The IT Donkey®

Knotty Travails

2011-07-31T06:59:00.000-07:00

After much coaxing and cajoling by his folks, the Donkey finally agreed to call the female his folks were emailing him about almost for 2 continuous days. Sitting in the adjoining room. Somehow, they think, an idea assumes an air of importance for the Donkey only if it is emailed to him.

Hence, yours truly did the bravest thing he had attempted in quite some time today morning : Called an unknown female.

Click.

The call was disconnected in the third ring.

Relief. I had an excuse to not go through this after all.

Unfortunately, it was answered in the second attempt. I, as anyone who had spent too much time being an ITDonkey would do, promptly went blank the moment it was. Fortunately, the person at the other end was not one, and she took charge.

5.30 pm, at Fancy Coffee Place.

Quite something , for someone whose idea of "eating out" was having a plate of masala dosa (fondly called as MSL.DSA) in the the office canteen.

What follows is a step by step account of how to score big self goals during such encounters.

- As you all know, most pictures of females taken for matrimonial purposes are seriously Auntyfied. Even in this form, my date for the day , did warrant a second look.

In real life, she was the kind of person, in whose direction all male teams in office crane their collective necks to catch a glimpse of.

And I, on the other hand, look like, well, Me. Which is only slightly worse than a real donkey. Only with less hair. Strike one against the donkey then.

- Presented with a form like the mentioned above,most of my brain cells loudly declare "No sir, we are better off staying back in the car..". Thus deserted by most of my key allies, I lurched towards where my date was seated.

"Hi Neha!"

"Hi, its Priya..!".

WHOA!! Thats an unbelievable biggie. The mother of all self goals.

Strike two against the Donkey. And strike three, four and five as well. I was on borrowed strikes now.

- "What exactly does your job involve Mr.Donkey?"

"I..I...umm...I...travel.." .

Borrowed Strike six. I was not even sub-prime strike worthy now.

No idea why I said that. I dont travel. My job involves shuffling some code. As I said, my senses had taken a leave, and were sitting at the adjoining table, having a massive laughter session at my expense. But I had already made myself sound like I am a travelling salesman. That every morning after I get up, I pick my battered briefcase up, and head for a road trip.

Not the correct thing to say to someone whose opening lines clearly said she wanted to stay in Pune. It was not even a correct thing at all.

There were a few other things in between though, including her objective evaluation of me. Had a good laugh while driving back and was finally alone though.

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2010-11-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Family weddings are good for the health.

I can spend all the time getting a decent workout from running away from the queries like "what are your expectations.." , "When is your turn.." , presented to me by little old ladies who seem to pop out of everywhere.

I was surprised the other day though, when my usual parking spot at home was occupied by a BMW when I returned after (yet another) long day at office. Even more surprising was that the gentleman owner was actually a visitor at my home. They were discussing..oh well. Excuse me sir, has it occurred to you, that even if we disregard other things, you folks are way way way above my league? Not that I have the slightest interest in these matters.

Now that we are on the subject of female companionship, I might add that Europe(from where the Donkey is back from his mule-ing duties) is a wonderful place to be with one!

Just walking down its cobbled streets and soaking it all in...the buildings, the slim and pretty and very fashionable ladies , the snotty men who pretended not to understand English, the street cafes, the quirky and stylish cars and the boutique shops.... filled me with a warm fuzzy feeling!

Antwerp is full of things I cannot afford.

Brussels seems to be the centre of the European universe. Its like they want to be symbolic of the continent, just like people equate NY with the USA.

And Amsterdam seems to be a city full of pot smoking pornography peddlers. Not really a place where you walk into a toy-shop expecting to find Chinese plastic cars.

Comment moderation.

2010-07-30T21:54:00.001-07:00

Sorry guys, had to enable moderation for comments to get rid of my quite considerable Chinese fan following, who, even though were engaged in the noble task of encouraging visitors to this blog to enhance their manliness with their help, didnt quite catch my fancy.

PS: I also now officially hate Facebook , because it gives me a glimpse of the utterly charmed life everybody else is leading.

Coming out.

2010-07-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Its been years. Years and years since I have been waiting for this moment.
Thought that apprehension of it all would go away as time progressed. But it hasnt. Got a lump in my throat as big as an apple as I am writing this.
I used to think that no, most certainly I am not the ONLY one in the world like this. There must be others, and yes, there most certainly are, but they can be very strongly stereotyped. Not me. Infact, some would indeed say that they never expected me to ever turn out like this.
But I can only hide this for so long, before people come to know through means other than me.
So here goes...thats me 'coming out' : I. Cant. Park.

There. I said it.
I cant park to save my life. The very thought of steering a big machine into a marked area into which it sort of fits fills my heart with great fear. And there is a monstrous knot in my tummy everytime I actually have to reverse into some place.
I sometimes walk for many kilometers to my destination just because the parking spot earlier on was "just so fine".
I have seen completely new drivers execute a perfect parallel park and dithering old ladies deftly sliding their cars in spots smaller than their car itself.
So why me ? Was I..err..born with it ?

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2010-03-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

Its a sign of worry when your parents show up serious faced into your room out of the blue. More so if they have been having some sort of discussion amongst themselves before that.

What is the reason you are spending inordinately long times in office these days ? - They ask.
Is it because there is *someone* we should be knowing about ? - She asks.

Ahh... they have no idea do they?

Ofcourse its about someone they should know !

Infact, I have the nagging suspicion that they already know..

The people luring me into the dark innards of the office (why dark? because they are darned keen to switch off all lights post 9pm..) , are a certain Mr. Mohandas Gandhi and a certain Mr.Benjamin Franklin .

Boy...do I love them!!

Pune Blasts

2010-02-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Is Mr.Manmohan Singh waiting for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination ?????

The year that was..

2010-01-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

The year was.. umm.. a bit of a blur to be frank.

For starters, I changed my postal address in the past 1 year. Twice. That essentially breaks all my previous records of postal address changing in one year.
The last time I did that , I was about 12 years old.
First time around, my pincodes were changed.
Second time around, my pincode was changed to a zipcode.

Also, I declared to anyone I came across that if at all I was still doing what I was doing where I was doing by the end of the year, I would quit doing it.
Well, the latter part of the condition has changed, but not how I originally intended it to.

Heck, I cant even remember any micro details of the past year. Is it a good thing ? Maybe.

Lessons in America

2009-12-29T21:08:00.000-08:00

- Dont order anything edible which says "Large" against it.

Ordered a "Large" popcorn today, taking a cue from several Americans discussing amongst themselves the size of their orders.

What I was handed in return for my four dollars fifty can only be described as a paper bucket I could have taken a popcorn bath in.

- Dont attempt to look for anything in waist size 32 which you like, because its not gonna be there.

Ever seen size 40, 44 or heck, even size 48 pants??

- Dont attempt to confuse people by presenting your indian driving license as "id proof".

Many million years ago, I had a photo of mine clicked when I was thin :(.

- Dont be a pedestrian in the 300 metre radius of a School Bus.

Curious cops come around to take a look in mean lookin Dodge Chargers :( .

...............many more to come!

Yes, its possible...

2009-11-28T19:32:00.000-08:00

Can a packet of Maggi be completely ruined ? Well..read the title.

A little background though.
You see, with no ability to move around myself, I have to be completely dependent on some kind soul to get me to a shop so I can buy the essentials of life.
But when there is no one in sight, I am left to fend for myself, especially at the end of the week, since the supplies bought a week earlier are about to run out.
So like millions of souls who find themselves in a similar predicament, I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I spotted a small packet of Maggi Instant Tomato flavoured noodles lying around. Maggi is one dish which even the most hamfisted of cooks cannot go wrong with. It is a safe, fulfilling,quick, economical and a distinctly non-healthy meal in itself for the hungry soul whose other option is starvation.
A suitable sized vessel was quickly found, and water added, the burner set to medium heat.
The water began boiling, and yours truly quickly opened the packet, emptied its contents into the water and discarded the packet in one fluid motion.
But..err.. Was it two cups of water or four I had added ?
What does the packet say ? Four? Two ? One ? How come I had never faced this issue back home ?
But the answer was evident, there was clearly much more water than this little packet was intended to be cooked in..
Needed a quick fix, so decided to add a spoonful of so of the leftover rice from the morning.
Clearly though, it was turning out to be more of a soup, so a little more fixing was called for.

An egg. For reasons not entirely known to me, I thought a couple of them would be a good idea.
So I did, broke and added a couple of eggs to the liquid, A little high heat, a little vigorous stirring, and I would be good to go....!! Sheer genius, that...

