My laptop crisis has ended with me reverting to my old laptop for now. Which naturally means a lot of memories come flooding back.
I remember picking up this fine piece of technology. Months before I was slated to go into University, I listed out all my specifications – I needed a large screen, a great processor, an amazing keyboard/scrollpad, a DVD drive, a couple of USB slots. And after my dad convinced me out of a lot of inertia, we took a trip to go shopping for the laptop. Comparing 3 stores, we chose which laptop we needed, bought it, and got a lot of free merchandise as well. Heading home was fun. Electing not to use the laptop till University was going to start was a conscious decision – one I broke on my 17th birthday. I thought I deserved that much.
But the memories don’t just lie in the fact that the laptop-shopping was such a wholesome, family event. It also lies in the fact that this laptop has been through such a range of events and emotions, that creating a chronological list would be difficult. It was with my on my first day of college. It saw me cancel flights and book flights – jetting from one University to another. It saw me Skype my parents – and then saw Skype being banned in the UAE.
It saw Trump being elected President.
Wild things, this laptop has seen.
The strange thing though – is because I had done a full clean-up of this machine before I switched over to my new one, the RAM/ROM, permanent storage device doesn’t reflect all the metadata of my activity on this PC. Which means it’s almost like I’m blessed with starting afresh.
And I think strangely, that’s a very poetic way to start the year. A new start to my activity on the interwebs, but also in the manner with which I engage with technology. Changing laptops though is hard work – especially because muscle memory has made me so uber-comfortable with my laptop’s typing layout, that moving across to a new device means I start to type “You” for “YouTube”, but type “UPI” – which basically means the Government thinks I’m a massive supporter of it’s initiatives.
It’s going to be a fun few months of this laptop. I’m eager to see what memories we make this time around.
Tejas Rao 