The first time

More than a decade ago, the family and I were at a coffee shop in some hotel in Chandigarh fairly late in the night - why we were there of all places I have no idea; it wasn't a very frequent haunt for us.

When the bill came, my dad looked at me, grinned, and asked, "Do you want to see it take really long for the bill to get cleared?" Intrigued, I nodded, and he whipped out his credit card, and gave it to the waiter. And he was right; they took nearly half an hour to swipe that card and bring back the bill for him to sign.

I went shopping earlier today and took out my card to pay for the one shirt I ended up buying; I was at the counter for less than a minute.

I have never yet been able to use my card without remembering the first time I ever heard of this thing called a credit card.

I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

Rants from the Sickbed

Fifth. Day. Running.

This is NOT good. My fever keeps fluctuating, and my grumpiness has reached new levels. I have spent quite some time berating my poor exhausted family over past grudges, mostly the change in my room's layout some months back (I hate it when that's done) and me not being allowed to buy something I've really wanted for the last five freakin' years. I'm fairly sure that if the gal pals were around, I would start screaming at them about the infamous incident from our third year; luckily, so far, only one of them has been brave enough to call and ask how I am.

If there is anything I have hated about this illness, it is the visits to the doc. First off, I don't like my doc. Her accent is all pretentious, and she talks to us as if we're 5-year-olds. Which really isn't wise around my dad, because ze father knows as much about medicines as most doctors. Very cool ze father is. So there.

Secondly, if I have to watch that damn LiveMedia screen in the clinic's waiting room one more time, I will just scream. Number one, it is clearly not "Live" if my two visits over the space of 48 hours had the same jokes being run. In fact, given that I was back in the waiting room after seeing the doc while my dad went to pick up medicines, and the same stuff from an hour back was being played, they clearly need a new name for themselves. Number two, not one of their jokes was funny. Zilch. Nada. AND, to add insult to injury, ALL their so-called jokes were grammatically wrong!!! There is major gnashing of teeth happening here.

On another note, what is with bloggers starting their posts with an apology for how long the post is? How do you actually know when you start the post how long it's going to be? I have never till date written a post which was exactly identical to how it seemed in my head before I actually started typing it; they always, always take a shape and form of their own. Plus, how does apologizing for the length make people want to read on till the end. Either they'll read the whole thing or they'll get bored halfway and leave - your regret at making them read such a long thing won't change their mind either way, because chances are, if the post is really as long as that, by the time they've reached that halfway point, they'll have forgotten all about your apology anyway.

I think I'm going to stop now.