And the result was... ghastly! It looked like a sticky, gelatinous mess which someone had just regurgitated.
And it also turned out to be the most horrible thing I have ever tasted in my life.
Even a generous sprinkling of crushed red peppers (Pizza Hut) and about half a cup of Heinz tomato ketchup couldnt save it.
And now, I was stuck with about half a kilo of it..

I said a little prayer, mustered up the courage, and quickly swallowed two half bowls of it in rapid succession. There was still three fourth of it left. Gulp. I was now left with no choice, but to pour my precious maggi down the kitchen sink, but there is only so much of torture I could subject myself to.

That brings me on neatly to the kind of solutions we have been providing.
You write something, user finds it not upto the mark, so you attempt to quick fix it like above and end up discarding the whole thing.

PS : A tall glass of orange juice and some chocolate chip cookies have rushed to my rescue today.

PPS : I would be grateful if someone tells me the real amount of water to be added to a small packet of Maggi.

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2009-11-10T04:07:00.000-08:00

As far as I see it, the city of Memphis is one long stretch of highway, with some buildings on either side.
So far, I have seen not even a single pedestrian on the road. Nor have I heard a single honk.

2009-10-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

To be able to successfully carry of dwindling hair, you need to be looking like either this :

Or like this :

Quarter life crisis

2009-10-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

Symptoms of a quarter life crisis , amongst other things :

- insecurity regarding the fact that their actions are meaningless

- insecurity regarding present accomplishments

- disappointment with one's job

- boredom with social interactions

- a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you.

WOW!

Log file.

2009-10-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

8.30 pm - I have slept for two and a half hours in the day today. My "preparation" for the night ahead. Picked at the food served for dinner at home.

9.00 pm - Get a call from the cab driver,asking me if I have a pickup. Come to think of it, it was ME who made the call. Damn, most of my phone expenses seem to go towards calling back cabbies and calling up my ISPs technical helpdesk.

9.20 pm - Hope is a very nice thing. Hope is what gets me out of bed. Though I would rather get out of bed every morning (like a normal human) than in the evening. Hope for the day was having a very pretty cab mate.

9.22 pm - Hopes dashed.

9.30 pm - Its raining. In October.

9.45 pm - Reached office. Just in time to see tired software engineers hurrying towards the last bus and the management types ambling towards their cars. Ride the lift (elevator, for those who speak Americanese) up all alone (ofcourse!).

10.15 pm - No interesting mails yet.

11.03 pm - Just spent half an hour chitchatting with a guy who couldnt go home in the heavy rains.

11.55 pm - Called up onsite guy and spent half an hour chitchatting with him.

12.15 am - Shouldnt have just picked at the food at dinnertime, my innards are growling out their demands. No interesting mails yet.

1.00 am - Have sent a few pointless mails on issues which dont really matter. Even that feels like a big accomplishment.

2.00 am - Maggi instant noodles are perfect odd hours comfort food! No interesting mails arrived in the meantime.

3.37 am - Katrina in HD is a perfect way to keep you awake. Watching her is like watching the sun rising from behind a lush green hill..its just plain...invigorating.

4.30 am - I am thirsty. No amount flipping the switch seems to restart the water cooler. If tomorrow you find it broken, its because I was at it for some considerable time.

5.49 am - My attempts to keep my head straight up are failing. It is flopping from side to side and does not want to be perched up at all. No interesting emails yet.

6.30 am - Less than 15 minutes to go before I can packup and leave office. And I am absolutely inundated with issues! Suddenly I am not very sleepy anymore. Thinking about hope of the day again.

6.53 am - Shittt!! I am wasting time typing this...BUttt..... No interesting mails yet..

Obama Nobel.

2009-10-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

So Obama won a Nobel for peace. Apparently, for his visions and plans.
I didnt know visions and I-coulds were enough warrant a big prize. If visions are being considered, may I..ahem... have an Oscar please?

Holiday

2009-09-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

What a short week.. (though any week in which I have to work even for an hour is too long for me :( )
For the first time in a very very long time, I have holidays on both the public holidays declared.
All this time, we used to work on "our" holidays, as well as the client holidays (like 4th of July..).

So I guess when it comes to holidays, we are transnationals. Used in the same sense as transvestites.

PS : Check out the number of mails I have received overnight, the server is rather overwhelmed..

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2009-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

Cars cars and more new cars...in our office parking lot. Large and small. Petrol and diesel. Dozens being added everyday. Infact, I see almost an equal number of cars with newer registration series as the older ones.
Excuse me, but can anyone please point me to the recession everyone has been harping about ?

"Can I have a raise? Its way past my due period.. "
"Are you nuts?? We are in the midst of a deep financial crisis!! You are a lucky to have a job at all!!
Ohh, before you leave, help yourself to some sweets, I bought new Honda City".

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2009-09-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

I do not understand the purpose of the below questions.

- Do you plan to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose?

- Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization ?

- Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or have you ever participated in genocide?

2009-09-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

I am thoroughly disillusioned.
Its a sweatshop.
Worse part? Because of the airconditioning, the sweat isnt even visible.

Can this be a salvation ?

The Bullet isnt a bike. Its a mindset.
Owning and caring for a Bullet makes one more of man than..well.. a biggish number of other things.
Life getting nowhere ? get a Bullet.
Too many disappointments.. ? get a Bullet.
Have a bad boss? get a Bullet.
No love life ? get a Bullet.
Bought a car ? get a Bullet.
Feeling happy ? get a Bullet.
Want to celebrate? get a Bullet.
None of the above? get a Bullet.

I will have some chrome on mine, thank you.
The deficiency of Vitamin M(oney) is what seperates me from thumping away my worries.

2009-08-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

Its low, red ,topless and American. And its mine.
Damn...! Always wanted to say that.

This '65 model is also optioned to the hilt with whitewalled tyres and beige interiors!

Is it also the closest I will ever get to the real thing...? :(

Found this relic from my childhood while rummaging through a cupboard the other day.
Back then, owning-one-when-I-grow-up seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

Unfortunately, 15 years down the line, things are exactly the same as, except being herded into the school Autorickshaw is replaced by being herded into the company bus... personal transport continues to remain a pipedream....

2009-08-15T06:46:00.001-07:00

Million dollar question (actually, a 5,800 rupee question)...

Western Digital My Book or a Seagate Freeagent Desk ?

I have just realised that my current storage capacity (bought 5 and 6 years ago respectively) isnt enough to handle the storage requirements of ...welll.. 5 and 6 years later respectively.

2009-08-15T06:34:00.001-07:00

You know its a worrying sign when the GPRS call volume on your phone crosses 45,000+ units in a single month.

Urgent measures needed to be adopted to compensate -

- Quit office breakfast.
- Quit office lunch.
- Quit office food altogether (better start begging colleagues for chai!)
- Wait extra hours in office so that my bus pass can be blackmarketed (I can use the free afterhours cab service).
- Invest in a thermos flask , to be filled with vending machine tea/coffee, and sold to all those guys standing outside the gate smoking.
- Start praying for the remainder (if any) of my variable pay to materialise miraculously.

Door Sign

2009-08-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

"Oracle Apps Develpment Team"

Says a the sign posted on a door outside a closed, inaccessible to us section of my floor.
Says volumes about the stuff being develpd there. Infact, this reflects the overall attitude of the company towards dev work in general , as far as I am concerned.

Time to save naukri.com in my favourites.

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2009-08-04T06:29:00.001-07:00

Heights of loserish behaviour :
Playing Excel games all day long to pass the time.
On your office laptop.

..on a weekend. :(

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2009-07-21T22:16:00.001-07:00

Need of the Hour - Pune Mental Hospital , Hinjewadi Branch.

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2009-06-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

When did we lose it ?
Once thought to be a bastion of forward thinking.
Places where ideas were born and the future of the world was decided. Places in which pony tailed guys showed up in jeans and ideated.
Technology was the king and profit was somebody else's problem.
Engineers were the most important asset of an "IT" company and were suitably valued as such.
People who attempted to introduce unnecessary bureaucracy and related processes were routinely taken to a back room and kicked around a bit.
People were proud of their creations. These places had a character, and most of the time a face
too.
And then somewhere along the way... the plot was lost.
Most companies are now run not by people who loved it and are passionate about creating stuff, but by corporations who are in it for the money.
Every morning (or afternoon, or evening) I am bundled into a bus and herded to some large faceless company along with a few thousand others. Punch in , do my stuff according to the established "processes" and when my 9 hours are up, punch out and head with the herd back home. Exactly like an assembly line worker.
Ideating ? You got to be kidding...There is no column in my timesheet where I can put this
against.
Independent thinking? Who needs thinking when you got rules and processes ?
Coding and trying out stuff? I will be shot for SOx violations.
In the list of one thousand of the most important things in an IT company, I, as a software
engineer, come in at around number 758, right below door knobs and just above chair handles. I would have droned on.. but my body and brain refuses to co operate with my will at 4 am in the day , in office.

