My interest in an unseen textbook used to make me skim my siblings’ textbooks as well. I used to examine the contents of my elder brother’s textbooks to see what I would be studying in the coming years, while my younger sister’s books used to make me reminisce about different things… like, for example, the chapter that was really, really boring.

So naturally, I am also interested in textbooks that my younger brother (who is the youngest of us all siblings) has to study. Much of my interest is also triggered by the changes that have been made into the curriculum during the past 10 years. I don’t reminisce much because of these changes, but I still enjoy the skimming.

It was quite a surprise then when I noticed that English Grammar & Composition for Classes 9 and 10 (published by the Punjab Textbook Board) was, for the most part, unchanged. It still had the same essays, the same stories, the same letters, and the same translation exercises.

It even had the same Aabi.

I was introduced to Aabi in the following Urdu-to-English translation exercise:

عابی میرے بچپن¹ کی دوست تھی۔ اکٹھے² کھیلا پڑھا۔ پھر میری ایف-اے کے بعد شادی ہو گئی اور میں اپنے میاں کے ساتھ لندن چلی گئی۔ عابی نے آگے پڑھا یا اس کی شادی ہو گئی مجھے کچھ خبر نہ ملی۔ جب میں پانچ برس کے بعد وطن لوٹی تو ایک روز بازار میں اچانک³ عابی کی بڑی بہن سے میری ملاقات ہو گئی۔ میں نے بے تابی⁴ سے عابی کے متعلق⁵ پوچھا تو ان کی آنکھوں میں آنسو⁶ تیرنے لگے۔ میرا گھر نزدیک ہی تھا۔ میں ان کو اپنے ساتھ لے آئی تاکہ وہ اطمینان سے مجھے عابی کے بارے میں کچھ بتا سکیں۔

Vocabulary:
1. childhood 2. together 3. suddenly 4. impatiently 5. about 6. tears

I remember it very clearly: our English teacher had read aloud the above quoted paragraph, and all of us had cried together, “Ma’am! Translation can wait. Please tell us what on earth happened to Aabi!”

To this day, I have been unable to find out the truth about Aabi. Maybe she died. Maybe she got married and her husband turned out to be a nutcase. Or maybe she left for college one day and never returned. The textbook doesn’t mention the source, but I doubt that the paragraph belongs to a proper story. And if my doubt is correct, how hard it really would have been to add a sentence or two, explaining Aabi and her family’s ordeal?

Okay, so maybe I am over-dramatizing. Because now I am certainly not as curious about Aabi as I was 10 years ago.

But still.

I still remember that light blue, shiny plastic case, with “Dux” printed inside a dark blue circle on its lid. In those days, anything from Dux used to be a status symbol, whether it was a simple eraser or an “ink remover”; even Staedtler couldn’t attract as much envy as Dux. Dux just used to declare out loud that the students carrying its products take the straightness of their lines and the roundness of their circles seriously.

Not to mention that compasses, and specially dividers, from Dux could also be utilized as accurate weapons. Accuracy was everything when you wanted to plant a compass under the seat of your “enemy” — quick and lethal, but also subtle. Sleight of hand, of course, was also important, so that you could swiftly recollect your compass, taking advantage of the ensuing chaos in the classroom after your enemy would jump two feet into the air and start rubbing his butt while yelling like a yeti.

But anyway, this post is not about such misadventures. It’s about a certain method that we discovered while doing geometry exercises.

I don’t know about others, but I actually used to enjoy drawing all those triangles and circles using just a sharp pencil, a compass, and a ruler. Somehow, it just felt magical to align the ruler, draw some lines, use the compass to draw arcs and circles, and then see some geometric figure appear on the paper. It was like constructing a small house, brick by brick. The sense of accomplishment used to be overwhelming at times.

Take the following figure, for example…

It’s an inscribed circle, or incircle, of a given triangle. (Everything drawn with the help of a ruler is red; green elements use the compass.) Now an incircle is a circle which is inside a triangle and touches all of its sides. Simple enough. You start by drawing the triangle according to the specification given in the exercise in your textbook. Next, you bisect all the angles of that triangle and find the point where the bisectors meet. You then take that point as the center of the incircle, and adjust the angle of the hinge of your compass so that the radius of the circle you are about to draw equals the distance between that point and any of the triangle’s sides. Finally, you draw the circle. Clean. Perfect. Magical.

