The Opa Tudo Bom phenom

Boy, I still can remember the day. I was, as I generally do in office, sitting like Thalaiva on my seat and earning my bread and butter. All of a sudden there's a buzz in the office. I can see people converge to a point, all of them chattering excitedly. Some look disturbed, some downright pale. Like something important had happened. Important, but more frighteningly, BAD. Like i learnt when I joined the group, Orkut had been blocked in office. First there was Shock ("What??Why??Where??"). Then there was Denial ("No f*****g way. Must be some temporary network problem."). Then finally sorrow, as I resigned to my Orkutless fate (" What will I do in office now???")

Till a few days/weeks back, we were quite smug in this part of the software world, that Orkut was not blocked in our office, you see. Damn right and decent of our IT guys, we thought, to allow us our leisures in between our generally hectic work (or vice versa). Till all our dreams came crashing down.

There a few things about being a software engineer. We have at least 2 messengers (to keep in touch), an Orkut account (to keep in touch), an e-mail program running constantly (to keep in touch) and some also keep a blog (those are the evil ones). As most of us would know, Orkut is now the "in" thing these days, even more popular than the messengers. And imagine sitting in office (note: there has been no mention of work) for a whole 8 hours without as much peeping into the hot girls profile who has pictures loaded in her album!!

The reason for all of this?? Some Portuguese speaking idiot decided it would be fun if he created some sort of a virus which would soon be all over Orkut. And some other idiots (both those who speak Portuguese and don't) decided clicking on the link would not be such a bad idea. And before you could say Orkut Bouyukotten (or wassissname again?), "Opa Tudo Bom" became more popular than "Whats for lunch?" in our office.

As faces fell, and mails were sent out to other friends about forced Orkut exile, there was the proverbial ray of light that shimmered in..It was possible to Orkut after all (look, it's a verb now). In a mails that came in from the battle-scarred-Orkut-veterans of other companies, it dawned upon the newly deprived that they would not be so deprived after all. It was possible to Orkut via proxy sites after all. And we could still stay in touch with our near and dear ones and maybe look at the occasional photo album (hot girls only) [At this point, the author wishes to state that he did not indulge in proxy browsing of orkut. Nor did he recommend it to anyone else. He used his home computer to browse Orkut.] The feeling of Euphoria that swept through office is hard to describe. Imagine a situation where a man dying of thirst is given Bisleri Water. Of course, it comes with pesticides in it, but it'll still save your life, won't it?

Now, Orkut is back in office. Nope, not just via a proxy, but directly through the Orkut URL itself. And everyone around me (me included) are happy with the development. After all, no red blooded Indian would like being Opa Tudo Bom(bed). We need our daily dose of Orkut to lead a proper and healthy life. It's the indian way, and I'll be darned if we can be suppressed by some malicious link!

Jai Hind!