Do companies like the ones above still exist ?
Heck, do sections in my company exist which function like the above ?

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2009-06-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

This happened in the middle of last week. It was around 6 pm. Issues were dropping in like bird droppings on a statue.
I was staring at the growing unattended list in my inbox in a kind of glazed expressionless trance which can only come from continuously looking at hopelessness.
Felt a tap on my shoulder. "I need you to go ahead and carry out an exercise in facial expression control", said my manager to a very startled me.
"Me..?? But I... I mean..", I began. "Go..!", came the interruption, with some decisive thumb pointing ,not unlike a swimming instructor telling his very scared student to jump in.
What happened for the next 30 minutes can only be described as hilariously pitiful. One moment I wanted to laugh out loud...really hard, the next I was enveloped in a kind of why-on-earth-I-am-here fear. Every single one of my facial muscles was hurting from a concerted effort to not let them do what they were attempting to. I did indeed periodically nod in order to break the monotony of thought (self pity!) , and so did the other person. I am pretty sure both of us were thinking that the other one is,without question,correct.
Tips on how to keep a straight face while interviewing someone (while knowing you absolutely dont belong there) would be greatly appreciated..

2009-05-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

Quite relevant, I should say :

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2009-05-21T00:53:00.001-07:00

The company seems to run on only one philosophy these days : Employee miserability is directly proportional to customer satisfaction.
The fact that I have accepted that life is going to be considerably difficult in the days to come doesnt make it one bit easier.

Ohh, and my co's transport management SUCKS. And I am even more of a jerk to be still dependent on them for ferrying me to and fro. 2 years since I am here, and I still have to think 10 times before I can even consider buying a Nano. Second hand ofcourse. (New cars are the sole preserve of those "software guys").
Ofcourse, in theory, I just might be able to scrape together enough to get something like the above, but I will have to give up a few trivial things. Like eating. And electricity.
I have already given up on having an interweb connection.

Desperately needed : a panacea for boredom.

PS : Lack of sleep and being miserable in general is a great way of losing weight! I am well on my way there by shedding some excess load in the form of hair on my head.

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2009-05-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

I am getting old. Really fast.
The day you realise that you find separating your PC paraphernalia too frustrating a process, you are O-L-D. (Something you enjoyed doing a thousand times in a day in college now seems extremely daunting.Things also suddenly get very heavy.)
A fact reinforced by the looks young people hanging around give me these days. "Maan...he must be ooooldd.. Must be atleast TWENTY...ewwww". "No yaar, definitely looks much older, must be nearing twenty-two".
I stare at them whizzing past, as I stand at the bus stop and observing how their 16 year old brains make them believe they are invincible. Frankly though, my "extremely old" brain thinks that a scooter against a JCB isnt much of a match.
But doesnt really matter to the chick who is riding and glares back at me. "Urghh...this guy is old, must be old enough to be a colleague to my parents".

Between a rock and a hard place

2009-05-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

Long weekend, this one. One that I wish would end soon. Yes, you read right, I wish this weekend would end, so that I could get back to work.With certain new developments taking place, I have had some "change of circumstances", which put me somewhat away from my usual comfort zone.
So what do I do now ? Do I hang out at home, where I get decidedly superbored or hang out all the while in office , where I get decidedly superbored and decidedly frustrated.

To pass the time here, I am reading stuff like Mathew Reilly's (hadnt heard of him before) "Scarecrow" , which reads exactly like a script for a B-Grade hollywood flick. (Everybody is very good looking, every enemy is a communist and everybody can drive/fly/ride everything).
But it still temporarily gets my mind off everything. I think I should stock up on reading material other than manuals of old gadgets. Maybe technical books (which would probably increase my chances of cracking an interview).

Amongst office things, some more good things came to an abrupt end. (Though I had a feeling they wood)
You win some, you lose most. Life goes on..

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2009-04-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

Cant help shake off the feeling that I am simply in the wrong decade. I should have been at this stage in the '80s..

To start off working with computers was so much easier back then. The ITDonkeys had respect..they were demigods ... .and had the world at their feet. IT was where the money was. If you were in IT , there was a real chance you did actually work on something that indeed was "cutting edge" .

There were a lot less big companies running out of money. The MBAs hadnt taken over everything yet.

And I loved the cars! I loved the fact their large engines did nothing in particular , and companies were not letting this insignificant fact bother them. Group B rallying was still around.

Did I mention I liked the cyberpunk movies ? Complete breakdown of social order and "robots and computers" taking over the world. LOL!

Seeing a Nintendo NES still leaves me with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. And I absolutely and totally adored the 8-bit games that came in with it.

This decade is simply too crowded, too fast, too unforgiving, too complicated and too vast to explore the edges of. ITDonkeys are well.. just that. And I am working on stuff which wont even cut through paper, let alone "edges". Everybody is bankrupt and an MBA decides whether the I get to keep my job or not.

I did.

2009-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

First thing in the morning today. Before reporting for my Donkey duties.
You can see that the lady applying the ink was too preoccupied with something (maybe her husband...or maybe my rather strange face).

Ohh...and I fail to understand why the ink-application was shifted from the index finger to its neighbour (not the thumb!). Makes for pretty strange press-photographs.

PS : As a result, got to show my manager , the "birdie" today :).

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2009-04-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

I am incredibly fed up of the pointless things around here (which is pretty much everything). Maybe I should just chuck it all and head to the Himalayas. Now where do I put in my cab request..

PS : Do I get broadband in the mountains ?

PPS : And cable TV ?

People's Republic of America.

2009-03-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Is the US slowly(or quickly, depending on your view) turning into the USSA ? (United Socialist States of America)
Their govt. forced the ouster of Rick Wagoner and has all but taken over GM. And indeed the entire American auto industry, the now-in-deep-shit (big) three.
The Govt. of America may soon be a giant holding corporation , with interests in banking, autos, mining, petroleum, aviation and defence. Chairman President will be at the helm, with an able politburo to guide him (or maybe her...who knows?).
Is the software industry asking for bailouts ? Not yet, but who knows.
The way things are going in India, I am wondering how long they can hold out. With many of their clients keeling over and dying, I am not sure how they may not be dragged down themselves.
Yes, one of the Big 3 ( I still like to call them that!) is client of ours, with a dedicated ODC and the works.
And I wonder what would happen to me , working in the ODC of a prime automotive supplier.

Finally...after decades of bumbling, they were finally getting a few things right, only to go bankrupt in the process. Too bad cars like the below may soon be a thing of the past, before I get to even see one in person :

PS : I have had conversations like the below with people who have returned from the venerable "onsite".
ME : Which car you owned "there" ?
Guy : Ohh..it was a Mustang.
ME: Cool... was it a V6 or a V8
Guy: (blank look)

Late night post.

2009-03-27T15:33:00.001-07:00

Its past 3.30 AM here in office, on a Friday night .. Saturday morning..
I am just done with killing Joe , my lone companion for the night.
It doesnt quite matter that Joe was bugging me for quite some time and deserved to be killed. I lodged a couple of strong protests by hand gestures.But they went unheeded. So killed he was. I can post gory pictures I took right after his death, if anybody is interested.

His incessant buzzing was getting on my nerves. Yes, Joe was a mosquito, giving me company in the desolate and darkened premises.

Amongst other updates, I found that my office status symbol has been flicked by someone.
No one else in the six cubicles around me had one.
It was a sure image enhancer.
An attention grabber.
A guaranteed chick bagger.
My very own dustbin,right under my desk.

And now .... its gone.
My image has taken a beating.
I will no longer get the same amount of attention.
Gorgeous cubicle ladies will no longer gravitate towards my desk.

Without the reassuring touch of my status symbol to my feet, I am going to end up feeling inadequate.
I am frustrated.

I just killed Joe's cousin John for fun.

I need some sleep.

Eco Friendly

2009-03-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is the latest craze to have hit the office admins.
Would love to hear their defence on this one. Contrary to my expecations though, it does not stink in its quest to go tree-hugging.
Except at night, post 12 am. When all I am doing to break the monotony of the night is down bottles of water.

.

2009-03-16T02:18:00.001-07:00

How bad is it if the best part about your day at work is the going home part ?

PS : Posted from the workplace.... A case of the "Mondays".

.

2009-03-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

I think a big batch of people is going to be fired again in the coming weeks. Which means the entire building where perhaps upwards of 1500 people work will be even more empty. Then they will probably sell the building off.

