I waited for a day and called them again, now I was greeted by another sweet voice asking if she can help me, I was like “maam, I had called yesterday to complain about my internet and the problem is still not solved!” Again I was assured; it will be rectified soon and was given a new complaint number for future reference. I didn’t complain for couple of days as I got to know more number of people had the same problem as me, I got to know much later that almost 30-40% of phone and internet connections in J P Nagar were affected. It seems the problem started when some construction workers damaged telephone cables while digging to install some pipes and after damaging the wires, they covered the dug area unknowingly. Next day my ISP BSNL started receiving frantic calls from customers complaining about phone and internet. Now these BSNL dudes had to pay for someone else’s mistake and they had to first re-dug and look for damaged cables and replace it, it took them 16 days to do it but I am not complaining. It didn’t feel bad now about losing internet connection, just knowing that other people are facing the same problem as you, reduces your pain by 50% or more. I also came across many people who needed internet more than me, one guy had a download of a movie “Slumdog Millionaire” stuck at 95% and it was RAR so he had to wait for the download to finish before watching it and the other guy was worried about not leveling up his character on a MMORPG and was afraid his friends will level up and pwn him later. These are all serious problems if you are a geek or a gamer.

I also realized after couple of days that I didn’t need internet very much to learn or do stuff unless for occasional hiccups. I had all the pdf’s and doc files I needed on my Drive but I missed python doc which I had forgotten to store it offline. I just started learning GREP and BASH for next week and I didn’t miss internet one bit. Finally after a week, I went to my ISP’s office to enquire about the problem and a solution to it, this time I was assured by Divisional Engineer that it would be back in a day. 2 days passed by, nothing happened and on the 3rd day, phone starts working but internet does not. After a while I realize, there is cross connection and I have been assigned a different number which was rectified in 5 hours. Finally on 16th of January 2009 at 4.30 pm, I finally got to use internet and I was happy like before but saner and slightly more responsible.

This week I want to strive and utilize 168 hours I get in a week. As a mortal, I do have to sleep and take rest. Assuming i sleep 7 hours a day (i am awake at night), i still have 119 hours to spare. I am really going to utilize those 119 hours. As of today, i am going to abstain visiting social networking sites(especially twitter for a week), Not Being online in IM all day and not being available to any of the off-line friends for a week(FYI: I am switching off my phone for a week). Let see how this works out for me. I will tell you next week, how my “168 hour week” was. Until that time wish me luck and talk to you next week. Have fun.

“It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray.” – Aesop’s Fables