Unless — yes, there is an unless — something goes wrong, which used to happen quite frequently.

Most of the time, it used to be the compass. Your enemy’s butt would sometimes damage its accuracy by making its hinge go loose, or by disturbing the alignment of its pin. A price that you just had to pay.

So instead of that perfect figure above, you could end up having something like below. (Notice that the incircle is not touching the side BC.)

At this point, me and my mates used to have two options. One, erase the unsuccessful drawing and start again. From scratch. This used to take a lot of our time. To add to our misery, Murphy’s law also used to spring in action, making matters worse and keeping us frustrated.

Second option was to cheat. But we didn’t like the word “cheat”, so we rephrased it. We started calling it “the commando method”.

Here’s what you do in the commando method. You erase the side BC carefully. Again, the eraser from Dux used to come handy with its sharp edges. (Staedtler erasers also used to work fine in this case.) You then redraw it, and make sure that it touches the incircle.

Clean. Perfect. Magical.

Of course, the commando method demands some changes in rest of the figure as well. For example, a slight change in angle B, decrease in length of the side AC, and adjustment of the bisector for angle C.

But thankfully, our math teacher used to be a human and not a robot. She could spot the difference between an angle of 45 degrees and an angle of 40 degrees, but not between angles of 45 and 46 (or 45 and 44) degrees. Similarly, addition or subtraction of some millimeters in the sides of the triangle would also escape her usually hawk-like eyes.

This, however, is the simplest case for the application of the commando method. Consider, for example, the figure below. It needs a certain level of experience with the commando method in order to get this figure right.

And finally, the commando method would completely fail if you end up with something like the following figure on a lined notebook.

Why, you ask? Because the base of the triangle was always drawn by us on a line in our math notebooks. Re-adjusting the base would move it away from the line, and that literally screamed “CHEAT!” at our math teacher. If, however, a blank page is being used, then the commando method can be applied without any hiccups. (But if someone is competent enough to draw the base of a triangle without any help from a line already present on the page, then s/he shouldn’t probably be needing the commando method anyway.)

With the passage of time, we learnt to apply this method for other exercises in geometry as well. Later on, we extended it to forge proofs of our work in the physics lab. Optics experiments, in particular, provided a magnificent playground for the commando method. In optics, some experiments included erecting a couple of pins on a sheet of paper, then looking at the images of those pins through a glass slab or a prism, and then aligning those images with another set of pins, which actually meant that we were tracing the path of the light rays through that glass slab or that prism. Commando method used to save us all the touble: we would start with drawing the resulting figure by copying it from our textbooks (with all the correct angles and all), and then poke pins on its lines, successfully indicating that the figure was drawn after the images of pins were aligned, when in fact, we hadn’t aligned any pins at all.

And believe me or not, we actually learnt a great deal while applying the commando method. Concepts of optics, such as refractive index and critical angle and other things from the same tribe, made much more sense to us after we cheated on their experiments. Honestly. We knew exactly what to do during our physics practical exam in matric, and nobody among us scored below 20 (from 25). Nobody applied the commando method either.

Now it’s been so long that I have used the commando method, that I miss it.

And I miss Dux as well. Some months before matric, there was a swarm of fake Duxes in the market, and the real Dux also disappeared somewhere, with the quality of its products declining. I have no idea who the current market leader is for geometry sets these days. And come to think of it, I don’t have an idea about anything these days.

If only I could apply the commando method to understand not just optics, but other things as well.

This paper evaluates and compares five time wasting algorithms which have become popular among today’s studentkind: idling, sleeping, strolling, movie-watching, and web surfing. In order to assess both the strengths and weaknesses of these algorithms, a set of carefully selected real-life benchmarks is used. The amount of time wasted, alongwith the quality time enjoyed while wasting it simultaneously, are calculated and analyzed, and recommendations for improving the performance of the mentioned algorithms are also offered.