Why do I say the above ? HR people were actually working on a Saturday...

Ohh... and they were also getting free meals from the cafe in return. As if working on a weekend is a super favour they are doing to the organisation. What about countless SEs who already do that and yet pay lots from their own pockets ?

.

2009-03-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

You know things are bad when you get the following dream :
A lazy sunday afternoon, and I am doing nothing at the moment. Hence to see what is to be done next, I open Remedy.

Why 'o why.. Its bad enough when you have your manager invading your dreams.
Ohh yeah, I had a freakishly realistic dream the other day, wherein the manager was , in his typical fashion, telling us "Yeah ... We have lost few onsite positions".

.

2009-03-04T07:32:00.001-08:00

How about this : The bestestest feeling I have had at work for a long, really really looooooong time , ends tomorrow :_( .
Only week since... forever that I was looking forward to go to work, AND stay highly motivated through the day and beyond ends abruptly tomorrow (Thursday).
Back to my dreary old self from Monday (not going to show up on Friday because I need some time before I can get back to sitting on a normal, good chair).

Aahh the chair... How I am going to miss the flicking of my (in-good-condition) chair in my absence , and the giggles that follow when I show up and clumsily try to adjust myself into a wobbly,creaky old one, followed by some comments which I think, on hindsight, are rather stupid.

All good things come to an end.
And the best ones end rather abruptly.

Monday!!!

2009-02-27T09:40:00.000-08:00

Never before, perhaps in the history of my entire working life, Have I been looking forward to a Monday morning as much as I am doing this Friday evening... :-))
Cant wait to get up and head to office !

watch this space. ;-) .

.

2009-02-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

Random thought... Over the past year and a half, I have sent and received in excess of 54,000 official mails (on client provided ID).

This is not counting the few thousands sent/received that I lost between April and June and last year, due to a stupid error on my part.
Not a single one of the above though, was memorable in any way. If someone asks me to choose a few of the above which I can keep and have to delete the rest, I wouldnt be able to pick even one.

Target Ads.

2009-02-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

An interesting "behavioural targetting" by online advertisers. My case, that is.

These guys must be getting really smart. Since TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign language. I think, not sure) by ETS seems to be the constant one. I dunno how these guys managed to figure out that I need help in that department, and are urging me to study it.
The other ones are, as you can see from the above screengrab, are the ones urging me to tie the nuptials. How on earth do they manage to figure out I was single??
These computer guys and their intelligent programs continue to amaze me. :|

Personality Test

2009-02-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

A good gauge of how pleasant someone's personality is the time required for the vacant seat next to him/her to be occupied by someone , whilst on public transport like the office bus.
People climb aboard, give the seats a glance, and if all of them have atleast 1 occupant, slide in next to the first non-repulsive co-passenger they find.
There are some people who have co-occupants on the seat, even when the 90% of the bus is empty. And then there is me.
99% of the time, mine is the absolute last seat to be filled to its capacity (of two) in the entire bus. The remaining times, it is not filled at all.
A few days ago, the bus was filled to capacity (well..almost), while I only had my laptop as a companion. Just as we were about to set off for home, in climbed a girl, not too unpleasant looking, I might add. She gave the entire bus a glance, hoping to squeeze in somewhere. But there was no other space available.
I , like a responsible co-passenger, lifted my bag off the seat and placed it on my lap, vacating it. But noooo.... She turned away and occupied the "cleaner's" seat in the driver's cabin. I guess
she found a rattly,noisy,smelly six cylinder diesel engine next to her better company to sit with than yours truly :(.

.

2009-02-12T09:20:00.001-08:00

Taking a leaf out of GJ's book, I am posting (one of my) my favourite Safari ads here :

"Slavery is not dead ..." . Darned right it isnt. Reclaiming my life is the need of the hour.

PS: Tomorrow is yet another day I have applied a leave for but plan to go anyway.
Yes I know. I am a chicken.

.

2009-02-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

Pathetic week, the last one. Around 200* people got the boot this Thursday and Friday, and thats 200 too many.
What is worse is the dreadful manner in which they were sent off,signing on pre composed resignation letters and later escorted to the gates by some of the HR girls, like criminals at the end of their detention. The chap was then bundled into a waiting car at the gates, with the cabbie having strict instructions to drop their cargo at the addresses mentioned by them without asking any questions.
I am sure they will deduct the cab fees in their final settlement. Security guards were placed on all rooftops , who were not letting anyone near the edges, citing "Wiring work" as the standard reason.
Everyday I go, I open my inbox half expecting the meeting invitation from a veep. Getting that, for lowlifes called common employees, has only one reason. The sack.
Not that I care anymore. Fear can be a motivation for only about a week.

Also, I wonder, shouldnt the non-direct revenue earners be the first ones to go ? Like HR, for example.

Amongst the Friday casualties, was Lovely Smile. This straightaway takes 10% of my motivation of heading to work. And thats quite a lot. I will miss the way LS's smile would light up my few minutes at work. I hope LS gets a better job elsewhere.
And that LS's beaming face will continue to illuminate a few more cubicles, in other, maybe more deserving organisations. :(

* Hearsay!

.

2009-01-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

After the declaration of Team Champions, a few days ago, was suprised to find a mail from a client side bigshot in my (very overcrowded) mailbox. The mail was him explaining the IT Team's structure under him to his superiors.
To my utter and total surprise, yours truly has been declared by them as a "Champion" !!

I am now officially known as, and I quote here, "THE NOT IN SYNC CHAMPION".

While other champs get dedicated resources under them in their respective teams, my 'team' constitutes of .. err.. me.
Great..now that I finally got some authority, I am going to enjoy bossing myself around.

--
Fines have been declared for those who leave the electrical fitments on in their cubicles overnight. That might sound like a good move, but I have got this strange but overwhelming fear that the socket into which I plug my docking station into is going to crackle and burst into flames anytime. I have been leaving it on for 3 straight days now. Going by the multitude of slightly blackened switches around, I guess this aint a too unfounded a fear.

.

2009-01-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

I just got one more boss!!
I dont know what sort of stuff they were having for lunch when they thought of this, but they did think that "Ohh yeah...the team is really overburdened with work and processes. We know JUST the solution...lets get them another boss!" was a rather good idea.

Its a bit like having a cricket team with 5 captains. Who make up the numbers,but sit out on wooden benches and shout out instructions.
The manager calls them.. wait for this... "The Champions". I kid you not!

Add to that the twisted team dynamics that exist in the upper layers, I dont see how we are going to accomplish anything productive out of this.

The year that was..

2009-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

So 2009 has already begun. Time to reflect I guess (because everyone does that!) on the past year.

So lets see.... My journey through last year has taken me...umm...errr....absolutely nowhere.
2008 will be remembered as one big splotch of boredom. I dont think there is anything I will miss if someone erases my memory block for the year 2008 and uses it to store something else which is comparatively more exciting , like a ticking clock .
Honestly, staring at a wall waiting for the paint to fade would have been more exciting than my life in 2008.

Some of the things I had promised myself I would be doing at the beginning of 2k8 :
- Losing weight (ofcourse!)
- Use my bike more often.
- Behave more responsibly (dont laugh).
- Do something worthwhile with my life (again, do not laugh).

Heres how things stand now:
- I have gained (quite a lot of) weight.
- The bike still has done < 800 kms in a year and half.
- D'uh.
- I am still an ITDonkey, aint I ?

The way things are going, I don't think this year is going to be any different. If anything, it could possibly get worse. Much much worse.

On another note, managed to catch up on the this season's finale of Topgear. And was completely blown off!! Its absolutely AMAZING..!!
Its not just about cars or vehicles, its one of the most incredible Television content creation of the year. Its a Vietnam special, and well..true to its title, it is indeed special.
It is quite difficult not to associate the word War with Vietnam. But this was a revelation.
It is seriously worth a watch, even if you are not into cars or vehicles. For a change, this episode isnt about automobiles, they arent the main focus.
Its the country.

.

2008-12-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

As the year draws to a close, I have realised that my leave balance for the year is intact. The compensatory offs (in return for working on holidays) and the balance carried over from last year was enough for me this year.
I even wasted a couple of leaves by applying for them and then going on those days anyway. (Because I have been accused of "taking liberty" with my leaves by the powers that be).
As has been oft said by people around me, this ITDonkey is a chicken of the species. :(

CC

2008-12-27T22:15:00.000-08:00

My bank has reduced my credit card limit to 5000 rupees, stating "security reasons". I wonder if its for theirs or mine. Not that I had gotten around to exploring what the "earlier" limit was anyway.
They are just playing it safe with IT guys, I believe.

