You are addicted to..

A few days back, a very old friend of mine, called me and we were having a nice chat, reminiscing about our school days, when he happened to ask my daily schedule. Now as most of you must be knowing how jobless and honest I am, he was obviously shocked when I told him my schedule. He added that I was addicted to the internet and like any other normal earthling, my immediate reaction was a long NO. (Ok not very long, but longer than the normal NO) But then a probe was launched which led to intense contemplation and finally I have come up with some substantial results. Thought it might be useful to you guys also... Self-assessment, they say. Ok, so here we go now..


You are addicted to the internet if..

• You get up early in the morning at 3 am to go to the bathroom, but decide to check your mails first. After half an hour, when you are done checking you mails, chatting with your equally insomniac pals, and adding some more items to your download queue in DC++ (which you might accidentally stumble upon a year later and delete it wondering why you downloaded it in the first place) you suddenly remember that you had got up to pee. So you accomplish your mission and on your return browse the net for one more hour and at a very early, healthy 5:30 am go back to bed, satisfied.
• You see or hear something funny and you start screaming "LOL LOL" or in some cases "ROFL ROFL" instead of actually laughing out loud. Another instance is when you are on the phone and say "BRB".
• You cannot recognise your own hadwriting. You want to type your assignments rather than write it. Easier to distribute it as well :D You type only in lowercase.. even your assignments. In fact, you no longer type with proper punctuation, capitolization or complete sentences.
• You would rather open cricinfo.com and watch ball-by-ball commentary than actually go to the TV lounge and watch the match. Especially when a wicket falls, the screams from the TV lounge drives you crazy, and you end up pressing the refresh button umpteen number of times just to see how the wicket fell.
• You have misplaced your room lock and you have this sudden urge to press Ctrl+F and search for it.
• To you, multi-tasking is nothing but chatting with 3 people simultaneously while checking the scores on cricinfo and keeping an eye on the yahoo mail alert. Not to mention the countless number of times you type nfrm and pine -i in your putty login.
• You are too lazy to write a diary and instead start a personal blog which soon becomes public. Of course you do become lazier and do not update your blog. Reason? Bloggers block.
• You beg your friend next door to get an account so that you can "keep in touch". And once he gets one, you buzz him quite frequently only to ask him if he's ready to eat dinner, or come to the cafeteria.
• You get up in the morning and go online before you actually start brushing your teeth.
• The only jokes you recieve are from e-mail.
• You start using smilies in your snail mail as well. In fact you have ever written a pen-and-paper letter to someone and found it absolutely _impossible_ to do without smilies. Then you realise how smilies (most of which are bald :|) are soo important in expressing your own emotions.
• You decide to go to the loo and suddenly remember that you had forgotten to change your status message. And so you come back and change your status message to "Off to pee. BRB" and make it just in time to the loo. (Or sometimes you are not soo lucky.. tsk tsk)
• You end your sentences with... three or more periods.....
• You do the craziest of the things which you wouldn't do under normal circumstances, when your internet connection is down. Like studying!! or even going to bed at 11:00!! Thinking of these very things gives me the goosebumps... maann!
  
• You forgot how to operate your own TV remote control.. :(
• You blog about symptoms indicating your addiction to the internet.
  
• You sat around for 2 or more minutes trying to think of something witty (or dumb) "You might be addicted to internet if.. " joke to add to this list.
• You understand all the jokes in this post. If so, my dear friend you are completely addicted to the internet and you better take a vacation to a place with no electricity and no phone lines. No no, you cannot buy a laptop and a cellular modem.

If you can think of any other instances which indicate internet addiction, please do write them in the comments section. You can also mention your favourite among the above mentioned ones. All brickbats are welcome as well :-s But make sure that you dont go overboard.

Quote of the day:

A clever person solves a problem...

A wise person avoids it.

--Albert Einstein.

P.S1: Have my multi-robotics presentation tomorrow :-ss. 5 groups made their presentations on tuesday amd some of them spoke in a very funny accent, pronouncing robots as Roberts and flaw as fllah(as in blah)
P.S2: Even the SE presentations were very funny, although they weren't intended to be. Had an all-girls group presenting with someone renaming them as the "Charlie's Angels" group. Lots of cat calls and screeches.. so finally I am doing something in SE class other than dozing off :D
P.S3: Some of the symptoms mentioned above in the post apply only to the IIITians.
PS4: I just realised that this was my 50th post. Cool, right? :D So if you guys dont mind, tell me the post which you did not like among all the posts (or hated the most.. yeah the worst post, or posts). And if that is not tiring enough, you can always do me a favour by mentioning your favourite post.. yeah the best among the worst.. :D

*Updated on 17th Feb*