Shocks and Surprises (Part 2)

blood_test2

The story of how my new blog came into being is going to be a small one so let me take the liberty to throw in some more “adventures” of the day!!

Taking off from where we left off last time, I was now in my college waiting for another peril coming my way. Incidentally, it happened to be the day I had to go to the mandatory TB screening so that the hold over my Spring registration could be removed. As expected, other students who belonged to any of the 160 listed countries by the university were waiting in line. Amongst them were couple of Indian girls and a bunch of Chinese (couple of them later turned out to be Japanese but who can tell just by looks!!). Now, I may not speak or express it but I have a morbid fear of the needles and I was all nerves. I tried to calm myself by striking up a conversation with the couple of Indian girls. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi! You guys here for the TB screening? (kinda dumb opening line seeing the big TB screening banner on the door!)

Girl1: Yes, I think you need to fill a form first which they will give to you, so just grab a seat for now.

Girl2: You know (Girl1), this place is so gloomy that it scares me so so much, I hope they blah blah blah (incessant complaining about the system,the place and the screening).

I quietly picked the Diabetes clinic brochures and started browsing through them trying to avoid her bickering. Within a couple of minutes Girl2 was called up for registration. I turned back to Girl1 and tried to start a fresh thread of conversation. Few loose talks about the weather, rain etc. later:

Me: So how long have you been here?

Girl1: Two years

Me: What?!!! (in disbelief)

Girl1: What do you mean by “What?!” (in greater disbelief)

Me: I meant how long have you been waiting in this clinic! (Duh!)

Girl1(red faced followed by a blank look): I think I came in at 1:15.

Girl2(returning after her registration): That was just registration re. The nurse will call me for blood test now. I hate this part.

Girl1: Don’t worry, I will go with you and you hold my hand,everything will be fine!

Girl2: You are so great, I don’t know but I always get scared at blah blah blah blah (philosophically talks about friendship,pain, god and Ekta Kapoor- Ok, the last part was just my invention!!)

I found it a good time to open the long unread novel that I had downloaded on my phone about a human in a robotic society while they chatted away their troubles.

Not so long later, I was up next for the blood test. The elderly nurse called me up inside giving me a sinister “yes, you’re next!” look. I followed her inside and sat down on the chair while she prepared all her instruments carefully for the delicate “operation” that she was going to carry out on me. When she turned back towards me, she held a long, thick needle and three small containers for collecting blood.

“That’s one big needle” I said to her.

“No way!” she spoke with a no-more-sinister motherly smile “you are a big lad”

When I asked her about which hand she was going to draw the blood from, she replied whichever hand she can find the veins easily. With my near absence of adipose tissue, it didn’t take her long to find the right vein.

“See, that’s a big healthy vein” she said, evidently pleased.

But the moment she inserted the needle into the vein, a thin stream of blood splattered out with full force into her gloves, apron and face. I watched shocked and horrified and the shock made me forget the pain of the prick. But she remained calm and filled the blood into the three containers. When she finally opened the cuffs and placed the cotton I exclaimed

“That wasn’t so bad!” I spoke about the obvious absence of any pain.

“Not for me” she said finally said about all the blood on her “will now wear my goggles all the time, that was surely an unexpected first!”

We both chuckled and finally I was off from the clinic and just have to wait for the results of the test. But did this incident lead me to abandon my old blog? No way! But the day wasn’t over yet and their were bigger shocks in store for me!

…to be continued

Shocks and Surprises (Part 1)

frustrated

“Lo and behold! Another blog..another feather in my cap..yipee!!”

Well, actually it’s not a happy event to start a new blog. Rather I have been literally forced into it! Things have not been going good for me in the last few days and this is probably just another extension of the long line of misfortunes in this month. So let me just describe the events that led to the creation of this blog. It’s not as entertaining as KRK’s antics on Big Boss but unlike him,I am more averse on using swear words! :P

It all started on Oct 22, the very next day after the mid-term of an insanely tough Econometrics class. The day also happened to coincide with the launch of Windows 7 which I had been eagerly waiting for. I was dead tired after the exam and my head was bordering on a full-blown headache but still I waited for the clock to tick to midnight. Midnight came but there was no sign of any mail from my good friends at Microsoft. I had no inkling of when I fell asleep but it was six in the morning when I woke up. I was still tired but I was even more excited about Windows 7 so I immediately opened my mail and there it lay expected but unseen!! Sent at midnight for sure but at PST rather than EST(so much for living in a country with different time zones!). I started the download and seeing ETA of 1 hour, fell back to sleep. When I woke up after over an hour, the download was complete. Happily I started the installation and selected a clean install, patting myself on my back for having completed the backing up of the data way ahead of time!!

Everything was going fine once the system installed and I was absolutely in love with the new cool features, I installed the essential programs, including all the chatting clients to get in touch with my sweetheart.I placed the first call to her on the new system but was too busy and excited to explore the new features of Windows, rather than hang onto her words. No wonder she was all angry within minutes of realizing what my first love for the day was!! But soon I realized the first glitch.On transferring my college notes and assignments, I noticed none of my assignments bore the familiar MS Word sign. It didn’t take long to dawn on me that after the clean install, along with several other software, I had even managed to remove the entire MS Office package. While I was shocked and dismayed, my sweetheart latched onto the opportunity to vent out her anger on my Facebook status update!! By then I was getting late and my office hours were about to start.I hurriedly downloaded the free trial of MS Office so that I can at least carry out my day to day tasks normally. It was raining when I got out in open and all I could hope was that at least the worst was over.

But as it turned out, it wasn’t the only and surely not the biggest shock of the day for me and the other unpleasant surprise actually is the reason for this new blog!!

…to be continued