5 years of the other side

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?

Emcee-ing @Office

An article i wrote for my company's internal magazine, probably no one read it there - so trying it out here

:-) anyways, this seems like a good place for keepsakes.

About 200 pairs of eyes staring. Almost all of them way too eager for the show to start - actually roaring at the two emcees present on the stage. This is the point at which I had to enter. As the co-host. For the first time ever in my life, I was compering a live event. Whew.

Scary, right?? No way…scary doesn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling at that moment. I was horrified. Mortified. Dumbfounded. It took every ounce of self control I had to not tremble or collapse there, and every iota of confidence (which my friends wrongly believe I have in plenty) I could muster to deliver the two lines I had been practicing since the past two days. I took a deep breath, looked at my co-anchors, felt the weight of the faith that Team Samskruthi had shown in me, braced myself (I could also have taken lord’s name, but I am not much of a believer, or did I? can’t remember) and lunged forward. All in the span of a second or two. Funny what an adrenalin rush can do to you - moving things in slow motion is just a side effect. After that, it wasn’t exactly piece of cake, but I still managed to control the butterflies in my stomach reasonably well, if not completely :)

I am talking about Fashion Fiesta - the launch of Samskruthi’09 on 28th August in Indore. The rumor that a fashion show is going to be held (for the first time in my office in Indore) was in the air for quite a while and became news when nominations were invited about a fortnight before the event. Like everybody else, I was also thrilled at the idea of watching friends and co-workers walk the ramp from some sheltered corner amongst the audience. But that was not to be. After a week or so, I was asked, or rather, informed that I would be the emcee for the show. And the preparations began. Thinking of a good introduction was a major challenge. Not that the rest was easy….it took a hell of a creative brainstorming for the three of us anchors to come up with each and every concept (which was of course already tried and tested in various national events) - the na-real awards, questions for the contestants, brain teasers for the audience, and what not. That was fun, real fun…thanks guys…I owe you one!!

The show was a great success, thanks to Team Samskuthi @Indore, amazing music arrangement, hilarious skits by the Musketeers group and most importantly, the wonderful participants and senior managers for their special "tapori" walk. Not to forget the enthusiastic audience who kept the momentum on from the word go. I can’t help but feel a bit proud that I too in some way was a tiny part of this magnificent evening. Thanks everyone for letting me be!!!

Welcome 2009

Well, I haven’t yet forgotten about having created this page last year, and yes, I know its kind of late to welcome an year at the end of its second quarter, but you see I’ve got many reasons....and then as the saying goes….Better late than never!

So, here are the top ten reasons why I did not blog for the past 5 months.

10. Economy. With the entire world tumbling down around you, it is best that you concentrate and spend minimum time on the internet. Lest your manager catch you red handed and score a point against, in such hard times.

9. Work. Loads of it. Deadlines, deliveries, turnovers, product releases, blah, blah. (By the way, 10 and 9 are closely related).

8. Studies. Yes…you heard me right. Studies. Passing CSQA is no joke. Ask any Certified Software Quality Analyst.

7. Attending friends’ weddings. It all begins with shopping, alterations, bookings, and excitement and reunions and inevitably leaves you with a nostalgia which absolutely incapacitates you of any creativity whatsoever.

6. Reading. Obsession to reach that 100th book mark. Page by one lengthy page you inch closer and closer to that milestone. How can you think of doing anything else then?? Let alone writing. That it was some 3 months ago and that currently I am on my 108th one is another story. (No, I am not paranoid about keeping count of books read, Shelfari does it for me)

5. Movies. It’s an addiction. Writing is so boring compared to it. There’s so much you need to think of our own for writing. Watch movies and criticize them. Much better time pass.

4. Sheer lethargy. Come summer and all you want to do is to relax, lie down, have cold drinks and day dream. Or change channels on the television.

3. Editing your company magazine. Whatever energy for writing still remains (after considering the above reasons) gets directed towards it.

2. Dental pain. Heard of braces? Its self inflicted agony. Trust me, getting rid of Bugs Bunny teeth is no child’s play.

1. There actually is no reason.

Coming to think of it, each of these invalid stupid reasons can themselves be elaborated in separate blog entries. But I don’t feel like writing. Sounds like reason number 4. No, its 2. Gotta go do the dentist today – predentodementophobia. But wait, can it be 5 or 3 or 10??? Surely its 1. Or is it? :-)

A Software Engineer’s Worst Nightmare

Forgetting passwords.

