Yesterday I had a killer headache. There is this lingering pain from my left ear to my left temple, which comes occasionally and forces me to suspend whatever I am doing. I guess I should have gone to the doctor’s long before yesterday, but I am lazy in some aspects ( any aspect of my life that has to do with non-entertainment, actually ). And yesterday, there was this whopper of a headache. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t open my eyes, I couldn’t lift my head or even move my jaw without having something like 20 thousand piano wires doing the cha-cha-cha in my head. With the occasional crash-cymbal chipping in (out of beat).

Enough is enough. I am going to a doctor today. I have to, so that my eyes ( I suspect it’s my eyes, they have been trouble-free so far, inspite of having been abused beyond belief for the past twenty-three years ) are safe. I did not go yesterday, because it was hurting, and I decided to get some sleep, and when I woke up, it wasn’t hurting anymore, and I decided to do something else.

Ahem.

“Something else” happened to be getting a new computer for myself. I was getting pretty desperate. Did some reseacrch with Psasi on Thursday evening, spending some time in scouring the weird cellars of Park Lane, getting to know the current prices. As usual, it’s a fish-market there, with no two shops giving the same prices on the same thing. And funnily enough, they have even stopped giving price quotations for systems. It’s a really lousy way of conducting business, I tell you. No proper customer service – everyone is given a glance and appraised as a potential customer, and only if one fits the bill, questions start getting answered. At the end of it, I had decided to stick to Shweta Computers, the place where we ( as in the REC gang) had been placing our orders since the days of yore. Finished off the day on a catastrophic note – a viewing of Qayamat at Anand. That makes it a hat-trick of brain-busters at Anand theatre, Andaaz, Hawa and now this. Faugh!

When I woke up yesterday, at around noon, the headache was gone. Most of it. And I decided to pre-pone the buying. Surprise! The guy at Shweta Computers told me that the Creative Inspire 5.1 speakers that I wanted was out of stock. A little more prying, and he says he can get it for an extra 500 rupees. That did it! Went over and checked out some of the overground shops, just asking for the Inspire speakers. Came to this shop that said they could get it in half an hour. And they did! Tentatively asked them if they could give me a quotation for a new system. Nice price. Made a quick phonecall to Psasi, and got some doubts about Intel Motherboards cleared ( The one they had suggested did not have any extra slot for a future AGP card. ) Half an hour, and it was done.

The final configuration was this – Intel P4 2.4 GHz, Intel GEsomething motherboard, 256 MB DRAM, 80 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD, Sony DVD drive, Creative Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (Value) Soundcard, Cambridge Soundworks Inspire 5.1 (5200 series) speakers. The whole thing came to 32k. I did not need a monitor, because I already had one.

I did not get any preinstalled software, and definitely no floppy drives. (I have this humongous chip on my shoulder against floppies and floppy drives. Does it make sense to have a 1.44 MB medium that costs 24 Rupees and a 700 MB medium that costs 10? ) Came home and installed and set the whole thing up all by myself….the most time, of course, was taken in setting up the speaker system. I made a goof when installing the Creative software. overwrote some Windows files by mistake ( the installer asked me if I wanted to overwrite the files. I figured they asked me “do you want to keep the files?” Boom! ) and when I try listening to music, it says it can’t detect the 5.1 speaker system, and the system hangs. Great! Control-alt-delete on the very first day of buying a computer. But then I try some fancy Comp-Sci fundu-ness ( ok, ok, I just reinstalled DirectX ) and voila, everything worked! Listened to Boys at neighbour-threatening volume, watched Night of the living Dead, played some Quake, showed off the system to assorted people ( Rishi, Mons, Abhishek, Amit et al )

The rest of the evening was spent in seeing a DVD, the only one I have – the one that came free with Chicago OST. And waiting for Saturday. The sale was due to start.

Saturday: A huge, rich haul. I ust can’t stop grinning.