Someone Got Bigger

It was this Friday, the yearly auspicious day for me. My BirthDay. If you missed it, don’t worry. I am still accepting all kinds of e-gifts, e-cards, e-wishes and whatever e-thing you can manage to send me. Hardcopies are also welcome. Contact me for the exact address!!

The day began with a GPL at 12 midnights. Thanks to a meager number of enthusiasts, it wasn’t as bad as it used to be in the college. Mukund doesn’t morally support it and Deep, whose birthday was just the next day, refrained from it as a slight diplomatic move. The mobile served a great purpose giving my friends and family to pour in the tele-wishes from all over India. It always feels good to know that someone remembered your birthday. Thanks to all you guys.

There was a small cake-cutting ceremony in the office. Things went without much ado. I got a shirt as a gift from my colleagues, my only hardware gift L. Just kidding, the e- and tele- wishes were equally appreciated. And yes, I forgot to mention the orkut-wishes. They were huge in number. Mobile, email and orkut are the three greatest links to all my friends.

Today (25th December) is the treat day. Deep and I will be treating the people in my office at a restaurant in Vashi. If you are missing out, you can always come to Mumbai and claim your share.

Mumbai getting chilly

The chill is finally creeping into the air of Mumbai. Mumbai doesn’t get a cold winter by virtue of its geographical location. Places near the sea go through only mild variations in the temperature over the year. Hope that brushes up your old school day lessons.

However now the people of Mumbai can enjoy a bit of the experience that the people of Delhi so bitterly loathe. Though it’s still hot with the sun up in the middle of the sky during the day, you can feel the chill once it starts getting dark. It doesn’t make you shiver or your teeth do not clatter but still you can sense that the winter is around. I personally hate getting too much cold. This slippery sensation of cold is the best that I enjoy. While some of my friends are out there in the freezing temperatures of Canada and the US of A, I enjoy being in Mumbai with its fleeting wintry days.

Our Boss is away on a meet with a foreign company. We are observing a no-meeting week :). It feels good :D However, he will be back on Saturday and if you didn’t know, Saturday is a working day for us. Given the fact that the piece of job we have, is not quite working out, there isn’t much scope for us to jump and bounce in joy. So better get to the work.

I am sitting the Marathons

Things get tricky sometimes. A few days back, most of the last week, our HOD was busy; too busy to remember that we exist. So there was no review meeting, no assessment, no communication at all for that matter. People were irritated to varying levels of indignation. Don’t count us among those workaholic fanatics. But then you expect your boss, if not to pat your back with a praise, at least to go through what you have done with some sincere effort. Well, apparently, as I mentioned earlier, he was damn busy to manage to do that. We believe him, the boss is always right.

As if to demonstrate the other extreme situation or may be to impress upon us the fact that he cares, he devoted a huge amount of time for us this week; too huge to cope with. The marathon meetings followed, some stretching over three hours at a stretch; some even more with a modest break of half an hour in between. As far the indication until now, the predicament is not going to be over soon.

It always starts with a call from his secretary asking all of us to assemble in the conference room. There is always some sort of urgency as all (barring one or two at the most) try to reach the room first just to secure a seat away from the chair of the meeting; the closer you are the more you are prone to get attacked. Hope you see the point. The meeting starts. People start discussing what they have done or what they plan to do. The boss pays full attention. You can never blame him of lending only half an ear to your story. Suddenly people realize that the process is getting boring and order some tea & coffee along with biscuits and chips for a change. No need to say that it is the best part of the game.

The eatables disappearing slowly (fast if the boss goes out for some time) and the drinks being sipped in a slower rate (since it is not in a public offering as the eatables are), people get finished with almost whatever they had to say. Now comes the turn of the big boss. Just as we are letting ourselves have a sigh of relief that this part of the work is over, the boss uses his ‘veto power’ (as we generally refer to it) to dismiss all of it (if you are lucky, you might manage a “partly right” status). So begin from scratch. However you can’t blame our boss to be harsh either.
“Well, XYZ, I think you have worked quite a bit in this regard but your model requires a few changes” – that is how he starts and goes on to change the whole of it in the name of giving a few tweaks and turns. By the time you leave the meeting, you realize that you have been given a turn of 540 degrees.

(PS – I must mention that our boss is quite smart in his suggestions. He does change our models a lot but those are not just for the sake of making changes to show off that he is the boss. The changes are quite appropriate.)

Moral of the story – Whenever you write something about your boss in a public blog, write something good, at least at the end, if you can’t place it in the main content.

Job Rediscovered

I decided it was time to salvage my sinking blog. If I don’t act now, I might lose my blog for good. Well, I have a pretty good excuse for such a long break in posts and the brilliant reason is ‘WORK’. Yes, you got it right! Suddenly after over five months, I have got something interesting and worthwhile to do in the office. So there is no more coming to the office and wondering what to do next after checking the email. If you are interested to know what exactly I am doing, well, not much luck there. One thing very neat about the group I am working in is that whatever you do is confidential. You get a document, you find some data, you watch some presentation, no matter how useless it might seem to be, it is strictly no-no to share with anyone outside the group. The approach has a two-way benefit. The boss gives his juniors a feeling that they are doing something important (at least he thinks that he does) and the juniors give their friends a feeling that they are doing something important (at least they think that they do).

However, the situation right now looks promising. It doesn’t look like a project, which both the boss and the employees know to be bogus and know that the other party knows but still can’t announce it in public. So I am hopeful this time and the best part is that I am enjoying my work these days.