On another note, the manager is considering exempting "married" people from the miserable night shifts. So, Anushka and Anushka, if you are reading this...
And does he mean that "single" people dont have a family??

.

2008-12-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

If the grapevine is to believed, banks will now begin classifying IT guys as subprime.
Righttt....After being knocked off the marriage aspirations list of Indian girls, yet another one for the ITDonkey.

Which reminds me.... I have got an alarming propensity of doing the absolute wrong thing when being observed. I was watching the marriage video of a close cousin today, in which yours truly makes 3 appearances of about 2 seconds each. I am yawning rather loudly in 2 of them, and have my mouth full of food in the third, which I had stopped chewing from the shock of finding the camera directly in front of me.
Old ladies watching the video will come to logical conclusion about how I got to my present shape by only sleeping and eating.
Well old ladies, you are wrong.... endlessly sitting motionless and tapping away at a keyboard has got as much to do with it as is anything else.
Anyway, in their eyes, I would already be subprime, and not someone worth recommending to their grandnieces. Not that I expect or even want to find a partner in this manner, but feels bad anyway. In the same manner when the bank says I wont be eligible for that car loan I didnt ask for.

.

2008-12-09T20:18:00.000-08:00

A quick update...
I have officially now got 4 bosses.
Thats right....4 people for 4 underlings.
Infact, a post named "Associate Project Lead" was just created to accomodate the new guy, which has already started creating friction between the three earlier bosses.

As of now, I plan to put up an unofficial hassle index for each of them, depending on how much each one of them hassles me.

Current standing in descending order :
Top Boss - > The leader.
Old lead - > Tolerable, to some extent.
Newer tech lead - > Doesnt interact much.
Newest process expert - > The middle order doesnt let him interact much.

For updates, watch this space.

And this is before the Z.O.P. brings back another team lead from the US by the end of December.

Which reminds me, Z.O.P. is not a client move, but our own initiative, as we move from an hourly billed project to a fixed price project.
I have absolutely no words to express my immense anger at the moment.

The Z.O.P.

2008-12-01T07:06:00.000-08:00

So it has happened. Almost that is.Became a direct victim of the credit crunch. Even as I type this out, a meeting is progressing at 8.30am CST (8.00 pm IST) announcing the bad news to the offshore team mates.
Starting January 2009 year, we will proceed towards a ZERO ONSITE POLICY. (Z.O.P.)
What it means is that they wont have people located at client side at all. Every single thing will be 100% offshored.
This happened after the management decided to pay a visit to our call centre wing. And suddenly realised they dont have onsite personnel at all, and were functioning just fine. In multiple shifts, across all timezones, including a couple of overlapping night shifts.
"Aahhaa!!" said they... and out came the calculators.
"Analysing our current relationship with the customer , it has come to our notice there are some gaps in value proposition we offer them.." , a bespectacled man must have droned to an audience of bean counters.
"For every resource we bring back , it will result in a saving of 75% , and if a corresponding resource at offshore is given 1.2% over and above our current investment in resource , it would result in the nett savings of over 5.97823 %.. " , all very exciting figures, if you are an MBA in power , like the above gnome eyed fellow.

The management must be terribly excited. "What a fantastic idea!!!" , they must be thinking.

What would be implied though that we can subject the software guys to fantastic amounts of misery , and convince the customer that there is value in that . So that fat cats like us can continue to get fatter.

.

2008-11-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

The mayhem caused by a bunch of ragtag gunmen in Mumbai is over.....for the time being (I desperately hope that I am wrong here).
This begs a question... How safe are we really ?
If the motive is to find a large concentration of humanity at a place, the following places come to the mind : Train Stations, state bus depots, large hotels...and..err IT Companies.
Lets face it guys..... we are all but sitting ducks for the anti-humans. Ofcourse we have security at our gates, well armed with...err...whistles. They are well suited to the tasks normally required of a security person at an IT Company. Guiding vehicles, checking visiting workers and keeping a general eye on things. The keyword here is "normally" . But confronted with the grimiest slime from the gutter, like the ones in Mumbai, I wonder how effective they will be.
Maybe they should make a shootout drill compulsary, like a fire safety drill. Hit the floor! Dont move! Unfortunately, stuff like this should come naturally to us.
Heres what we might have to do while leaving for work :
Laptop bag - Check.
Lunch box - Check.
Swipe Card - Check.
Cellphone - Check.
9 MM in the holster - Check.
Yes, I do hope they allow private citizens to bear arms now. I know that it will bring a huge set of their own problems , but how many choices are we left with now ?
Its worse than the wild west now, you shoot or you get shot.

PS: I am serious.
You can place an order here.
This , apparently, isnt being sold to private buyers.

Panic ?

2008-11-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

Our primary client will be sending out RFPs (Request for Proposals) for various projects, including mine, in December. All the Indian IT biggies, are understood to have an expressed an interest. That.... and some Mexican firm too, and nearshoring is a good option, say the United Voters of Obama.

This, combined with the overall recession atmosphere, has our management worried I guess.
The number of pointless prep talk meetings have increased drastically. We already had our fourth in the last couple of weeks. "What can we do make this place better?" , they ask... usually without the expectation of an answer. I usually spend the time making little dots appear in patterns on the different pages of my notepad (Which invariably everyone carries into the meeting, but noone ever does anything with it.)

I keep asking myself, is it such a bad thing if this thing goes ??

On another note, my project details were suddenly changed last month. From September 2009, its now down to Dec 2008. This isnt the case for everybody.
Annndd... a big list of around 200 people to be laid off is being drawn up. This is one of those confirmed rumours.
So am I on my way out ?
I dont know. Watch this space.

.

2008-11-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Yet another thing I forgot to add.
I have been through things "I am going have to go ahead and ask you to come in during Diwali" , in almost the exactly the same style.

Office Space (contd)

2008-11-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

Forgot to mention in my earlier post. I seriously got my own version of the "TPS Reports" .
And I kid you not, we even got a dedicated resource, who does nothing but review our equivalent of "TPS Reports" all day long.
A little background on TPSR:
In the movie, our protagonist (believe me, if you are ITDonkey, its terribly easy to identify with him) , who is a harried IT company employee. And works, like me, in the field of Databases (dBase III, I guess, from the below screengrab ) .
Now on a Monday morning, our hero gets picked on by his bosses for forgetting to follow a new 'process' of putting new cover sheets on his "TPS Reports".

At one point in the movie, the chap asks his colleagues , "What if I am still doing this by the time I am 50 ? "
This , seriously, sent a shudder down my entire body. What if I am still doing what I currently do ?? The stuff which isnt, for me, even slightly constructive or interesting and doesnt add an iota of value to my life and leaves me feeling empty. Okay, there is the money (not much to begin with, just enough to create an understanding of how little you can afford ) , but little else.
For someone like me who has absolutely no other skills (not that I classify what I currently do under a "skill" ) , I guess carrying on is the only option.

Office Space.

2008-11-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

I happened to see the film "Office Space" today.
Its not a movie. No sir.
Its a friggin documentary.

I dont know how many ITDonkey's out there feel so, but for me, the movie just so....connects... I got no other words for it.
Its an absolute must watch for everyone out there who works in the Information "Technology" (!) industry.

Freebies....

2008-11-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

I have a strange sense of elation today... Actually got free food from office.
A free lunch. Those not in the 'know' may not realise how alien a term it is for my organization.
I was standing in the cafeteria with money in my hand and an incredulous look on my face saying "Whaat?!!... You dont want it!!???" .

Cubicle..

2008-10-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

Why do I find the work environs so dreary ? Maybe its in part due to..err...they are.
I wonder how many people find long rows of wooden benches with people at them tapping away on their workstations exciting ?

This week we had a 'cubicle' 'decoration' thing going around for a day.
(I may have differences with the usage of the word 'cubicle' though. In our case , they are simply curved benches sans enclosures).

People were hanging up all sorts of trinkets and baubles over their desks. Coloured papers were cut out and plastered on the desks. Lamps (Made in China) were being hung from the overhead lights. The neighbouring team even hung out long, colourful sarees everywhere to give out that rustic look. The ITCoolies were taking every effort to make their sections appear 'cheerful'.

But do they really appear so ?

Do people really go "Rightt.... I WANT to sit here..." by seeing a gaudy fluorescent wallpapered desk ? Unless they are about 7 years old, I doubt they would.

So I have a better idea to brighten up the place... Its 'pretty faces'. Sitting at my dreary place , if I look up from my dreary work, all I see is other dreary faces.
The management has no idea how much they can benefit by the strategic intermittent placement of pretty faces.
They dont really have to do anything, just their presence is enough to light up the atmosphere in 4 adjacent locations.
Another alternative would be that of 'walkers' , wherein several pretty faces can simply walk around the offices, doing nothing in particular. If they let the time table of their 'walks' be known , it would be great. Now there would be atleast something I would look forward to doing. The listless tapping at my keyboard would be a wee bit easier this way as I contemplate over things like whether the 3pm face was better than yesterdays 9 am face.
The walkers would leave a trail of very happy souls in their wake everytime they made a pass...

Somebody should really undertake a feasibility study on this...

PS : This may appear as an overwhelmingly male-perspective post, but then, I havent yet come across any bored female ITDonkeys.

Chat..

2008-10-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Thought of sharing this very relevant chat I had with a New York based genius chap (who claims to be a former ITDonkey himself) today morning.

Genius Geek : job nahi ahe ka aj

ka office madhech ahes ?
(dont you have a job today
or are you in office?)

ITDonkey: office madhech ahe :P
(In office itself)

starting up the excel sheets of the day

today got to analyse some finance results.. :P

Genius Geek: cool

ITDonkey: no man, its pathetically tedious and time consuming work

why cant they hire accounts people to do it i dunno. I guess they take the term 'donkey' a bit too seriously

Genius Geek : :P

ITDonkey: i can get the data and give it to them ... the 'why' part should be their business

Genius Geek: sure

u are doin somethin which is not IT related

ITDonkey: I always do everything which is not IT related

GG : yeh.. i guess their definition of IT is something on the computer

ITD: lol... :D

JC Injured.

2008-10-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

Just got to hear that the venerable JC was injured in a head on collision, his first crash in over 31 years.
I really do hope the motormouth is okay. And lets hope the crash WILL NOT knock some sense into him. The nature of the crash is yet unknown.
The chap is a bit like a supercar : big and impractical and nonsensical - but huuuuuggge fun.

Wishing you health and a speedy recovery, Jezza. Hope TG powerslides back into its scheduled start of 2nd November.

Old Girl..

2008-10-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

Today evening, I was walking down one of the main roads in the town, when I saw a once familiar blue object driving down...
Did bring back memories.. of an old review I had written on her a few years ago. It is as :

"In the last century, a certain man called Adolf who lived in or around the region of
Bavaria, wanted his fellow Bavarians to be motorised.In order to do this,they had to follow some simple
instructions : it should be really cheap to buy,cheap to run and cheap to build.In short they wanted a People’s Car.Volks Wagen.

Fast forward 50 years. A chap from a prominent family in India also wished to do the same for his fellow countrymen. So he called upon a few Japanese fellows who were good at this sort of thing and the result,ladies and gentlemen, is the car we know now as the Maruti 800.Many prefer to simply call it Maruti.

Back when it was launched, the only cars we could buy here were big lumps of metal from the 50’s,which were slow,thirsty and spartan to say the least. The Maruti ushered in the plastic brigade.It was the first time that Indians were introduced to such a concept and they promptly responded by not buying it ....because they thought it was too flimsy. But once people warmed to the idea that a car could be made with something other than pig iron on ox cart frames,the trickle turned into a flood, and soon there were long queues of people outside dealerships wanting to buy the thing.

Back then, it was revolutionary in other ways too...Take the engine for example. It proved that engines could actually run without letting people know that they were from 50 feet away.

It also didnt have to make tractor like noises early in the morning.Before it was launched,there was a general consensus that cars were bound to break down every time it was too hot, too cold, too windy or too wet. But then along came the 800, which demonstrated that actually this needn?t necessarily be so. It worked even when the weather had broken down completely. And it kept on working, faultlessly, for year after year after year.It was also terribly easy and predictable to drive, and chauffeurs found themselves jobless and women drivers found an ally.

So, when around 10 - 11 years ago, when my family decided that buying a car was a solution to our three-people-on-a-scooter problem, the 800 was the natural choice.So we bought a metallic blue one, in 1994(it was a 92 model). Before starting to drive in India, my father had driven for the first time on a regular basis in the US. His car there was a Chevrolet Caprice(cheapest to lease).So it was a shock of sorts for him to drive here something that was only as big as the Chevy’s front seat.It didnt matter though...and soon the Maruti was an integral part of our lives.

Its 796cc 39(or is it 37?) hp engine was peppy enough for us and it was regularly taken on road trips.It was great fun with my parents upfront and me in the back seat staring at the unending highway through the windscreen.It had great fuel efficiency too...we regularly got 20+ kpl on the highway.It was utterly reliable too...the most we had suffered was a puncture once on the Pune - Bangalore highway.

When I turned 18, I learnt to drive in this car.It is the ultimate learn-to-drive-in car. It is very light to steer, the handling is predictable, and even if you get a bump or scratch here and there, it is cheap to fix. It is also enormous fun. The 4 speed manual is slick and shifts without a hitch or too much effort. When I step on the accelerator and go for it, it always brings a smile to my face because even if it is not going very fast, it feels like it is. And because I was 18, and it was my father’s car, I regularly drove it as if my hair was on fire and changed gears only when the screaming valves were about to pop through the hood.

Ofcourse, it has some completely ignorable(at the time) negative points too. Take the space.If you are a Westerner, you could probably die of claustrophobia in there...but we being Indians, were used to cramped spaces. Then there was the complete lack of safety features.We didnt know that, hence it was as good a highway car for us as any other.

There is also a small button on the dashboard there which says ’A/C’.And when you press it,no perceptible change takes place when you roll up the windows.In our other car (Indigo) when you step inside when the aircon has been switched on, you feel like you have walked into a refrigerator. In the 800 it feels like someone is blowing air at you through a straw. From 20 feet away.The ride is quite harsh too.

All this,as plenty of you might agree,doesnt matter to the 800 buyer.Because these days no one buys an 800 because they like it, they buy it because they cant afford anything else. So if you are thinking of buying this car, but can stretch your budget a bit, go for something else.If you are thinking of buying one second hand, go right ahead and buy one. There are good ones available for as little as Rs.40000.

As for our car, it has been lying idle for the past 3-4 years,and I only take it out for occasional spins.After writing this review I got all nostalgic and went down to take a drive in it. After only a few meters, there was smoke from the hood, and I had to stop and pour water over the engine to prevent it from burning itself up. It seems after all these years of lying around the coolant had somehow leaked away..So much for the reliability :)."

The car has since been sold, a few years ago. On the day she was sold, I took her for one last ride... The faded and large steering wheel seemed perfect for me.. and the well worn gearshift. Couldnt bear to watch the lady who had bought it drive it away.

Why am I writing this ? I dont know. ..

Techie ??

2008-10-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

I hate that term. When its directed towards to me that is.
Just because I work in a software company, people assume I am a "techie". D'uh.
I am just a donkey.
An information handler.
A mere shuffler.
A coolie because the 'masters' cant be bothered to carry the load themselves.

I deal daily with client users , many of whom are more technically proficient than I am. Many of them quite sympathetic too.
Many a times, I am sitting with a few of my ITmonkey friends in the cafeteria and they suddenly slip into tech jargon leaving me staring into space.
The nature of my job does not require me to study things like the workings of complex operating systems' interactions with large databases.
Infact, the only "technicalities" I concern myself during the course of the day are things like which colour to put in which cell of the Excel sheet (or excel shit , depending upon how you look at them) .
You can say that I work for the IuT industry - Information unTechnical.

So Techie ?? Naaah...

More of a Supportie.

Boredom...

2008-10-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Why Boredom? Because I am so good at it. Because I have spent so much time practicing it.
Because boredom is the ITdonkey's constant companion.
This post could have been up earlier, but for my boredom. If I wasnt so bored , I would have even put an exact definition to it.
Is it the feeling when countless hours are spent listlessly tapping away on the work computer ? When trips to the water cooler are frequently called for just to break the monotony ? Or when staring at the road from the terrace seems like an excellent idea of a break ? When mulling over mundane things seems infinitely more interesting (like, How did they come up with these location numbers for the rooms? Did they count from the top floor downwards and from left to right? How big a comb the frizzy haired girl must be using ? )
The most exciting part of the workday is the ride to and fro ? Or the strange sense of elation felt when the count of major bumps encountered on the road matched yesterdays ?

I reached this stage of boredom, about 2 months after I started working as in ITDonkey. Earlier on though, the feeling was smothered by the overwhelming volume of work and the pressure of it which i let myself feel.
But......as i said above, practice is the key, and now boredom and busy-ness learned to live with each other. These days, they even co exist in harmony. Each acknowledges the other's presence, and does not try to overwhelm the other.

IF anyone else out there can put a precise definition to it, do let me know.

My boredom starts as soon as I power up my tools of the trade :

PS : Please ignore the pink biscuits I was having for breakfast on a boring Saturday morning.

