In a triumph of rotten timing, I began dating my first girlfriend in my final weeks of high school, just before I was to leave India for college in the United States. It was 1999, but it already feels like an unrecognizable age. We had no Skype, and phone calls would have broken the bank. Personal email addresses, however, were newly popular in India, and she had a Hotmail ID. We walked to a cybercafe, near my house in Chennai, to sign me up for a MailExcite account. In my password, I included her date of birth.
During my years at Penn State, I checked email at what was then an alarming frequency: in the morning, between classes, in the evening, once before bed. I didn’t own a computer, so I had to tramp from my dorm to the nearest computer lab; on many winter mornings, only the warming hope of new email got me out of bed.
It was an agonizing way to conduct a relationship, but it paved the way for my eventual Internet addiction. I spent hours online, trying to find cricket scores, read Indian newspapers and blogs and even stream a little Bollywood music. In the end, I don’t know if the Internet alleviated my homesickness or prolonged it.
After graduating, I returned to India; three months later, my girlfriend and I broke up. The Internet preserved us, but a daily-wear relationship seemed beyond our powers. Now we hover within a degree of separation on Facebook. But, in a way, she’s closer than that. Even today, part of nearly every password I create is her date of birth.
SUBRAMANIAN, S. The New York Times Sunday Magazine. 7 jun. 2015. Disponível em:
. Acesso em: 10 jun. 2015.
rotten: péssimo
to sign(ed) up for: cadastrar-se em
to tramp(ed): caminhar muito
homesickness: saudade de casa
to hover: oscilar
Responda de acordo com as instruções.
a) Dê o equivalente, em português, para:
password (título; l. 11; l. 35):
b) Write down from the 1st paragraph the expressions (words) that mean the same as the following, respectively:
