Return of the M-man.

Two days ago, which makes it four days, just four days, before the project presentation, we decided our topic. And to exacerbate things, the net in the hostel, and college for that matter, stopped working. The firewall crashed they say. That's not all. Our project guide, who's a big ignoramus in almost any topic under the sun, disappeared suddenly. A few days back, I had asked him for his number as he was our guide and all, to which he was, if I am not mistaken, surprised. I have no clue why, but whatever the reason was, was valid enough for him to give me his fake number. So, we continued with the topic we had earlier decided, which was vast enough to give us the heebie jeebies. That, we should have realized much much much earlier. But we didn't. This forced us to seek shelter in nearby net-cafes. Now, there are two of them. One is never empty and the other has PCs slower than Babbage's original. I could have gone to far off net-cafes but I didn't wanna waste money on petrol. And that would've been unnecessary petrol-use, no? So I stuck to the neolithic net-cafe. Never have I googled so severely and well, desperately, for something, anything that might give us some clue, any clue, to help us move further. Or rather, start. Again, dead end. There were hardly any results of any use to us and those that were of some relevance, were papers which had to be bought off the site to view completely. We did have one e-book that had helped us a bit but we had scrutinized it to the last detail and enough to not find any new info. Then, to worsen things, we heard about internal tests. Four tests(!!!), ten marks each(!!! ^ !!!), scheduled for the same day as the the day we have our project presentation on. We then paid a certain professor a brief visit to see if he had anything that might be of any help to us. Murphy never misses a chance. The professor informed us that the thing we were looking for was difficult, no, impossible to find on the net, and he had his reasons which we found quite logical. To top it all off, two professors, who are quite a scare and were not supposed to be in the panel for that day, crashed the first-batch seminar session and gave almost every group the %$#@hole, which psyched us out with the new possibility of the same two professors attending our seminar.

My brain shuts down when stuff like this happens. With no clue what to do, I usually stop working. Its my style of saying Fuck All That. Withdrawal symptoms. The cycle repeats itself every time a few days before any deadline. Parabolic in nature if plotted (brainpower against time), it starts with the arrival of information which initially does not deliver the effect. I continue not working. A day or two later, I start realizing the gravity of it all. I start working. Gradually, brainpower changes to turbo-mode. As the deadline approaches, something goes wrong and the brain-meter starts going haywire. Now, all that load, all that work, and tenfold of what it was earlier, the brain can't handle, can it? So it retires to normal-mode again and I end up watching a movie instead.

4 days before the deadline :

“Don't worry man. Ours will be the best presentation.”

“Wait! I have an e-book. We'll use that. It has all the info we need.”

“Movie?”

3 days before the deadline :

“Don't worry man. We won't get a re-do.”

“Dude. This e-book's useless.”

“Can you think of any other topic?”

“Fuck the movie man. Lets work.”

2 days before deadline :

“I don't want a re-do man!”

“This e-book rocks man! Lets make as many slides as we can with as much bullshit as we can find.”

“Don't worry. Our topic itself is fucking impressive. They'll like it.”

1 day before the deadline :

“Argh!”

“Movie?”