Dell, my darling...

For those of you who are not aware of a typical software engineer's day, here is a quick view. Wake up late, get-wet-in-a-minute bath, get dressed in a hurry, skip the breakfast or waste half of it, reach office(sleeping if on a bus or messaging while driving), glue your fingers to a PC, interleave the work between coffee breaks, lunch break and net surfing and drive back home. There are some exceptions like the slog-it-out till midnight or warm the bench all day but I guess they are less now that companies are pinching hard for a penny. Now, to the story...

What happens when we come back home? Do we sit down, relax, take a nap or go for a stroll with family or friends? May be some of us do, but I am yet to see one of them. Most of us sit down with our handsome friend, our all time favourite, classic time eater, the one and only laptop. Now, why do we do that? Didn't we want to get away from the computer at office? Didn't we wait for our day in front of a PC to come to scratching halt? Lets dig deep to see if we get some answers.

With a coffee on the table, relentless wife or mother calling for our attention, we logon to our mail a/c. Dutifully delete all spam and promotional emails, read all the mails in our friends group, then we take a sip on that hot-then-cold-now coffee with our one hand, while the other types a (x)ollywood rumour site on the web address bar. Then we hop on to a sports site, a political news site, a social n/w site and complete our chaotic surfing pattern after an hour or two.

Now, this needs some serious introspection. We crave to get away from the office computer but we are happy to sit down and spend meaningful time in a meaningless way when we could spend it with someone who needs our time or to read a book or to develop a new skill or even to learn a new language. Or we could see if we can do what we do using computers without them. Sure, that was confusing enough. In other words, we could call up a friend instead of tweet-ing or orkut-ing or facebook-ing them. Sure we all have some hundreds of friends in all these sites, but how many do we really care about. How many do we really want to share our lives with? Very less, probably. Some of us might be obsessed with laptops due to restrictions at office but that being the reason is very less.

Laptops, computers and mobile phones all came into our lives to make things easier, now we are addicted to them. I am not for one to throw them all away from our lives, but limit their participation in our lives. Bring in some human element in your life after office hours. Join your wife or parents or grandparents or kids on a walk, share your day with them. Help your mind get relaxed, free your fingers from stress and start up your life by shutting down that laptop.

Vj