1 Introduction

Time wasting has been one of the most time consuming activities of mankind ever since time itself started. Over the centuries, different algorithms for efficient wasting of time have been devised and implemented, and have been passed down to junior generations by time-wasting experts of their eras. Studentkind, in particular, have been extremely creative in inventing novel approaches to solve the problem of time wasting, and thus have achieved a cult status among time wasters from all walks of life

Recent studies have shown that a majority of studentkind favors five certain algorithms over the rest: idling, sleeping, strolling, movie-watching, and web surfing. In this paper, we evaluate each of these five algorithms and present their pros and cons. It should also be noted that some of these algorithms may qualify for being meaningful activities in themselves; however, we chose not to extend this study into that domain, because the definition of a time wasting algorithm (see next section) rules such studies out. (The reader may observe that the creativity of studentkind shines outstandingly as they convert legitimate activities into time wasters.)

The outline of this paper is as follows. First, in Section 2, fundamental definitions are provided, and various benchmark parameters are laid down that are used for evaluation of the five algorithms. In Section 3, a brief review of each of the algorithms is presented. Section 4 describes the experiments and their results, and is followed by Section 5, which presents some recommendations. Section 6 concludes the paper.

2 Definitions and Benchmarks

We begin by defining a time wasting algorithm, A.

Def. 1. A = { N | N ≠ required N at time t }

Informally, a time wasting algorithm is an algorithm which is run when it is not required to run. In the rest of the paper, we shall use the words algorithm and activity interchangeably.

We also define another quantity, critical time (t_c).

Def. 2. Critical time is the point in time when the algorithm finishes.

Since all time wasting algorithms are recursive (that is, they never end), their stopping criteria is almost always the critical time.

A number of different benchmarks for evaluation of each of the algorithms were selected, and they are described below.

2.1 Amount of time wasted (t_w)

The most important parameter for any time wasting algorithm is the amount of time, t_w, that it lets the user waste. However, t_w also depends on the diligence of the users themselves, and is, therefore, a rather subjective parameter. We have thus kept t_w fixed during the experiments, using it as a common ground for evaluation of other parameters.

2.2 Amount of generated entertainment (e)

A time wasting algorithm is practically useless if it does not provide its user with a way of having fun. Formally,

e = A (t_w) (1)

where t_w is the amount of time wasted using a time wasting algorithm A, and e is the generated amount of entertainment.

It might be argued that one is not wasting any time if one is having fun, but studies have shown that time wasting for its own sake should not be void of joy. Also, by Definition 1, any activity that should not be engaged in at a given time is a time wasting activity, regardless of the amount of joy it holds for its participants.

2.3 Amount of guilt induced (g)

A time wasting algorithm which induces the least amount of guilt for its user is highly favorable, since the amount of guilt can greatly reduce the entertainment achieved. Thus,

e′ = e − g (2)

where e′ is the actual amount of entertainment. Time wasting algorithms keep evolving to reduce g, though most users rely on their own stubbornness to ignore any amount of g induced while wasting time.

2.4 Reasonable Excuse Factor (REF)

REF is the ability of a time wasting activity to be presented as an excuse for not engaging in the required activity. Theoretically,

REF ∝ 1/g

i.e., lesser the amount of guilt induced, higher the REF. However, our experiments (Section 4) show that this theoretical concept does not always hold true.

3 The Algorithms

In this section, we describe the five algorithms that are compared in the next section. It should be noted that all of these algorithms are very self explanatory and we do not feel a need to explicitly define and state them.

3.1 Idling

Perhaps the most fundamental algorithm for time wasting is doing nothing, or idling. Over the years, a significant decrease in the practical application of idling has been observed, which is not surprising, considering the lack of creativity and less t_w (as we show in the next section).

3.2 Sleeping

Sleeping has always come naturally to the sloths among us, and they are rightfully credited for the widespread use of this activity as a time wasting algorithm. It is, like idling, one of the fundamental time wasters.

3.3 Strolling

Strolling is the alternative algorithm to sleeping for those who find it hard to lock themselves in their bedrooms. It is often accompanied with eating icecreams or french fries, but can be performed without them. Most students like to run this algorithm in teams.

3.4 Movie-watching

This algorithm has evolved from sneaking out of one’s home for attending the late night show in the local theater to the convenience of one’s bedroom, thanks to the advancements in technology. Moreover, the choice of watching movie clips on handheld devices such as mobile phones has immensely increased the usage of this algorithm.

3.5 Web Surfing

Web surfing is the most recent in the mentioned algorithms, but studies show an exponential growth in its application. Just like movie-watching, web surfing has also benefited from the increase in handheld device usage, and some researchers even predict that this algorithm will join the most fundamental ones in near future.

