Of Surprises, HIV and Mosquitoes!!

Waking up in the morning today, things felt pretty unreal to me. My watch read 8:30 a.m., a time that I had never seen in the 5 days when I woke up only in the early afternoons. But still I managed to push myself out of the bed and get ready in time. The first day of being back after the spring break had fare amount of surprises in store. The surprise started with the lovely weather that we happened to have today. For the first time in roughly 3 or maybe 4 months, I was going to the college with no headgear on!! The warm sunshine and the soft breeze made me instantly drop the idea of taking a bus and instead I chose to walk to enjoy the lovely weather. Hopefully this weather will continue so that the winter jacket also goes off soon!! The second surprise was definitely a pleasant one as we got back our graded papers for a subject that I fear the most and in which I unexpectedly fared well :) But still long way to go in this semester yet and fortunes can swing faster than Sehwag’s bat out here!! The moment that I got back from the first class of the day, I realized that the assignment for one of my courses was due this week while all this while I had been thinking that it was due in the next week. But I surprised myself even more by almost finishing almost half of the task in the next few hours.

The final class for the day had country presentations by two of our colleagues. One of the country that was covered was South Africa. I for one did not know that South Africa had actually 3 capitals!! I don’t why I always thought that it just had two. For someone who prided himself on his general knowledge (once!!!), that was some bit of info. Thankfully, even one of my friend (whom I consider fairly knowledgeable too ;)!!) came up shorts when I tested his knowledge regarding this. So, that gave me quite a relief that I was not so ignorant after all!! The other surprising thing related to South Africa was its life expectancy, which was quite low at 48 years!! I always thought SA to be one of the better off countries in Africa but this clearly was not the case. Contrast this with India which has an almost equivalent median age (25.1 for India), but a far superior life expectancy of 60-65 years. Now, that’s why we have always been referred to as survivors!! The primary cause for this low life expectancy is something that originated from and plagues almost the entire African continent- HIV/AIDS. Another staggering statistic that I came across today was that 3 percent of Washington residents are living with HIV and AIDS. Now 3 percent might seem like a low number but in HIV parlance, one percent is considered severe epidemic. The statistic is comparable to some parts of Uganda and Kenya!! Surprising, considering how much money and work has been put into by philanthropic organizations from America in Africa to try and curb the epidemic, while something similar has been afflicting their own capital.

Recently, I also came across one of the researches that was funded by Bill Gates where scientists had managed to create a laser gun targeted towards, hold your breath, mosquitoes!! It has been built in such a way that it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of the mosquitoes’ wings which then triggers a laser beam. The laser beam burns down the mosquitoes’ wings while the carcass remains. Even for someone who has cursed more mosquitoes than humans in four years of college life in Manipal- that seemed cruel!! But why would you want to spend so much time and money on such trivial a thing, no matter how annoying it is. Killing a mosquito is something that requires no more than a flick of the hand, just ask my ex-roommate for that ;)

I finally reached home and surprisingly fell asleep. After waking up, I had this real urge to watch Friends, but I was left disappointed as I don’t have the 16^th and 17^th episodes of the Season 10 and I don’t want to jump straight to the grand finale (Can somebody help plzzz?!!). The final surprise for the day was also a good one when I got the news via mail that one of our classes for tomorrow has been cancelled!! :) I really wanted to get into the bed early so that my day starts early tomorrow but somehow my body is refusing to get off its habit of sleeping late and so no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get sleep(and this post ensued!!). But I guess, sleep or not I will have to get back inside the sheets and try not to be dreamy eyed all day tomorrow. Maybe I should try singing lullaby’s to myself for once ;)