One fine sunny day I wake up in the morning at 8 as usual, hurry and scurry to reach office by 10, switch on my computer and it dutifully prompts to enter the bios password. I realize I can't remember it. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of the network department in keeping the bios passwords same for everyone, I ask my neighbor and move on till being stuck at my machine password. Under normal circumstances I keep it pasted on my desk, but today the chit is not there. Looks like the company’s clear desk policy has been extended to cover unnecessary (!) post-it stamps as well. Sigh. All in the game. So I contact the network guy and unlock my pc and try to get settled just like every other day – but today is just not another every other day – I open my lotus notes, and can't remember that password as well. Then I try and remember the name of the text file where I usually store my passwords, but I can’t recall it either. Logic tells me it has to be passwords.txt – so I search for the file and any other possible password file names that my follow-the-sheep-kind-of-mind can make up and think of, but all to no avail. Left with no other option, I again contact the network guy and reset my LN password. Next I can’t login to sametime connect also and again NG comes to my rescue (btw, he is highly frustrated with me by now).

And now I kind of get the picture, my worst fear has come true and I am not going to recall a single password today. Today all passwords have resolved to demonstrate their importance and conspired to vanish off my virtual/physical/temporary/permanent memory. I can even listen to them hissing this is just the beginning baby. Ha. Ha. Ha.

So.....that’s that. My gmail password is gone. I can’t login to gtalk. I can’t write blogs. I can’t view my pay slip. I can’t get my bills reimbursed. I can’t transfer funds. I can’t buy anything online. I can’t trade in shares. I can’t book tickets. I can’t read music reviews from my favorite site. I can't access my company website – means I can't do another universe of things like checking my work hours, leave balances, trainings, filling timesheets, etc etc. No orkut. No facebook. No shelfari. No twitter. No life. My day is as screwed as screwed can get. Lord save me and give me the strength and perseverance to reset all passwords.

This goes to all my passwords, I am sorry if I didn’t give you your much deserved attention and care, but now I have realized how important you all are. I will even count you in the basic necessities of life – air, water, food, shelter, clothes, ipod, laptop, books, television, internet, cellphone, PASSWORDS. I humbly request you not to repeat this tomorrow or day after or next year or ever again. Or least have mercy and go one at a time. Puh-leeeeeee-sss. Deal???

My Latest Resolution

Before I write what my latest resolution is, I think there is a need to shed some light on why to make resolutions (and publicize them).

Its just that some things are so so undoable that no matter what amount of motivation you dig up from within, you cannot do them (that must be the case with everybody – or you are just not human). But the point is, you desperately want to improve and do that very thing and you come to loath yourself for avoiding it and for continuously finding excuses to keep away from it – things like not wasting food or oiling your hair or controlling your anger and so on. That’s when resolutions come to your rescue – of course you can forget about them – that’s when your blog can help you out. And again you can conveniently shut your eyes to the blog entry as well and sleep soundly, but this is one thing I am yet to discover. Hope this explains the purpose of this absurd piece of crap I am writing now.

Given my love of books, it seldom happens that I have to force myself into reading something – but when it does happen I normally buy the book – that’s reason enough to make me read it. Not that I am an overly stingy scroogy person – but I do have a value for money – if you are spending your hard-earned-meticulously-saved (!!! – that’s an average software engineer’s expression on the statement) funds somewhere – you gotta make good use of it. But this time nothing’s working. So this is my last refuge. Now one might ask what’s so important in a book that you want to force yourself to read it. Well, it’s a classic, and it’s a must read, and when you have decided it’s a must read, it’s a must read – ANY WHICH WAY – if you can’t, you are a coward, and an escapist.

Enough digress. Here goes the resolution –

I hereby solemnly swear to God and all that is holy, by my life and the love of it, that I shall read DON QUIXOTE and will not touch any other book before it is finished. (er…wait a minute God….before you jot it down in your goodness book, a little clarification here – just in case you consider it a sin – by touch I mean touch literally, online books are exempt from this self imposed conjecture).

And I promise the next book review I am gonna write would be of Don Quixote.