Clubbed House

"A good lecture class is like a good skirt. It should be short enough to garner interest, but long enough to cover the contents."

Some lecturer from some other college,
during the pre-UTSAV Faculty Skit Competition,
which, according to Kit Sze, recycled the quote
from something Winston Churchill said

The Block 1 Examination had finally finished its loathsome run. Never mind that I've probably flunked everything (thank heavens our batch still can drop the scores of one block exam from being considered into our internal assessment average). What's important is that it's over. Done with. Finito. Kaput. There's important lessons to be learnt from this debacle of being woefully ill-prepared for exams, and the deadly evils of procrastination, I know. I'll put that on a post-it note and learn those valuable lessons tomorrow.

Today, I just want to relax.

The first order of business is to purchase 100 rupees worth of semi-synthetic junk food and watched all the old Disney classics I've downloaded during the course of the entire past week. You guys should try watching those flicks again now that you're adults. It's like you're watching entirely new and different movies! Really, I kid you not!

So watch cartoons and eat junk - that's the plan.

And plans have a tiresome habit of going awry.

It was about 3 pm in the afternoon - I was already fifteen minutes into The Emperor's New Groove and halfway through my second packet of Cheetos - when I heard a thunderous crash so loud I'm sure my ancestors buried all the way in China would sit up in their graves and go, "OMGWTF?" I paused the movie, went upstairs and headed for the door to the balcony (where I fancied the source of the din to be).

Once I opened the door the insane wind grabbed the door out of my hands and flung it wide open, I saw this;

See the smashed railing of my balcony?

Of course, at that time I surveyed the scene, it wasn't nearly quite as tranquil as it is in this picture. Here's a video (yes, I took one!) of the meteorologic mayhem that got my lil' homestead besieged;

It's called the 'force of nature', I believe.

So here's the situation, if you haven't worked it out yet;

• The massive wind-power of the storm managed to snap a tree's trunk (not uproot - but snap) midway. Anyway, the tree had no business growing so tall anyway with a trunk that disproportionately slender.
• The falling foliage pawned the railing of my balcony. "Slender" was a relative term. It's a fucking LOG, I tell you.

When the typhoon slowed down a little a quarter of an hour later, I decided to check out the damage from outside my house. This is what I saw at my front door;

Let's play 'Spot the Timber'.

Here's the broken bits up close;

The bit still attached to terra firma.


The aerodynamic bit.

And for an idea of how far the two parts were separated;

Some wind, huh?

While I was pacing about the courtyard trying to get a good angle, Fifi decided to join me in the drizzle. I think she must have heard the shutter-sound effect of my camera and decided to come and camwhorebitch. She's a vain one, that Fifi. I mean, just look at this shameless display of canine charm;

Fifi, shooting electricity from her eyes.

Anyway, back to the story.

Aside my balcony, that length of lumber also body-slammed the roof over Vincent's room and smashed some tiles to bits;

The devastation perpetrated by Log-zilla.

The biggest bother, of course, was that the electricity line was snapped. If they don't get some repair-bloke on that soon, we'll be sitting in the dark tonight. Then, I can neither read nor find out what on earth is this 'New Groove' thing belonging to the emperor. This is a serious code red, grade A¹ tragedy!

And I doubt that my inverter and battery can hold out much longer now. Pretty soon, I'll be cut off from the Great and Beneficent World Wide Web as well. Consider this post a shout for help before I am thrust into a modern day's equivalent of the Dark Ages.

Sigh. There I was, thinking that I could finally loosen up and relax after the exams.

Considering my run of calamity this entire year, I won't be surprise at all if the broken half of the tree chooses the precise moment I'm walking under it to slip from its perch and bean me for keeps.



EDIT: Hey, the power's back! Huzzah! I get to watch my cartoons animated movies tonight after all!

UPDATE

Okay, I was going to start a new post actually regarding the aftermath and sequelae of the maiden flight of the tree-who-was-Humpty-Dumpty - but I decided to just write the update here.

I was wakened sometime in the morning between 8 am and 12 pm (it's Sunday - does it matter?) by what sounded like a tree falling from someplace very-high-up. I bolted straight up in my bed, shook the sleepy-clouds out of my head (I physically do that everyday I wake up actually - funny habit, I know) and debated whether the crash I heard was a figment of a particularly noisy nightmare or that my brain exploded out of my ears.

Then, with a small and private "Eureka" moment, I remembered that I actually did have a tree (or half of it, whatever) perched on the rather very-high-up second-floor balcony.

Case closed. I went back to sleep that very instant.

When I really woke up about noontime, I saw that all-the-King's-horses-and-all-the-King's-men was still hard at work chopping our botanical Humpty Dumpty to ickle, teeny bits. Here's a photograph;

All the King's lumberjacks.

See that bloke in a clean white shirt and a pair of black slacks at the top right quarter of the picture - the one diligently and industriously watching everyone hard at work while not lifting even a pinky to help? That's the King. The Patrician. The Landlord-in-Supreme.

The King owes me a new railing for my balcony.

Vincent's new skylight!

Vince suffered the most in this incidence of nature's vitriolic violence. His entire room was soaked and one of his nifty, pricey, electronic gadgets got killed in the deluge (I don't remember exactly what it was but I suspect it's an MP3 player or something like that). He had to move all his stuff out of his place and sleep in Nickson's room that night - or in their joint kitchen-come-dining room (I didn't ask).

It's raining now even as I write this update. I hope the insta-roof-fix held. Poor Vince.



A creature of technological comfort,
k0k s3n w4i

¹ A for Apocalyptic.