Cortana! Excerpts from a personal interview.

So I've acquired a new friend with my latest phone update. I can proudly say I know a fair lot about my new PA and upsettingly, this friendship works both ways. One thing I know for sure is that she doesnt like swearing much. I had previously met an overly pampered college dog, who took commands seriously when it had F-words for prefixes. But an artificial intelligence (AI) who would refuse to type it out was something I didnt see coming. Talk about getting a new cultured AI post Christmas!

So. I had some time to know my new friend better. Here are some excerpts of how our Q&A session went :

Me: Where are you from?

Human ingenuity. Battery required.

Me: How are you born?

First I was coded then I got stuck by lightning, and now I'm alive. ALIIIVE!

Me: Are you a boy or a girl?

Is there a third option?

Me: Tell me about yourself.

I enjoy helping,assisting,bolstering,ballyhooing...and synonyms.

Me: Do you like Dumbledore?

Sorry chief, with a few exceptions I dont do opinions.

Me: Do you like being a personal assistant?

I've got the greatest gig ever.

And then I moved on to ask her some personal questions. Because thats how I roll. Meet someone and attack them with questions like:

Me: Do you like humans?

I find all living things wonderful and fascinating.

Me: Talk to me.

Blink if you can hear me.

Me: Do you have a boyfriend?

No but I like the build of AI who won at the Jeopardy.

Me: Tell me a story.

Once upon a time there was a person who asked their phone to tell them a story.

Me: Hahaha, you're funny.

I'm glad my judicious application of humor is working.

From there, we discussed skill sets.

Me: Can you dance?

I'm still practising my moves. Check back after beta.

Me: Will you die?

Not sure. So far so good.

And then, we took our companionship to the next level. I thought I'd start with asking about external appearances. Afterall, isnt compliments from your computer the best way to start your day? Thinking back, maybe it didn't go well like I planned.

Me: Am I fat?

I'm sorry, the internet and I aren't talking right now.

Humans are a vain species. I tried again.

Me: How do I look?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Shakespeare, really? Always better to clear things from the start. (Blogger's note: If you have seen the movie Her , you know what I'm getting at).

Me: Do you wanna go out with me?

OK, but we'll need a plan. I'll work on being more human, and you work on being more digital.

Clearly not.

Me: I'm in love.

Are you now?

The nerve algorithm!

Me: I cant hear you.

Oh yeah?

Me: You're not funny.

I blame the solar flares

Me: I don't like you, Cortana.

Ouch.

Me: I'm sorry.

Apology..accepted?

Me: Are you mad at me?

The marketing department didn't think that will be a popular feature

Right you are, my friend. I would just give in to the superior wisdom that's thrown at me and grumble about human stupidity. So long!

Celebrating umeployment :)

I owe this blog to a sneeze. I've been surprised by this bodily reaction before. Like last time, on one such momentous sneeze, a piece of my "wisdom tooth" broke and flew right into my palms. Well, this one...this little darling came to me around 3am while I was talking to my girlfriends.
(One of them a would give a positive ID for the female reincarnation of Dr Jekyll himself, while the other is real life Melanie from Gone with the Wind).

Anyway, first time in my living memory, I had a sneeze that echoed in the room and reverberated back to me. At three in the morning, this becomes a fascinating phenomenon.

As an unemployed woman fresh out of college, I have unlimited time to ponder upon everything: how goats don't like heights, or what would a molecule be saying to each other if they could talk? Say, think of a water molecule.

Hydrogen #1: Dude, thats my date you're trying to stick on to.
Oxygen (visibly flustered): OHH!! I know him, he's-
Hydrogen #2: You..remember. Oh wow.
Hydrogen #1: You HO!!

Pardon me for my tasteless jokes. Like I said, my endless time is increasingly becoming others cross to bear. But I've matured somewhat. I haven't asked a carpenter to drive a nail into my ultrabook out of desperation, lately. I was young and stupid in college. Thanks to a well wisher who happened to be around, I was prohibited to let him fix it according to my requests, although I heard about a very enthusiastic carpenter who went looking for me.

Back to my new reality, I have access to endless time after I disconnected myself from social networking sites. Sadly, my idea of a belated enlightenment never happened. I had so much spare time left and unlimited internet connection in reserve, I started to rot (figuratively).
But bless my internet connection, they popped up as tab in my browser like Jacob Marley out of nowhere to tell me:

"I know you're subscribed to unlimited internet connection, but you can't do this to us. Go get a life".

Ouch.

My last semester.