4 Experiments and Results

We conducted test experiments for each of the five algorithms in five consecutive days. Test activities used as required Ns to be neglected (see Defintion 1) included writing a report that a professor demanded, revising lecture notes, installing productive software, updating a blog called Ulta Seedha, and doing the laundry.

As explained in Section 2, the amount of time wasted (t_w) was kept fixed, and was assigned the value of 120 minutes. e, g, e′, and REF were measured on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

Table 1 summarizes the results.

Table 1: Results obtained after testing the five algorithms

Please note that the amount of guilt induced was measured during t_w, and not afterwards.

It can be observed that both movie-watching and web surfing showed similar behavior, with web surfing ranking higher as a reasonable excuse. Indeed, a student can always tell others that she tried to search the worldwide web for hours before finding something useful. Sleeping also performed in a satisfactory manner with the least amount of guilt due to the sub-conscious nature of the algorithm. Movie-watching also showed a closer amount of g to sleeping, since there is very little room for guilt when enjoying an on-screen action sequence or romance. Unsurprisingly, idling shows the highest g, and consequently, the least e′. This was inevitable because the mind is set free to think of the consequences while running the idling algorithm. Strolling may perform well for some users, and improvements maybe suggested for reducing its g.

All of these algorithms performed poorly for REF, with the slight exception of web surfing. We recommend that the interested reader explore the algorithm of baby-sitting if a higher REF is desired. However, baby-sitting is widely avoided due to its very low e′—even lower than idling.

5 Recommendations

We now present some recommendations based on our observations during the experiments.

1. Movie-watching and web surfing may be combined together to enhance the time wasting experience. Wesbites such as YouTube may prove to be highly useful in this regard.
2. To reduce the g for strolling, listening to music while running the algorithm is highly encouraged. The interested reader may consult the user manual of Apple’s iPod or similar portable music players.
3. Web surfing may also be enhanced by contributing to meaningless message boards. This may reduce the g.
4. A significant increase in the REF for sleeping may be made by catching a virus, but a certified physician should be consulted beforehand.

6 Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper, we presented a comparative analysis for five popular time wasting activities. We showed that fundamental activities such as idling are now being replaced by more recent developments in the area of time wasting algorithms. We also provided some recommendations for improving the current performance of these algorithms.

Readers may observe that we have not included a recently emerged and heavily implemented time wasting algorithm of gaming. We believe that this algorithm deserves a separate paper of its own, and we intend to work on it in the near future. Also, TV-watching was not included in favor of movie-watching, and research may be carried out to assess its merits and demerits.

References

This paper does not cite any references because, ironically, we think that they are a waste of time.

It was in 3rd grade when our teachers slowly but steadily started to challenge our writing abilities by leaving gaps in their dictated essays and letting us fill those gaps on our own. As a result, new realizations started dawning upon us. For example, I discovered that the hobby I was extremely passionate about was stamp-collection. I also discovered that my favorite sport was not cricket, since everybody in my class had declared that they would write on cricket. Always trying (and failing) to be different from others, I thus chose to write on field hockey. And since our teacher had asked us to mention also our favorite sportsman from our favorite sport, I suddenly found that I loved the way how Shahbaz Ahmad Sr. dribbled the ball, and thus crowned him with the honor of being my favorite field hockey player.

In 6th grade, we were blessed with a strict disciplinarian of an English teacher, and it was after I left that school that I realized what a tremendous teacher she was. She would just sit there in her chair and ask us to come forward with topics on which an essay could be written. After the whole class would agree on one topic, she would give us a brief overview about it, and that’s that. No dictations, no spoon-feeding. We would finish our essays over the weekend and then recite them one by one so that the whole class could listen, and she would point out the strengths and weaknesses of our masterpieces. Of course, at that time, the thought of reciting our essays to the strictest teacher of the school used to scare the hell out of us, but the process did make us learn.

I should probably mention at this point that my intention today was not to give out tips on essay writing, as some might conclude so from the title of this post. In fact, for a graduate student, my essays are still very childish, and giving out pointers on writing good essays will be a very neem-hakeem‘ish thing for me to do. The real purpose of writing all the stuff above was to provide you with a preamble for the actual content of this post, which you can see by clicking on the images below.

