inside the school, they had fun and so did most of the volunteers.

Oh, and about the problem I was worried about: it seems my worries were unjustified. The big kids did not create too much problems once we started treating them as our helpers instead of like students. It was interesting to see  the classmates divided into 'semi-teacher' and 'students' but we had no other problems and things worked out pretty well.

Fits of giggling hysteria strikes again

Has any teenage boy every reached adulthood without going through the sacred ritual of hearing giggles from girls and wondering if its him, and thinking probably not, but who knows, maybe its him. Maybe the zip was lose?

Its a tradition as long as the human civilization and probably much older. During the stone ages, when a gang of young hunters got ready to go out and hunt some animals, a group of fellow cave-mates would probably giggle, giggle. The hunting party would stop and whisper amongst themselves. Everyone, check your weapons, everything in place? Okay, what about the leather we are wearing? That's fine? Great! Lets do it. But the giggles would not stop, and keep bothering our young hunters.

By the time they found the prey, anxiety would have turned them into psychotic killers. They would not see the teeth of the Sabretooth trying to pierce their skin, or the weight of the Mastadoon trying to crush them. All they would see is blood, and attack, and attack. JUST TELL ME, YOU WILD BEAST, WHY WERE THEY GIGGLING? WHY? They would scream, drowning even the loudest of roars in loud fit of anger. After the animal was killed, the anger would subside, and they would go back to the caves, almost forgetting what had conspired previously that day.

In this modern day and age, it is not possible for human teenage boys to go kill endangered and extinct animals every day. The hobby of making animals extinct for fun is no longer considered politically correct, thanks to our judgmental governments and all the draconian laws they try to impose upon us. So now, there is a lot of anxiety among male teenagers about the nature of the giggles. Questions like Do I have a mismatched pair of socks? Am I sure I did not forget wearing pants today? Do I smell? Do I look like a clown? Is it because of my zits? have become a basic part of every boy's life.

Some may argue that the problem does not exist in the Middle East, thanks to the Burqa issue and all the segregation between girls and boys, but it could not be any further from the truth. Muslim girls are, in fact, even more biting at the giggling because they have vengeance boiling in their bloods. And since they are behind the Burquas anyway, they don't even have to fear of reprimand or retribution. The problem is so big that all the evil-women-laugh-tracks you hear in movies and on the TV are, in fact, clips of schoolgirls in burqa laughing at their male friends. See? You can hear all the hate and promise of revenge in some short sound bites. The moral of the story is, never, ever mess around with girls/women in Burqa. You never know what's behind the dark veils. Heck, it could even be Sirius Black's dead body which has never really been found.