Of winter break, I, and B-Mobile internet service

Dated: 20/11/2014

It is getting colder, I get into bed by 8:00 PM. Cold feet is never comfortable thus I always wear socks to bed and cover my feet with a small warm blanket underneath the huge blankets that I use to cover myself. Once warm and comfortable in bed I try logging into Facebook. The net is bad but I still try for a few minutes. The net is too lazy to lead me into my account and the warmth of my bed slowly lulls me to sleep. A goodnights sleep after a tiring two hours of walk in the day.

Next day, I find myself awake in the early hours of the morning. Father and niece with whom I share the room are probably fast asleep because I can’t hear them. My first thought is my last act of the night: my phone! With my eyes still half open, I start feeling for my phone. I find it buried beneath the covers with me; sometimes near my feet, sometimes under me. The places I find my phone in, in the mornings makes me feel glad that my phone isn’t a smartphone. A few nudges at a hard key and my phone comes back to life.

First thing I see on the screen is the Facebook message page. Oh my! I have been online the whole night! It seems like the net always works only after I fall asleep. I skim through the few messages that my friends have dropped for me. A ‘Hi’ from one, a ‘sticker’ from another, a ‘Goodnight’ from yet another and etc., some have been online a few minutes before I came back to life, some a few hours ago. I failed to respond to their messages. Curse me not, if you have to, curse the net. While out of the country, I feel amazed about how people so often say the net is bad in the country but now I realize, it wasn’t an excuse. You know it only when you stand in the same shoes. Karma saw that! It is now my time to get the shoe bites. Someone who has always found it funny when people said the net in the country is bad, can’t even say the net is bad when one faces it. So ‘Mum’ is the word.  I decide not to mention the net while replying to the messages.

Facebook becomes a place of boredom, when you have no one to chat with. I log out and go back to sleep, when my niece wakes up and starts playing. Have always wondered, why kids love waking up early? Another few hours of sleep and my other half of the day starts. I hear my nieces, who are getting ready for school. Nephew is up too. The bed becomes a magnet during mornings especially the cold ones and mornings in Bhutan are always cold. I lay still in bed till the clock strikes 7:30 AM. After that I have no choice but to get up.

Another two hours of walking to and fro, six hours in the office (almost half of that time spent on trying to use Dzongkha Unicode), and another night with the bad net; the same thing happens all over again.