The computer room.

I have abandoned the computer room in the library.

Every damning day ,there is a bunch of first-year college-goers that skips class, only to race there and proceed to have the time of their lives. And I am ashamed to admit that they are A-Level students. Any decent A-Level student would, upon skipping class, go and find some solid means of entertainment. And Taylor’s being the central hub of a tightly-packed mass of Internet cafés, eateries and shopping centers, there really isn’t a problem. In fact, I think the neighboring secondary school has considerable problems dealing with truants.

Anyway, back to the story. These people, they talk raucously, make obscene gesticulations, and, upon encountering anything remotely funny, proceed to laugh the top of their heads off. The only reason the library staff hasn’t done anything about this fiasco is that the room is pretty well insulated. The room was designed for IT studies, see, and it was right smack in the centre of the library, so in order for some semblance of peace to be maintained (not that it ever does anyhow) the architectural committee sound-proofed the room. To my articulate dismay. It has led me to suspect that the security camera installed in the room does not convey sound, but then again, why would they? This is why I am now in the Web, the internal Internet café offered by the college.

Now, I know it does sound a lot like what my class does in their free time (creating huge amounts of verbal hubris, generally causing a breach of peace etc.) but we DO control ourselves to some extent. And there is a basic code of etiquette to follow. You do NOT, I repeat NOT, maul your classmates, be they female or male, be you female or male yourself, for fun or whatever malign purpose. You do NOT open your emails and proceed to tell your friend (and in doing so ululating soundly enough for everyone in the vicinity to have a listen in, whether they like it or not) about how damned funny it was. Even if the sender was Jim Carrey, or some HTML genius, or basically someone with too much free time on his or her hands, which in that case, should be relegated to the deepest depths of Azkaban with the oldest, clunkiest computer in creation, that processes everything with the speed of a gerbil learning how to count, and finally shutting down just as your download is 99.95% complete. HA! HA! HA! … You do NOT play free online puzzle games, on five different computers simultaneously in order to increase your chances of beating* your friend - who is also using five other terminals to achieve the same means. So the cumulative effect viewable to someone who sits in the back row (guess who?) would be that of two maniacal primates, or maybe octopi, lurching from side to side, tapping, occasionally falling over chairs and bumping into table counters, ensnaring themselves in mouse wires, and managing to keep up a steady stream of giggles, curses, primal screams of rage and individualized victory whoops. I’ll leave it to your imagination. You do NOT consume edibles (or drinkables) you snuck in with exaggerated smacks, slurps or any other audile contortions reminiscent of the complex sexual practices that Eric Van Lustbader wrote in his books ‘Ninja’, ‘White Ninja’, or ‘Zero’ (actually, I have nothing personal against bringing food in. It’s the food processing that gets to me). And as coup de grâce – or more like a coup de la souffrance - you do NOT greet your friends like you own the damn place, with affected tones, such as “My! You look so retarded today!” and so forth, on the same verbal plane as the afore-mentioned, bang each key ferociously, swear loudly and fluently in nasal tones when you cannot locate the USB hub for your mass storage device, causing each and every other person beyond your nearest and dearest to hate your guts immensely, and issue your mating calls to your friend across the room, inflecting unnecessary sound waves on those unlucky enough to stray across your path (and miniscule projectiles of sputum on the computer screens of those directly in front).

I swear, I get a headache every time I go into there. I have also resolved to limit my library periods to, strictly speaking, study time. Nothing. Else.

*The game in question being Hapland stick game. If you've played it before, you might understand the need for five computers, actually, but that's BESIDE THE POINT.