First Anniversary, at First Job!

“A true balance between work and life comes with knowing that your life and activities are integrated, not separated.”
- Michael Sunnarborg

July the 23^rd, 2013 - exactly a year since I’ve started at the first real grown-up job of my life.

And as stereotyped as it seems to be when it comes to Indians, I actually do work in IT. Still it hasn’t really turned out to be as torturous as they make it out to be.

Maybe that comes later. I don’t know ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Anyway. This past one year has been a helluva roller coaster ride; loads of twist and turns, sudden ups and drastic downs. But nonetheless a very exciting time indeed.

Met a lot of wonderful people (AG, KR, PV, RG, TS etc.)

Learnt a lot about the Lone Wolf guidelines (the importance of having a healthy supply of paper soap with you at all times, how to go from full-wallet-rich-as-shit to puny-arse-broke-as-hell in less than a week!)

Had some really great experiences (nomadic solo trips all around the city, rediscovering friendships, and shedding off a few way-past-expiry-date ones...)

As for the things that go on within the office walls. Man, each day is a revelation!

Things seem so different this side of college.

My workplace is in the IT compound of a Special Economic Zone. The best thing about working in SEZs and Tech Parks, where almost always half a dozen big companies set up shop in the same neighborhood, is that you get to meet people from many other IT companies and interact with them. So I kind of have observed some peculiarities and similarities in almost every big MNC I have come across. We are not all that different, you and I. Everybody is just as stuck/fortunate as everybody else.

Yes, I agree I have been away from home since college. So you could say I already know the basics of shacking it out on your own. But college was different. In school you know you are going to have to spend the rest of your time there with the people around you. So you find the most compatible ones and choose to have them around you at all times.

In a corporate, you don’t have that option. You don’t get to choose. You have to make do with what you get because you will have at some point or the other get something done by or for them. Most people won't be so hard to handle or like. As always it depends on your luck, and how much they know the good parts of you (if at all there exists one) and how much you get to know them.

I’ve seen the sense of putting in an effort or time to actually get to know someone is absent here, may be that used to be there a couple of decades earlier in our father/grandfather’s offices; when people that you work with, somehow ended up becoming your best of mates and your child’s god parents. It sure isn’t happening these days!

Ma's Appointment with the Surgeon

“There's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.”
- Mitch Albom

  'For One More Day'

The hospital was huge!

Its large pillars and domes on the four corners made it seem more like a Mughal palace than a place where people come to when they are sick (or to die). There was lush green lawn outside with a smallish angel fountain in the center of it, around which the IN and OUT routes for vehicles were mapped out so that people may navigate themselves within the premises. It was quaint on the outside. Beautiful flowers were beginning to bloom on the decorative plants around the park benches in the lawn. This place reeked of rich monies. There was probably had a rich trustee or a patron, who had donated generously!

But on the inside, inevitably, the environment was gloomy. The whole place stinked, the usual stench of hospitals anywhere around the planet. The smells of medicines, anti-septics, alcohol swabs, maybe a bit of urine here and there. This hospital was just as big inside as it was outside. But the sheer number of people inside it made it seem tiny and crowded, especially around the reception's desk. That was where Vik was standing right now hands on hips and exasperation evident on his face.

Vik had just told the lady at the desk for the hunderedth time that he was here for an appointment with the surgeon for fixing his mother's leg. To which the receptionist has just informed him for the ninety-ninth time that his appointment was for 6PM and he has come in at 6:45PM he will have to wait now. She can only get him to see the surgeon once a gap shows up in the his schedule which was packed for another couple of hours, or he could take a seat and hope that someone else was just as punctual as him had an appointment today and shows up late so that she could get him into their slot.

Vik was always a kind-hearted guy but also had considerable amount of temper under his hood which he always kept in check. It inevitably showed up from time to time, especially when he has had a rough day in office like today.

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He had had an argument with his manager at work just an hour ago,

"Smile.. You deserve it!!" :-) :-) :-)

via An Irony Called Life(facebook)

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Their Balls Against His Bat!

“The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.”

- Douglas Adams
  'Life, the Universe and Everything'

 Another curve ball comes his way, a googly, a yorker, a killer bouncer right to his head.

What is going on inside the head of the guy with the bat, is it about how or why or what slieght of hand the bowler did to put this challenge in front of him?

Where are the spectators watching right now, is it at the bowler who is standing right the huffing and panting close to the umpire sweating like a pig and out of breath?

Who is the bowler and the fielders gawking at wide-eyed, expecting some action next? Is it at each other, in their shifty restless glorious squinted faces that has been standing there under the sun since God-knows-how-long?

Why is the time standing still?

Why are they all looking at him like that? What are they expecting of him?

4 more runs with 1 ball to go.

The odds are against him, yes. But do they think that all this pressure they are crushing him with, is going to help his case in any way at all?

Don't they understand the import of this fraction of second in his life?

A Long Time Coming

"I am using the truth, Master Wayne. Maybe it's time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day. I'm sorry."

- Alfred Pennyworth

  'The Dark Knight Rises'

Truth.

Such a fearsome idea, isn't it. A gigantic magnificent elephant in the room; that we all know about but never come out in the open and acknowledge. We see it, sense it, register it inside our brains, and even decipher the outcome of it all. But we never really seem capable to accept it as a fact of life and take in the guts, by sheer sportsmanship.

Not all men are born sporty. Not all men can live with their true faces out in the open for everyone to see.

We all are born capable of knowing and analyzing things that happen in our lives. If anyone says that they didn't see it coming. Pal, they are lying blatantly. Maybe they themselves not realizing that they are.