The Appraisal - Part 3

2008-09-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

"He has a problem attitude towards seniors..." , says he..

I have chosen this moment to take a status review of my fingernails. "He will have to take the company's value set seriously." It continued.
I feel a strange sense of joy when I discovered that the number fingernails = number of fingers!

I was done with my glaring . It was time that I realised that my fingers were infinitely more interesting.

I had made amply clear that walking into this project is like approaching a wall. You might greet it enthusiastically. Wave and dance and Cheer. Wax eloquently for hours. Waste time in petty conversations. But it still remains a wall.
But there comes a time when you realise its forever going to remain a wall. So I guess TheWall knows that I know that its a wall.

Conclusion : Any discussions on appraisals done post appraisal are a prime example of an Exercise in Pointlessness.

Movie Preview

2008-09-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Switched on the TV today, and saw the trailer for this AWESOME movie, DeshDrohi.
It completely blew me off!!! The movie stars Gracy Singh, Roza, Kamaal Khan and many other extremely talented people.
Manoj Tiwari is sensational. He plays an immigrant Bhaiyya in Mumbai in this film. And ofcourse, gives a riveting performance. Gracy Singh (of Lagaan/Munnabhai fame) , thankfully, acts sensibly and has chosen this fantastic movie as her comeback film.
The gripping storyline mainly dwells on the 'plight' of being a Hindustani, yet not being regarded as one in ones own country.
I do not know when it will be released, but it will surely be one blockbuster of a movie. Cant wait to see that one and a full review!

Behold ladies and gentlemen, the trailer to this awesome movie :

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=bhWatrG4WTI

Do watch it and let me know your reactions..

PS :
Do they have openings for Movie Reviewers anywhere?

The Appraisal - Part 2.

2008-09-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

So it happened. My grading and appraisal for the year. Got the fateful letter on Thursday evening. Didnt know what to make of it at first.
Then the whispering winds told me about the raise others who had started out on the same baseline had received within the team.
And I turned incandescent with rage. I had been shortchanged. Again. By a huge margin.

I used to think most of my adult life that, I rarely let anything provoke me. But a year with this project has shattered that belief.
I might add at this point that mere numbers mean nothing to me. Its the discrimination that gets to me.
Some observations I made :
- Uniformly, girls had an easy sailing.
- Guys which he (Mr.Manager) thought would raise hell have been taken care of.
- Guys which he thinks could be trampled upon without a murmur of protest have been trampled upon. (Like yours truly, who has been mute throughout the year) .

The page on our intranet which announced the increments talked about a certain link elsewhere on the site which would allow us to raise concerns about the appraisals.

But surprisingly, the link was not enabled for me at all! How effing communist is that??!!
Not that it put me off, I immediately dashed off a mail to Comrade HR , with CC to Comrade Manager.
Other people have adviced me to just go and talk to the manager and the HR, instead of going through all the hassles. But in my past experience, things are not taken seriously unless they have an official premise to it.
Watch this space for further developments.

Stocks...

2008-09-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

IT companies have taken a bad beating. America's ripple effect was felt on our stock market, and particularly my company's shares, which I believe fell to its lowest point ever.

When it reached just over half the value it had in January this year a few days ago, I went about telling everyone whom I met to get the shares, as there was no way they were going to fall any further. I even used words like 'deal pipeline' and 'corrective actions' to make people think I am talking sense. Some people fell for my pitch and did indeed invest.

I might add at this point, that I have absolutely no knowledge about stocks. I have never dealt in them, bought them, traded them or even understood them. Whatever I doled out was always on 'gut feeling'.

Ofcourse, what I feel is completely irrelevant, and the stock value plummeted by double digit percentages. Thus, since yesterday evening, I have been telling all I meet : "Yes, I know for sure, this is the lowest the share will ever go".

Even my dad fell prey to my entusiastic advice and went ahead and bought a few of the COs shares. Or Maybe he just didnt want to disappoint someone who had uttered his first words of financial relevance.

Ofcourse, the market responded to my enthusiasm by promptly shaving a few more percentage points of The Stock. This was bad.....the first ever financial 'advice' I gave to a family member resulted in an instant loss :(

I believe, this puts an end to my career as a stock advisor :( .

PS : Why did I do this ?
As an ITDonkey, out of necessity ,I have to keep exploring other career options.
Watch this space for more of my 'explorations' into unchartered waters.

The Dispensable Donkey

2008-09-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

"After delayed appraisals and cut in payouts, India's fourth largest IT service provider, Satyam Computer is reported to have handed pink slips to about 400 engineers and associates in Hyderabad, Pune and Visakhapatnam centers."

"The bad news has come from India's third largest IT outsourcer, Wipro Technologies too. The company has already laid off 1,000 employees, and another 2,000 employees have been put on scanner."

"IBM had reportedly laid off 700 entry-level trainee programmers (ELTPs) across its offices in India. Zensar too had reportedly given pink slips to 2 per cent of it staff, again the company claimed that it was on performance basis."

" TCS planning more layoffs.."

Even my relatively small(ish) co fired around a 100 people last month. And around a 100 more will be, I hear, by the end of this quarter.

PR blabber might indicate that it is a "routine" thing, done after every appraisal cycle. According to them, the low performers are 'released' every year.
I personally know a few of the people who were booted out in my organization, and they were not bad people at all! Most of them were decent folks, with pretty decent skillsets and in some cases, a decent, if not exceptional track record too. Many were having between 1 and 2 years of experience. Some were as high up as Vice Presidents and delivery managers.

Rumours were floating around of the boat going under, a belief reinforced by the fact that a few weeks ago the President, VP and the Operations Controller went to each and every floor requesting everyone NOT to believe in the rumours.

I believe the management enjoys having the people living in the state of fear. If the herd spots an apparently wayward donkey being ruthlessly beaten up by its keepers, others will automatically fall into line, they believe.

If even these people were fired, what hope does a mere ITDonkey have ?
Which brings me to another question : Just how indispensable (or otherwise) is a Donkey to a project ?
I dont know about others, but being in an application support "project" , the effort expended on training a new resource on the 'application' may not make it worthwhile to get rid of existing donkeys. So I am being assured that I am 'safe'. But I am not sure.

Also, as I sit in front of my workstation with glazed eyes, typing unenthusiastically into my old keyboard, I wonder if getting fired from here is really a bad thing.

But being a bonded donkey, the company has also tied a two lakh rupee shackle around my legs. Am I despensible ? Yes.
Will they do away with me ? Probably not.

It has been with great effort that they manage to trick resources into joining, and they are not about to let go of them without a fight.

"Support" Projects are really the mainstay of my company. So I guess they are an assured source of income atleast for the immediate future.
Most of the people I know who were fired were from development projects. So I guess its safe to assume for the time being, that only Monkeys are being fired. Donkeys are being held on too.

But what would I do after getting fired ? I have no special skillsets which would land me another job, not with the market slowdown anyway.
In the absence of Plan B , I think for the time being, I will continue going through the motions.

EDIT : Prat gave me this link the first thing in the morning : Motivational Stuff.

I think I will drop my idea of ever getting to own/run personalized transport :(

No wait.... Do they sell Bicycles on Installments ?

Test Drive

2008-09-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

"Hey, you out of bed yet...? Me and N are going to test drive a car, you coming along ?" , V was yelling into his mouthpiece. How do I know this ? Well, it was me at the other end he was yelling at. Ofcourse, I was up. Enjoying the the simple pleasure of lazily going through the Times of India with a steaming cup of strong yet sweet chai by my side. 'Well...yeah...okay...'.

You see, my friend V happens to be in the market for a compact car. N happens to be a die hard car lover. I happened to be around with no work.

At the designated time, got the 'missed' call , indicating a that others were ready. I stopped looking for pictures of pretty women in the Pune Mirror and reached for the cupboard (closet, for American readers) to change.

Shit! No jeans in sight. Bad sign for someone who happens to have only jeans and neatly pressed office formals. Managed to dig out an long forgotten pair. Glanced at the waist size. 32", it said. Ohh Dear.No wonder I was forced to forget about them. Managed to finally squeeze myself into it.

Also managed to slow my breathing down, because if I did breathe any harder, the massively stressed out button on pants would surely pop out. Managed to stumble out and squeezed myself into N's silved Accent. Nice car that. One of the last of the endearing (to me) classic low slung sedans in that segment. And Hyundai does pay careful attention to quality.

Arrived at the dealership, and soon had the attention of a salesman. Formalities completed, got to inspect a red display Indica Vista.