These masterpieces were forwarded to me by a friend a long time ago, and I came across them today while browsing through the contents of my machine’s hard disk. I just wish I had the spontaneity of that child, whoever he is, who has written these essays. His teacher might think that he needed to focus on the title (and, let’s be honest, his teacher is right), but I am willing to bet that even my strict English teacher wouldn’t have denied that that child has got style.

Of course, she would also have crossed his essays with her trademark slash of red ink. She was, after all, a strict disciplinarian.

Let’s scroll back in time. Make it last Sunday morning. Yes, yesterday. I woke up from a ‘nap’ after Fajr. I tried to remember my plan. I realized that I had no plan. I looked around in my bedroom, searching for a plan. I spotted something else. A textbook. Wow, I thought, I have an exam tomorrow. I rolled my sleeves up to my elbows, dragged that textbook into my lap and opened it. I stared at it for about five minutes. Another realization came. This wasn’t the textbook that I was supposed to read. I concentrated, and then I concentrated hard. I wanted to search for the required textbook, so I concentrated really hard. Finally, a light bulb popped above my head, glowing its wisdom upon me. I then remembered that the required textbook exists in my possession, but in electronic format.

I took a deep breath and switched my computer on. I opened the file explorer. Instead, Mozilla Firefox appeared on the screen. Oh my, I am still sleepy. But what’s the harm in surfing the Internet for a while? Within a minute, I found my computer connected to the Internet. Then I found myself opening new tabs and new websites. Boy, I love the Internet. An hour passed. Then two. Something started to pinch me. Ouch, it’s hurting. What’s wrong? Another light bulb popped up, this time hitting me on the head. Ah yes, the textbook. I closed all the tabs. I closed Mozilla Firefox. I opened the textbook.

I started reading. I read, and read. And then I read some more. And even more. I deciphered each and every equation, each and every function, each and every variable. I didn’t miss a thing. I didn’t miss a dot. I felt proud. I reclined back into my chair. I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. Deeeeeep breath. And then something started hitting me on my head. Repeatedly. Mercilessly. I opened my eyes. It was the light bulb again. What the? I looked at the textbook. I had been reading the wrong chapters.

I stood up and walked out. I grabbed the newspaper. I read the newspaper. The day passed just like that.

At night, I again switched my computer on. This time I browsed the textbook carefully. I marked the chapters to read. I noted down the points needing more attention. Then I went to sleep.

I woke up again in the morning. Today’s morning. Exam is at 1240 hours, I yawned. Crash. The light bulb smashed against my skull. All right, all right, I am studying. Don’t kill me. I opened the textbook. I grabbed my notebook. I furiously scribbled on my notebook. I reworked difficult concepts. I reworked difficult examples. I reworked difficult problems. I reworked everything difficult. And still the light bulb. WHAT? 1200 hours. I was running out of time.

I reached the university. “How’s your prep?” “It sucks.”

I entered the examination hall. I took my seat. Don’t worry. You practised everything difficult. It’s gonna be a piece of cake. Nah, it’s Ramadan. I don’t need no cakes. Our instructor entered. We looked at him. He distributed the exam booklets. I opened mine. I browsed the questions. Nothing was difficult. Everything was easy. I hadn’t prepared anything easy.

I couldn’t believe it.

I was there at Hassan’s place, enjoying the tasty pizza his mother had cooked, when he suddenly blurted the above sentence. I simply stared at him, and tried to laugh and swallow the pizza-bite at the same time. As a result, I choked.

“No, seriously. We have been studying for ages now.” He added. I took a sip of the cold drink.

“When we were in school,” he continued, “we had to study because we had to move to the higher class. Fine. That we did. And that we did for 8 years.

“Then came the matriculation exam. And thus started all those warnings: This is going to be the base of your academic career! Ab nahin parrho ge tou kab parrho ge!?” Hassan stopped for a moment. I nodded and took another bite of the pizza.

“After matric, we hadn’t even straightened our backs when everybody in the world started yelling: My God! How can you be so careless when your are in FSc! This is the gateway to your professional education! Parrh liya karo kabhi!”

I agreed.

“All those charms of college life were poof and there we were, going to college in the morning, and then to academy in the evening, since this was yet another base we had to build.” Hassan snorted. I refilled my glass with cold drink.

“And after all those pains and sleepless nights, we finally managed to get into university. Ah, how we had thought of being free and independent, but damn!

