A Voice from the Silent Majority

How do people work without vacations (I mean long ones)? That I've always wondered since I was a small child. During school days we are always waiting for the holidays to come, so no matter how hard the work became we always managed to draw some comfort by reminding ourselves that the holidays are coming nearer. And when they came it was 2months of playing, going on trips and just pure idling. But I've never seen an employed person enjoy such freedom (unless they get fired, in which case they become unemployed). So how do employed people manage to go on and on everyday from 9am – 6pm without feeling miserable?

What might be my last long holiday (2 ½ months) ends on the 14^th of September as uni starts on that day. And I find myself dreading the end of the vacation, wondering whether it's the last, and asking myself whether I managed to enjoy every moment of it. How will I survive once I'm employed?

Long gone are the days when 1.44mb floppies ruled the standards of portability. Nowadays its even hard to find a PC or a Laptop with a floppy drive. But the thing about usb drives (or pendrives or thumb drives or whatever you wish to call them) is that they are soooo easy to lose. I'm currently going on my 5^th because of this matter.

The first one I got had a capacity of 64mb that was in 2004 (and the damn thing cost rs.3500, that was for getting through O/Ls). In school this device was a blessing. It was so easy to conceal so the prefects couldn't find them. So I managed to increase my collection of mp3s considerably using this (those were the days of the dial-up so downloading a mp3 was a costly business). But then my father also started to see the uses of this device. Now he could work at home and take all those stuff back to office in this magical device (initially he was totally opposed to spending rs. 3500 on this small device). So he decided why buy a new one when there is already one at home. So he started "borrowing" it, and after a couple of days forgot it in office, and the pen drive was never seen again.

So no pen drive till I got to campus. When I first got in to campus I thought this was downloading heaven (boy was I wrong, during day time I rarely see speeds above 20kBps) so I decided to buy a larger capacity pen drive preferably 1GB(by this time pen drive prices had come down) . But I made the mistake of going with my father so after listening to the prices and figuring out that that 512mb one was cheaper he said, ඔච්චර එකක් ඕනෙද? (which means I think the 512mb one is more than enough). So I had to settle on the 512mb (Thank God the shop didn't have 256mb pens). Then couple of months later I heard my mother complaining that a piece of the washing machine had come off (මෙන්න washing machine එකේ කෑල්ලක් කැඩිලා!!). True enough she was holding few fragments of a circuit. However one piece showed a remarkable resemblance to a usb connector, then it dawned on me that I probably must had left the pendrive in the pocket of my denim. I quickly looked inside the washing machine and found other pieces of incriminating evidence which I quickly disposed of before my father saw them (also managed to get that usb connector thingy from my mother). Then I joined her in blaming the washing machine.(However a friend of mine managed to salvage a pen drive after it was put in the washing machine, he was lucky twice.)

Again no pen drive. But now the pendrive had become a crucial part in my life. So after saving for a couple of weeks I managed to finance a new one and this time 2GB. By that time I had managed to persuade my father to get ADSL, so had a healthy collection of movies. So my boarding mate and I used to swap pen drives when we were going home (since the capacities were same we couldn't be bothered to transfer movies from mine to his and vice versa). By now I was a bit more responsible and from experience (see above) I knew put the pen drive in my pocket was not a good idea. So I used to put it in my bag. One day (this was after about a year) when I got home no pen drive (I had swapped pen drives as well, so the lost pen drive belonged to my boarding mate, more serious). Upon further inspection of the bag I discovered a small hole at the bottom just enough for a pen to fit through (talk about being a victim of circumstances, ආයේ ඉතින් කොහෙ කියල හොයන්නද?). So what to do, I told him to keep mine.

Then I went and bought a very cheap Chinese pendrive (2GB again). However this too didn't last long (and mind you the cheap technology didn't play a part). Thanks to the huge number of assignments and course works that needs to be submitted I have to visit communication shops a lot to get printouts while in campus (although I have a printer at home it's much more cheaper to print from outside, hp cartridges are more expensive then the printer). There I left the pen drive on the computer (and needless to say when I got back it wasn't there).

So I decided no more pendrives for me. I started working on google docs to prevent carrying stuff with me, no more movies , no more music or any other cool things, and most importantly no more worries. Plus there was also the added advantage of less virus attacks to my pc. But recently a friend presented me a pen drive (4GB, he had no idea about my history with pen drives). Until now it's NOT lost (oh I did manage to lose it's cover/clip) :) .