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An Irony of Co-ordinatorship

 In the midst of colossal howl of exult and reverberating round of applause, Bhutan welcomed Television in 1999 when His Majesty the King announced the overture of Television during his national address of Silver jubilee commemoration.
 
 Back at NRTI the trainees joined the throng from the institute knowing little that such advent of technology would hardly bring least differences to the trainees. From that day, they remained looking forward for the day to proffer the television yet another welcome to NRTI.
 
 They were full of themselves that the Television would one or other day find its way to NRTI in view of the fact that a year ago, His Majesty gifted them with a set of screen and antennae dish during his visit to the institute.
 
 But on the grounds that they should not do away with the exceptional gift of the golden throne, they saw the cable operator going back after he connected NRTI village excluding the institute in the list. The other reason for not incepting the cable in the institute was that since it provides wider choice for anything that you wish to watch, it was feared that there would be disputes over watching the channels.
 
 It was palpable from the experiences that even a family members land up in argument and known the fact that it is large numbers of trainees sharing one screen, the disputes is unquestionably predicted.
 
 Some time ago during the world cup, the cable service was installed in the institute for the interim after requesting the Director, NRTI. But before that it was made very obvious that there should not arise any misunderstanding. Many ways were explored so that any problems arising from not coming to general consensus over watching one channel is kept far away. For instance, the trainees were warned that a small problem would mature up to disconnecting the service without any further explanation.
 
In every semester, two video coordinators (one from the senior and other from the junior batch) are appointed whose responsibilities are as follows;
  • Make sure that all materials and equipments in the hall are intact.
  • Arrange videocassettes for the shows in Tuesday, Friday and during weekends.
  • Maintain cleanliness of the video hall.
  • Make sure the Screen, deck and TV receiver are functional.
I have shouldered these responsibilities during my sixth semester course in NRTI. During my tenure I have experienced the irony of being the video coordinator. Among all the responsibilities, arranging the videocassettes comes hard.

This is for the reason that, firstly there is only one cassette dealer in Wangdue, which is at the distance of 10 Km away from the institute, who enjoys monopoly business. Consequently, the video coordinators have no choice than to boogie to his biorhythms.
 
For the procurement of the videocassettes, the management releases a budget of Nu.200/- every month but such small amount is hardly able to meet the expenditure. This is because, for the reason to get single cassettes for the show one has to go all the way to Wangdue in the Taxi which is even more pricey than buying the cassettes. Furthermore since the show coincides with the scholastic days, there is hardly any time to arrange the cassettes. And if we fail, we are bound for lots of disparagement from the fellow friends.
 
Even if we come up with cassettes, it never serves the purpose. For the reason that there are some who go for horror while other go for love story and there are still others who still go for war, comedy, science fiction, Legends, Nature, Sports, Action movies, Adventures, Family movies, etc, So, since the large number of trainees does not have common interest, it is impossible to meet the individual expectation at a single go.

Before I have actually shouldered the responsibilities, I have found it so easy. I just thought, all that a video coordinator has to do is operate the video and show them to the fellow trainees. But later, I came to know that I have overlooked many of the challenges of the coordinatorship that I hardly realised it is easy to join the crowd but easier said than done to lead the crowd. But little collaboration from the friends could serve great purposes and keep the coordinator little away from such anguish.

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