Today it’s been 5 years that I joined the corporate world. 5 years since I crossed the threshold to become monetarily independent, got the final freedom from the days of pocket money; liberty from the money doesn’t grow on trees speeches. I remember I had a huge list of things to buy which were kind of banned before (well, the never ending list still continues to grow and by its magnitude it doesn’t seem likely that it will ever exhaust, only that no stuff is banned now, just a bit unreachable by priority and capability to buy standards). 5 years since I thought I had bidden a final farewell to terms like syllabus, tests, scores and grades, exams, viva voices, and of course, study books. (I had even gone to a temple to offer a nariyal and give my personal thanks to God for making it all end. I would like to remind the readers - if there are any - that I am not really what you would call a believer, and in retrospect I think I should rather have offered that nariyal to Time). 5 years since the mystery of after-all-what-exactly-people-do-in-an-office is solved. 5 years since I stopped going from home to school/college to school/college to home, and started going from home to office to office to home. And that pretty much sums up the “before” and “after” of my job life.
You see, 5 years is a long time. 1825..no…1826 days (counting the lone leap year - an engineer, even if only in name, is supposed to do the math right), about 261 weeks and 43824 hours. Lets not go into the minutes and seconds, because in a 5 year span, an hour seems to be an optimal least count..but wait! How else am I going to count my crossword solving time?? (yes, the rest of the post is going to be that boring, me counting all minutes of the past 5 years). So let’s deal in minutes, 2629440 in total, of which 783000 were spent in the office, 97875 in commuting and much of the rest is unaccounted for - you can calculate just that much okay, what kind of scheming shrewd calculative person counts minutes of her personal time anyway?
Coming to official minutes, on an average 26100 were spent playing table tennis, 13050 in daily crosswords, 52200 having lunch, 39150 for snacks, and the remaining, well that’s what we come to office for, work - which involves meetings, strategic discussions (read chatting), email reading/writing/forwarding, attending/providing training and the list goes on. After writing this I wish I could say I love my office, but that would clearly be against the unwritten protocol and ethical code of conduct of the working class.
The maximum I can say is that I don’t miss school. I don’t miss college. Just feel a bit nostalgic about them once in a while, like when there’s that ad on TV where some friends fight for who will pay the bill, or when I pass in front of my college campus and can still see my good old scooty standing there amidst a bunch of carefree idiots, whenever I am sitting in any CCD or whenever I see my school bus.
The point is, every phase of life has its bitter-sweet-stupid-interesting-dull-hillarious-embarrasing-amazing-inspring-ooh-aah-ouch-wow-psst moments. A series of snapshots, if you will. And they keep clicking and printing themselves, whether you like it or not, so why not like it? Like it to the degree of falling in love with it? Love it to limit of being proud of it?
You see, 5 years is a long time. 1825..no…1826 days (counting the lone leap year - an engineer, even if only in name, is supposed to do the math right), about 261 weeks and 43824 hours. Lets not go into the minutes and seconds, because in a 5 year span, an hour seems to be an optimal least count..but wait! How else am I going to count my crossword solving time?? (yes, the rest of the post is going to be that boring, me counting all minutes of the past 5 years). So let’s deal in minutes, 2629440 in total, of which 783000 were spent in the office, 97875 in commuting and much of the rest is unaccounted for - you can calculate just that much okay, what kind of scheming shrewd calculative person counts minutes of her personal time anyway?
Coming to official minutes, on an average 26100 were spent playing table tennis, 13050 in daily crosswords, 52200 having lunch, 39150 for snacks, and the remaining, well that’s what we come to office for, work - which involves meetings, strategic discussions (read chatting), email reading/writing/forwarding, attending/providing training and the list goes on. After writing this I wish I could say I love my office, but that would clearly be against the unwritten protocol and ethical code of conduct of the working class.
The maximum I can say is that I don’t miss school. I don’t miss college. Just feel a bit nostalgic about them once in a while, like when there’s that ad on TV where some friends fight for who will pay the bill, or when I pass in front of my college campus and can still see my good old scooty standing there amidst a bunch of carefree idiots, whenever I am sitting in any CCD or whenever I see my school bus.
The point is, every phase of life has its bitter-sweet-stupid-interesting-dull-hillarious-embarrasing-amazing-inspring-ooh-aah-ouch-wow-psst moments. A series of snapshots, if you will. And they keep clicking and printing themselves, whether you like it or not, so why not like it? Like it to the degree of falling in love with it? Love it to limit of being proud of it?
