Less words to pass

Password. What an exciting word that used to be. As a 10 year old, I would think of Secret Seven and other Enid Blytons where the password was a magical word, allowing you entry to a world of secrets that your parents and elders couldnt gain access to. My cousins and I used to form secret societies for the sole purpose of having a password. It meant adventure, mystery and most of all, fun!

Fun. HA! At the age of 30, passwords have become a chore. A daily reminder of my failing memory and of the complexity of life today in an increasingly untrustworthy world. In a normal day, we need to know at least 7 different passwords:

to log in to the comp at work, and sometimes at home
to access work mail
to access personal mail
to social network
to read newspapers
to read blogs
to buy something online
even to just check one's account balance

Everything needs a password and like any game worth its name, its rules have become
codified. It cant be anything simple or obvious, like your mother's maiden name or the date when you paid the first installment on your housing loan. It cant be all letters or all numbers. It has to be of a certain length. You need to type it twice. Dont write it down anywhere. Dont use the same password for everything.

Banks go one step further. After making you perform mental calisthenics to arrive at an alphanumeric password that doesnt offend their finely tuned sense of what is fitting, you then have to change this password, that you laboured over, the first time you log in properly. So they can start the whole game all over again.
The fiends also ask you to remember some other answer to an inane question that will be asked, should you forget this work of art..er password. And of course, you need a fresh set of passwords to transact any business on the phone.

Phew. Is it any wonder that we all feel wretched and demoralised all the time.

Nature abhors an empty room

For as long as I can remember, I've never thought of my family as being particularly sociable. We visited relatives and friends and they in turn came home of course, but on the whole there was none of the people dropping in whenever they felt like or sharing of food or impromtu get-togethers that are fairly routine with other more closely knit families. And we wouldnt want to have it any other way.
But for the last two years, the guest bedroom has hardly had a week to itself. First it was the uncle who used our home as base camp while he plotted and schemed to get the courts to grant his daughter a divorce. That the daughter ran away a week after the divorce came through is another story. Then it was another relative with an infected foot who needed medical attention. On the rare occasion when both these uncles were in their own homes, another uncle who had some litigation going on about some longstanding water dispute would take their place.
Then the first uncle's son, who'd finished some generic degree (in Australia; so every night we had to endure conversations dealing with every aspect of 'The Austrialian Life') used our house as a sort of labour exchange, meticulously exploiting all of my Dad's contacts till after five months, he managed to land a job. It took him another month to actually move out to his own place. Then his father (the first uncle, are you keeping up?) breaks his collar bone and his wonderfully concerned son decides to bring him here to get the docs to take a look at him but does the uncle stay in his own son's house? Oh no. Why should he when he can stay with us! Even though my cook only recently had an operation and therefore needed all the rest she could get.
Then another aunt and uncle turn up and stay put till they find a tenent for their house. Now at long last, we are guest-less. But since there's no polite way of telling people to buzz off, we've decided to put it about that we're going to paint the whole house, redo the false ceiling, inject anti-termite chemicals and generally stir up such a whirling fury of dust and paint and white cement that our house will hopefully become invisible to the naked eye (the PC term is 'unaided'; how prissy). If only we lived in Harry Potter's world, we would be the first in line to make our house Unplottable.

So when my sister told me she's thinking of building a house, my only reaction was 'Invest in some virtual reality, 3D, CGI screen that makes your spare bedroom permanently resemble some building site, if you dont want to be inundated with relatives who casually invite themselves to long stays at your house. She had a simpler idea. Hide the door to the room behind a bookcase. Afterall most people wont go within 10 yards of books. How true.