“This is your professional education! Ab nahin parrho ge tou sari zindagi sar pakarr kar rotay raho ge!” Hassan made a clumsy face. “I didn’t know I was sent to earth for doing nothing but studying.”

No matter how much I agree with Hassan, here’s this one thing that I know: we still don’t study.

The final project, alhamdulillah, is over. (Thanks a million for all those prayers!) The details of everything which we faced and went through are very boring, so it’s better for me not to discuss them. What’s important is, that we are done with everything academic (except submitting the reports and project CD and blah blah blah), and now waiting for the results. And as before, we’ll need your prayers and wishes, as this is our belief that the prayer factor is the one which helped us to survive. Otherwise, as I just said, we don’t study.

I have missed a lot of Blogistan happenings in the past two months. Blurking around, I can see new bloggers, catchy new templates, impressive posts, and a lot of halla gulla. Which reminds me, that I have been tagged by Saeed and Bhaijan, and if I am not wrong, I might break Bhaijan’s record of responding late to a tag. *rolls his eyes*

Time to resume bloghopping.

As you can guess, the time has come again for me to switch to my war mode. The final project has started to demand more time (mostly because we have been depriving it of its right share, and now that it’s firing back, we have finally decided to bestow our affection upon it).

Wish us good luck, everybody. We need it badly.

And since all negotiation attempts have failed, I have switched to my war mode in order to face their beauty.

Farewell my dear countrymen. We shall meet again. Soon.

Meanwhile, your prayers can always find me.

No, I have not lost my mind. (Waisay who knows. I might actually have lost my mind and might haven’t come to notice about it. You miss a thing only if you are too dependant on it, you see.) So regardless of whether I have lost my mind or not, I wrote the starting sentence with all my will and intention. You might then ask the reason. The reason, my dear friends, is very simple: Exams provide you with a reason/excuse for doing/not doing anything. And the question which asks if you were studying for your exams can ruin the whole flavour of this reason, so I would prefer not to answer it.

So you see, I didn’t update because I was busy with my exams. *innocent look*

But just think for a while. Aren’t exams a blessing in disguise? You don’t have to go to the market and purchase forgotten ingredients (examples: hari mirch, dhania, etc). You don’t have to worry about your shave and haircut, since you are so busy in your studies. You don’t need to answer the door-bell every time because it’s understood that you are studying. You get so much time in front of your computer for working out with the coding examples. You get the luxury of being alone in your room and not disturbed by your younger siblings because you have to prepare for your exam. You can create a mess in your bedroom with your textbooks, notes, photocopies of lecture slides and all other junk and not have to worry about it, because it’s your exam tomorrow.

And many other things.

What happens after the exams are over, however, is another story altogether and beyond the scope of this current post. But it’s not much though. You just have to think of some other excuses then. Some valid excuses, that is, and none of which can come up to the validity of its-my-exam-tomorrow.

Which brings us to the starting line again. Exams are beautiful.

And it would be more nice if the chair I am sitting in could be a little more comfortable. Or the table on which this keyboard is placed could be a little higher so that my knees bruise themselves no more. If the keyboard itself could be more responsive to my fingertips, it would be a bonus. Also, addition of an extra light source could make it a whole lot nicer for my eyes. And in case you haven’t guessed where I am sitting — I am sitting in a ‘cabin’ belonging to an internet cafe.

Past few days have been a roller coaster ride. (By the way, I haven’t had a ride on a roller coaster ever). We shifted to a new house, and are hoping that it would become a home soon. No telephone lines yet in the new thikana, so had to come at this cafe. My knees tell me that I chose the wrong cafe.

On the other hand, we are approaching the end of the current semester at university. Which means assignments, assignments and more assignments. And even more assignments. After you are done with the assignments, you have projects. Projects, projects and more projects. And even more projects. And after you are done with the projects, you have exams. (No, I am not going to write exams, exams and more exams. Were you expecting that?) And after you are done with the exams… drum-roll, please… vacations! So right now all I can imagine is that I’ll be enjoying my holidays after 31st July. They say that you should always have your goal in your mind. I adopt this approach when the goal is the holidays.

Nothing more to write, unless I want to write about that mug which is here right in front of me beside the monitor, and which would have been quite elegant if it had some coffee in it. Right now it contains heaps of cigarette’s ash.