Skunk in class

The last two weeks were spent in the computer labs holding the printer hub tightly and letting the dot matrix printers do a rather efficient job of handling around 2500 pages of paper.

Teachers also had the sadistic pleasure of telling us that all the work we had done in the last two weeks was of no practical use because all our files were piled up ready to be incinerated before the external examiner arrived. Students entered the lab, Mr. W32.CyberVirus greeted everyone the way he always does and handed over to each of us handwritten lists of programs that had been randomly selected for each of us. He also gave the I’ll-never-go-out-with-you look to this certain student called Rajender who refused to accept his list.

An hour later, I was done with my practical exam and viva session. I just hate to remind myself that the human brain is so underdeveloped that students being called out for their viva in random order is something it considers absolutely absurd. I mean, give me a break. I love my name and everything but sometimes I just wish it started with something like P or M. Since this was my practical exam, I don’t know what to expect.

The next 5 hours were really boring in the lab. Helping people, running between the two labs for fun wasn’t really fun. Just when everybody was about to leave, something weird happened. Some 40 glasses of tea and an equal amount of samosas arrived in the lab. For a moment, I thought the external examiner had one helluva appetite. The scene was really stupid. Students eating samosas, teachers coming to collect prints from each student and the lab assistants laughing their asses off.

Something felt really odd yesterday. Something was missing. I realised it wasn’t something, it was somebody. The skunk was. After troubling our senses for several days, our computers performed our tasks amazingly well. Even the 200Mhz Celerons. I guess it wasn’t just us that the skunk had been troubling.

Other good news is that Windows XP is being eradicated to be replaced by a Delhi University approved distribution of Linux. I just hope it isn’t Red Hat 5.