Rant 7: NightCrawlers 2, The Hunger Strikes Back!

One of the most humongous problems among Night crawlers is food. of course a smoke is sometimes an issue but woh hostel hi kya jahan bhenchod sutta na mila (to borrow from a very lovable song)
for me the hunger limit is reached near around 2:30 am when Russia and Japan have been successfully conquered by Germany (talking about Rise of Nations here) and there are no more cruel demons running riot (read: assignments). Manipal is one of the few places I've been in where cheap, delicious and most importantly Junk food is served at all hours. granted there is only one place here that delivers at say 5 am but given a choice between a disco night out and burgers from this place, on a day that i need cheering up, and i would def opt for the latter.
among other things, there is something wholly reassuring about sitting down in front of ur laptop, put on an episode of ur favourite TV show and enjoy the quiet of night-time from the comfort of ur dorm room chair, while gulping down huge bites of burgers. i was nicknamed burger-dash by my friends in my first year and now i do profess my love for this remarkable creation of man.
before i get too hungry and eat my mouse..
talking about nightcrawlers in general, it is quite interesting to walk down the hostel campus area at such odd hours. there are only so few people there that you can pretty much tell what each one is there for.
theres the guys who've come for the exact same purpose as me, i.e. collecting food. each "collection" is unique in the nature of the transaction. occaisionally, the poor delivery guy, who's been running the route all night, weighed down by 7 other packs of food, will forget a bottle of cola. it irritates the hell out of u believe me. However, my tired out friend, i do have sympathy for ur job. to be delivering all those delicious meals is a job no self-proclaimed saint will ever take up.
You bring happiness to the NightCrawlers.
...to be continued

rant 2: night crawlers

yes...we are the night crawlers.
we form a small but nonetheless resilient batch of students who prefer to emerge from their precious watering holes after sundown.
more specifically, it is the time after around midnight, that hostel life seems most abuzz. starting off with some metalhead banging to really loud music and unbelievably unintelligible lyrics, we take our tour from the ground floor up. CS freaks gathered 15 to a room, connected not by Nokia, but the magic of LAN cables. emotions run high even as some poor sob got caught holding metaphorically his own phallus (actually it was a pointless pistol) against the guy with the really big machine gun. mothers and sisters get their usual dose of verbal "homage" as does the warden of the hostel.
our men are true citizens of the global world. every night is a new adventure in the land of Orkut and Facebook. Checking out the latest photo updates...ahem...as well as "status" updates is no mean feat. and our lads make sure that not even a minute is wasted in replying to the latest scrap
note to self: scrap chatting sucks! really pointless...i just dont know why these ppl..........ah to hell with it....next thing u know, i'll be ranting off!

moving on...
the eternal romeo. by the light of the room cleaner's dingy almost-orange-now bulb sits our man..one hand idly holding a phone to his ear. i was lucky(?) to be within earshot of one such romeo at about 2:30 am. and i swear on my aging keyboard, don juan de marco could not have done a better job on his lady as our man managed in less than 20 mins. quite evidently there had been a "major" misunderstanding between the two lovers. something along the lines of "you-sent-her-a-wall-post-with-a-smiley-on-the-same-day-that-i-got-your-lousy-beer-invitation" (ref to facebook issue). our man def had the rhetoric to get around most of her artillery shots. thus emerged a hostel hero.

and which hostel would be complete without the group of guys who believe that a birthday is a great reason to beat the crap out of you, pour water (inclusive of eggs, soap, shampoo, etc) on you, give u a cake (mostly around ur mouth) and then go crazy over the cheap beer that you managed to sneak in. as their coup de grace some decide the hostel corridors aren't clean enough and hence a hostel wide campaign of "Messiest hostel dustbin" is launched with the top 3 contenders getting the chance to dump their garbage in the wing of their choice. this particular ritual has of course been performed by one particular group that has for the last 8 months shifted locale.

the morning after

...to be continued.