Being a fan of European football and a die hard fan of current England and European champions “Red Devils” Manchester United, who will like to miss the champions league battle between red devils and villa real at our rival’s home. It is at these times I used to think why shouldn’t they play around 9 PM IST. That too why are these champions league matches played on week days. This is why I like English Premier League than Spanish la liga…
Believe me, after marriage, watching mid night football matches will become really difficult without those boozing with friends. Staying awake in those midnights to watch matches needs some boozing anyway. Then also yesterday night I waited impatiently for the start of the match. Can you believe that I was waiting for a match which was going to start at night 1.15. And can you guess what all I did for time passing. Forced LS to go to bed and I forcefully took charge of the unwashed plates we used for dinner. Cut the vegetables for today. I even found out that I can remain alive after brushing teeth. Even after this, the watch told me still half an hour to go for the telecast. I wonder why whenever we are waiting for some enthusiastic stuff to happen, the watch will run slow only, whatever brand it may be. Still somewhere in my mind the thought remained that for what am I taking this much pain???
Everything was going purrrfect and telecast time was reaching closer, and suddenly I found one message in my television. “Set top box not able to receive input signal. Try changing the channel or contact helpdesk.” Now this was the worst thing to happen in anyone’s life. And who the hell customer care executive will remain awake at this time of night??? That was the moment I wanted to regret for loving ManUtd. Ohh God!! what should I do now? Call customer care?? no way… Go down and check cable connections… Waaoh!! My mind was working like a typical debugger!! Yes PK, go down and check it out!! In the midnight, when everyone except me in the entire flat lies slept, I went down to check the connection, to be frank, just like a thief. But adding to the moarn, the connections remain intact.
No more debugging ideas coming up. No way left other than taking the typical last chance of any software engineer. Since there was no ctrl+alt+del in hathway set top box, I switched it off. With prayers in mind, I switched it on again. My optimistic thoughts were crushed to ground when I see the same “Set top box…” message in the screen. For the second time, now being fully pessimist, I repeated the process, but the output remained the same. What to do??? Where to go??? My whole effort went on waste… I was able to reach Arshu’s (who is yet another ManUtd freak) mobile after a couple of tries and was cooled down hearing it was still 0-0 after 35 minutes…
Slowly I felt, my mind taking an U-turn. Mechanically I walked towards my bed with my mind whispering “people used to live when there was no tv and no football“…
A Fighter's Book 