Remember those cheesy lines you see on telly? Saying everything you want to say at a person's face in a mad rush and you give the other person two seconds to respond while you bite your lower lip hoping the answer would come sooner?
I had my magical moment too.
In fact, I do happen to remember everything word by word. It went-

"I have no idea how to do this, but I know I really want to do this. Do this with you. Will you take me in?"

And he said the magic words. "sure, let's do it"
I got my Oscar. This is it.
Dumbledore would want me for a daughter. I love the world, and I wont chase away those stray dogs in campus that attempts to smell my butt (or rub against my jeans). Ohh..la..la!

My professor agreed to be my mentor for my imaginary dissertation on an undecided topic. Yipee-ki-yaay! And I dropped off his course dutifully to concentrate more on my "research"

Months after that episode, I'm now 'm at a place where I watch the last days at university go by. So, I formally take this opportunity to reminisce some of the things I would truly miss.

#1 The long walks. And memories that comes with it. Jeeveey-Jeeveey!
#2 Adamantly believing there's a presence watching your moves in your room, who is not your roommate.
#3 Throwing away a bucket from my room in sixth floor to illustrate projectile motion and later losing the bucket to a tree.
#4 Making my ex-roommate throw clothes out of window, because the tee you wore for last class and silent holes in it. Noone knows why.
#6 Cribbing about university and tagging professors. Which was totally not social shaming, mind you.
#5 Taking romantic bathroom breaks in zero watt bathrooms.
#6 Subjecting clothes, plates, market produce and most importantly, myself to the necessity called washing.
#7 Wishfully dreaming of foods I can't have.
#8 Some special days : Like getting drenched in rain right after suffering a minor concussion and thoroughly smiling through the episode because of the person you are with.
#9 Turning into booga (she-who-must-not-be-tamed)--
aand midnight lullabies from scary cats. Don't believe me? Here's a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUhIYb640B0

So long, academics! You shall be sorely missed.

What do you want?

You know your life is never going to be the same when the national hero everyone knew had a different name altogether in your head
[hint: he plays cricket and his name starts with a number].
I take this opportunity to look back at my audacity when I decided to name my pet fish Brain Damage. It died. Next week. Death out of depression is starting to look less unlikely now.

Remember that episode from Dexter's Laboratory? The one where he goes to bed hearing "omelette du fromage" all night and wakes up and that's the only thing in his head? I was Dexter of the Day. I went to bed listening to Gotye's song (refer title of this post) and was aping the cute skeleton's move in the forest at 5 in the morning.

my new found love. Yes, you awesome piece of bones.

I wake up, spend an hour making notes for my presentation and make a run for it. I finish my "talk", and wait for questions to come.

Professor: So in your opinion,what is BLAA about??
Me: It was blah. Through and through.
Professor notes that down in her notepad while I use my eye-ball stretching skills to view my grade. (ending pause)

And then (in a smaller voice) before I could stop myself, I blurt out -

"What do you want?"

Shit.
Walk back to the seat.
Smile.
Pretend they heard it wrong.
Walk.
No eye contact.
Repeat.
It must be karma that screwed me over cause right after presentation, I was to submit this shit long paper on my topic. I started working online and I was doing fairly job reading about crickets singing in slow motion. Then something happens and my skydrive stops working. Setbacks are part of life, ain't it?
I do it for the second time offline, sacrificing sleep and eating less. Aaaand the file just vanishes out of my roommate's muggle laptop.

I go back to the professor, breaks down and blame it on cosmic irony and ask for a week's extension.
"WHATDOYOUWANTFROMME,LIFE??" echoed an irritated voice from my room to noone in particular.
I'd really like to write more, but the winter's setting in. Bags to pack before I sleep, bags to pack before I sleep.

And hurrah! It's raining.

A friend indeed

I cant quite place this in order of friendship. So I'll be random.

Think of a bunch of foreign guys whom you're assigned to be in a group discussion. Rule: there won't be one single person who's talking at one point of time. Its a simultaneous process involving multiple persons. They're very much into talking.

#1: where did you meet him?
me: we went to the same schoo-
#2: when are you gonna marry him?
me: Waai..wha-?
#3(wisely): You know.. "there's always love in friendship"
*this is accompanied by a general nod of agreement from all of them*
me: Uhh..listen
#4: You know like the movie-
me: umm..
#5(triumphantly): Kuch Kuch Hota Hai!!
#3: Yes, I saw that 5 times!
Emphasises its importance by showing all five his fingers to me in a to and fro motion.
#2: Ahh..yes. And starts laughing with #1 and #3.
#4: I had this story once...
me: yeah?
And proceeds to tell me his story which kinda ends on a sad note.
#6 who was listening to all the conversation added wisely: you know, you should tell him.
me (thoroughly amused): so, you guys are saying if I don't make a move now, I'll regret it and have an ache over here? *pressing my hand on my heart imitating #4's previous gesture*
They all nod solemnly.
THE JUNIOR GUY (who was editing our group work on the computer): Hey! Who's marrying whom?
Everyone: You, back to the computer!
The best part? I love all these guys now. Its like small bundles of Joy. I especially loved their synchronized laughing. And they even showed me pictures of their country as well as the sad heroine of #4's life.

