Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Ye Olde Arun

A lot has changed since I dropped out of my mother. So much in fact, that I almost feel old. Yup, I could pretty much gather a few kids around me and go "Hamare zamane mein..." (Back in our day...) in a highly patronizing tone. Here's why:
1. I've seen black and white TVs
2. I was born in a time without cable and one, yes one, government run terrestrial TV channel.
3. I can recognise the tune All India Radio plays when it opens broadcast every morning.
4. I know what Krishi Darshan is (if you don't, don't ask).
5. I don't understand the chat lingo kids use these days. Chatting with my cousin on MSN makes me feel inadequate. I'm old skool. I first conversed online on a quaint thing called IRC. LOL sure! LHO?? What the f***?
6. I've owned and used a Unix shell account.
7. I used to run a moderately popular Bulletin Board System. No, not an online forum! You could dial into it using your modem and surf (if you can call it that) in colorful ASCII. Yay!
8. On that note, I know what Legend of the Red Dragon is.
9. I played GTA and GTA2. Yes, that's right, they're top down and 2D and free. You got a problem with that, punk?
10. I was born before the Internet.
11. Until I was 12 years old, you'd have to wait anything between a year to your whole life to get a phone connection (yes, a landline). Thank you MTNL.
12. I was born before cellphones.
13. I was brought up with the notion (and given theory to prove) that the most a telephone line could do was 33.6kbps. If your provider was nice, maybe you could get 56kbps sometimes. DSL?? ADSL?? Hogwash!
14. At various times in my life, I have owned an Atari 2600, Atari 5200, the original 8-bit Nintendo, the 16-bit Nintendo and a Gameboy. The only one I still have track of is my super nintendo. And yes, Contra still rocks my world. Bring on the 30 lives!!
15. I've used an 8088-based PC and a BBC micro.
16. I know GWBasic and QBasic (hate both).
17. I can write an application using C++ and Windows API, in Windows 3.11, on a computer with 2MB of RAM, and a 33Mhz processor.
18. I've seen Visual Basic 1.0. The DOS version. Don't believe me? Translate this Einstein!
19. I can tell you the speed of a modem by listening to its handshake. No really, I can! And I know other people who can. Sad. I know. Not if you've spent 20 calls and 40 minnutes trying to get connected.
20. I know what .mod and .s3m files are.

Birthdate: 03/09/80

Can't think of anymore right now, but feel free to add to the list. I know I will. Also old:
http://anupma.livejournal.com/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/serioussam/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pun23/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/anand/

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

And I thought you were kidding!

You linked? You really did link?! Damn it! All those kids thought I was this happening chick and you had to yank the covers off.

Now that the harm is already done, lemme tell you that I was born before Milton came out with their trademark water bottles. I have carried plastic water bottle to school. Ancient, ain’t I?

10:42 AM, October 07, 2005  
Blogger Arun said...

Heh! I've lost way more water bottles than cellphones, so you know that is a LARGE number. My mum used to be at school every two days rummaging through the lost and found looking for it :)

10:58 AM, October 07, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This bradfield guy likes his name, huh?

Anyhoo, look who's back online! At 256 kbps MTNL sweetness too!

Right see ya tommorow then. And get google talk.

12:45 PM, October 11, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You think you are old!!!!

MY CLASSMATES ARE HAVING KIDS!!!!

3:24 AM, October 14, 2005  
Blogger Arun said...

Heh :). I knew i'd miss stuff. What about the Baba masala ads on video? Or "Jaipan", we want a revolution! Yeah, watching movies on VHS with rented VCRs was definitely old skool.

Don't worry about kids pun23, you'll have your own soon, and I'll get to be chacha for real.

9:38 AM, October 14, 2005  

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