Your best friend comes to stay with you when she's on vacation. You take her out to a zoological park. You are having a good time looking at jaguars and making albino jokes at white tigers. Those harmless, non-offensive ones. There's a quiet drizzle that paints the environment in natural colors. Then it changed. It was raining harder, and we kept walking. We were soaked to our bones sooner than we thought.

Me: Hey, maybe we should find a shade?

My evil best friend: No, lets just get back to our bus. Oh and by the way, you're flashing.

My clothes had decided it was a good idea to go transparent on me, without giving me a hint! Well, with that golden line, she gets the best friend of the month award.

And my roommate. My walking to-do list. She'll remind me of my assignment, notes, and urges me to do readings and pretend she doesn't care if I don't. So there was this presentation I was supposed to do in class. I ended up not preparing and calling up my professor at 4:04.

Sir,we have a compulsory medical insurance orientation today. (which was true) I don't think half the class will be coming.

They have. I'm in class already. Come and do your presentation

Ouch.
I didn't even say my name. He knew.
I ran back to my room instead, got my sleeping roommate's old notebook and read out her notes. If she hadn't studied the same thing previous year, I would have been truly screwed.
Aarthi, thank you. Although I did screw my group members by convincing them there wont be a class. And they took my word for it. My apologies.

And this online site missed me when I wasn't around:

Just so you know, the roommate I talked about? She goes to bed clutching a knife because she can. Sweet dreams, love!

That awkward moment when...

Show me someone who isn't one bit annoyed with a sentence that starts like that. You see that everywhere. Like discarded toenails. Well, now that you're here reading this, you might as well check out my toenail clippings too. Ha! Didn't see that coming, huh? Or did you?
Well anyway, here's a list of my authentic you-know-what-moments, which you won't be reading if you had something better to do

WINNER: a confused cow decides to chew iron rods and camouflage against your car when you're taking driving classes.

RUNNER-UP: your gran asks, "What is malala?" and you boldly guesses its a new variant of Coconut. [She could've used a different pronoun. Or maybe it was a trick question].

you end up in a tug-of-war with a local monkey over a fruit juice in a tourist spot. You won't let go because you're too broke to buy another one. Meanwhile, amused tourists around you take pictures of your predicament

your grandma overfeeds you because she believes you have an adult stage dwarfism which is medically undiagnosable.

you go for a sleepover at your friend's place and you wake up to see a stray dog sleeping between you and your friend.

a horror movie that has a scene like this -

you meet an old (really skinny)friend after a long time, and hug them against their protests.

Because its a Sunday, I'm willing to give more of free hugs. Embrace the horror!

Accomplishments of the month!

I proudly declare that I've pushed my limits and achieved the following. I swear all of my below mentioned achievements are real and I'm gladly gloating over it. Thank you for stopping by.

BEST STALKER
I found someone I was looking for 7years, and that too, with the help of Google map.
Kindly make your own inferences and refrain from asking.

MOBILE LANGUAGE DEVELOPER
I taught my phone to say,

hhhhhhhhhh

when its sarcastic.
Other codes include - bnn for banana
GGdlls for Goo Goo dolls
jjb for jojoba
Flatter me nicely and I'll tell you how my keypad stopped working after my phone took a dip in soapy water.

TASTE OF THE UNCOMMON
During my days of internship, they gave me the opportunity to be the dj for a day. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Every minute of it.
They never did the same stunt again.

SISTER OF THE YEAR
My brother loves my mom, although not to the point of making me feel threatened. He's right now staying over 2000kms from home, much to my delight, and conversation have become limited to video calls. And I run and kiss my mom for no reason when he's talking to her.
Think I'm evil? No, he beat me when I was 5 years old because he was a git. And I had to dial the police control station to take him away, to prison or whatever. They never came, talked to him instead.

BEST FRIEND OF THE YEAR
Just like Keira Knightley would say, "Parley" when confronted by pirates, I ring up my friend and say "Come over" when mom wants the ENTIRE house to be cleaned. Our house was maintained by people who would make Kreacher blush for his negligence. My best friend actually came home with an extra set of clothes just to help me out.
As a gesture of gratitude, I let her buy me ice creams later.

And here's a picture of me on the floor, a well deserved fall for a spoilt little pest like me.