Now I might clarify beforehand, after more than 8 years of using Tata cars in the family, I am more than a bit skeptical about them. Dont get me wrong, I really like and respect them as a company. But the cars....well... lets just say that they have a long way to go.

Butttt...there was something different about this vehicle. Let me start from the door handles. Gone are the plasticky bits you tuck your fingers under found on all of their earlier vehicles. These were proper grab type ones, making it seem upmarket.
The long, sweeping headlight design is dramatic and eye catching , and so are the integrated indicators just below the RV mirrors. Surprisingly for a Tata, the shutlines were pretty good too. And the paint finish was fantastic.

But the real goodies werent on the outside. It was inside. Man, the car was SPACIOUS. With a capital S in bold. A lot airier than even our Indigo. And thats pretty big on the inside.
Even more stunning were the seats. Big and spacious and very very comfortable, for a car of this category. The two tone interiors were made of good quality plastic, and it was more carefully put together than any of its predecessors. There was an integrated audio system in the topend model. And the driver's seat and steering column was adjustable for height and rake. The red showroom car was shod with 14" tubeless tires on alloys. So far, so good...

Now came the time for a test drive. We were handed over the keys to a black Demo Car, which had..err...Demo Car written all over it. I did the honours by climbing into the driver's seat first, with V next to me and N and the salesguy behind. After I was done fiddling around with the seat, I turned the key on in the ignition....and.... was this really a diesel vehicle ? The small 1.3L diesel is truly good, with no vibrations and/or clatter or even noise creeping inside the car with the AC on.
I slotted into first and released the pleasingly soft pedals, and wow, this was indeed good. The gearbox is good. As in very good. You have no idea how much of improvement I found it over the previous Indixx series. It was fantastic. But it wasnt the best bit.

It was the engine. A slick, smooth operator that it is, you dont get a sudden rush out of it, just a steady wave of acceleration. And it feels faaaaaaantastic. All the gears slotted in with a precision as of yet unseen on any other Tata vehicle. (by me). It even smooths out the road imperfections with a great degree of success which only a Pune based company can build, maybe because it can test it so comprehensively here.

Hence I now say something I never thought I would say about a Tata vehicle :
Its smoooth and refined car. More importantly, it feels good, a trait so far unseen in that company's vehicles.

I earlier said that the Tata vehicles have a long way to go. If this is anything to go by , they really are there, atleast in the Indian context.
Ohh, and it costs five lakh forty three thousand rupees, in Pune. Which is pretty good for a car in this class. And pretty much beyond my means for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion:
Need to get a bicycle.Its within my means. If I cycle to work, I can salvage more old pants. Which saves money. And eventually scrounge together enough to get my own car. A Tata Nano.Second hand. In 2013.

The machine.

2008-09-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

60kb. That was the amount of free space left on my work computer. I mean, on its primary drive. Innumerable disk space/page file warnings werent enough to effect a corrective action from my side. It had slowed down to a crawl, but then, so had I. I just figured that when it stopped working, so would I.

What finally spurred me into action was how extremely slowly [windows]+D and [alt]+[tab] did their stuff. That, coupled with my usual tendency to be doing the wrong things at the wrong moments. Not that I manage to do the right things at the right moments, but that will be the subject of another discussion.

Today, as usual, I was staring intently at pictures+info of some of the 6x4 Tippers available in India. So much so, that I wasnt aware of my manager and HIS manager standing behind me.
It wasnt until I realised that the "Arrey woh Receipt Generation Document ka kya hua ?" coming from somewhere behind me was directed at me, that I realised that I was being observed. The panicky me, immediately hit [windows]+D , which went about doing what it was supposed to do with such agonising lethargy, that my manager had all the time to go through three gtalk chat windows and AMW's (amwasia.com) tipper page.

I decided then and there that after I was done giving ambiguous answers, I would free up space on my hand-me-down machine. Managed to clear around 700 MBs of space just by ridding my desktop of unnecessary stuff. It is now probably the cleanest it has been since it left the factory sometime in 2004.

This is how it looks (briefly,before slacking and resultant clutter set in again) :

When I say it is a hand-me-down, I might add that had passed through some real important hands before that. I found documents like minutes of the lunch meeting with the CEO and old recruitment and deployment targets. It also has some interesting tidbits left behind by its (many) other previous owners. Like a girl's Infy offer letter. Some long dissolved team's mahabaleshwar trip pictures. Loads of fresher resumes.

Now that I have taken some improvement actions about, I might as well take some more. Like shutting down the thing once in a while. Dubbed the 'the server' , my machine hasnt been shut down ever since I restarted it after a week's leave in June.

The Phantom Brake

2008-09-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

Cant get enough of cabbies.. can I ?
Anyway, this is a common occurrence for me. As usual, I am in the cab, barrelling down the highway. This time, in the front seat. A couple of trucks are driving parallel to each other in the front. My cabbie has his eyes focussed, left hand firmly on the horn, right foot buried deep. 30..20...10 feet apart, yet there is seemingly no letdown in the acceleration. I curse under my breath and brace for impact. I slam my right foot hard into the carpet, as if slowing down was in my hands. After what seems like an eternity, my cabbie realises that there is now way he can drive through the truck and decides to slow down. I relax a bit and start breathing again. Slowly, ease my right foot off the imaginary brake. The Phantom Brake.

In another instance, we were once travelling in internal colony roads, early in the morning. Seeing the deserted roads, my driver had got into the highway-mode right in the city. The road was pretty twisty, full of blind turns. I started to get the familiar sensation of being hurled down something. As we approached each corner, I instinctively tensed up, since we were surely going too fast to corner safely. Each time we approached a twisty, I mashed my foot deep into the Phantom Brake, hoping to bring things back into control. I have lost count of the number of early morning joggers/dudhwallahs/compound walls we narrowly missed.

Curiously though, I have observed that none of my fellow passengers suffer from the Phantom Brake Syndrome. People are happily staring out of the window, listening to music, yapping on the phone or dozing. Do let me know if anyone of you also suffer from the same.....

Also, in my experience some of the best maintained cabs are also the worst driven. I actually feel safer in the older, more beaten up variety, since they tend to be driven carefully, lest some of the trim falls off. Many of the vehicles have a surprisingly high figure on their odo. I have been in a vehicle whose odometer read 2,65,000 kilometers, and thats when it had stopped working. Many of the fairly new vehicles also routinely have 1,00,000 kilometers.
One of my best cab experiences though, was in a white DLS model with red(ish) vinyl seats. It had 192,000 kilometers on the clock. And not a squeak or rattle to show it.

Carting...(contd)

2008-09-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

Let me continue my rant on donkey carts.
Cab drivers are a reviled species. And rightly so. You do not commute in them. You cling on for dear life.

I remember one of my first cab rides ever. The time was 6.30 am. We had just done our final pickup and were heading towards the office in Hinjewadi, using the Pune-Bangalore bypass highway. I was seated on the rear seat, sandwiched between 2 ladies on either side (oh dear!). 2 seconds after we hit the highway, the cabbie decided to step on it. I mean, really stepped on it. We were hurtling down the highway at 100+kmph. But that wasnt the worse part. It was his weaving in and out of the lanes, overtaking trucks and other slower vehicles.
Sitting next to a lady, I was instinctively sitting as though I was making an effort to shrink myself (I always do that, dont ask me why, I dont know). Since my (rather big) feet were placed on the transmission tunnel, I couldnt get a proper grip with my feet.
As a result, everytime the car swerved, I desperately groped for something to hold on to, to stop myself from rolling over on either lady.
By the time the 20 or so kilometer journey ended, I had developed a bad ankle pain, from trying to awkardly grip the floor with my feet. If I was stronger, the hump would be squeezed in the middle.

Lesson learnt : The front seat is the best seat. It also has seat belts.

The Donkey® Cart

2008-09-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

No, the Donkeys dont really pull them, but they are used to cart donkeys too and from work. My carts usually include a Tata Indicab or a Tata 1510 Bus.

Though the cab gets me there (and back) quicker, for a myriad of reasons I still prefer the bus. Some of them are because :
1.It seems a lot less call-centre-ish
2.Its a lot less riskier.

Example of a donkey chariot :

The bus I travel in is exactly the same spec, but has a different colour scheme.

Appraisal

2008-09-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

A few week's ago, yours truly got appraised. Not monetarily though (Though its about time, its been 14 months :( ) , just the evaluation.
In one of the "Areas of Development" , he had marked :

"Need to improve on self-drive".

lol! Mr. Manager, ever seen an excited donkey?? Do they ever go "Ohh yeaahh.... I will make 10 pointless trips carrying bricks and sand today, which would result in a few blades of grass for me today EOD ! Yipee!! Life's so exciting!" D'uh.

Predictably, we (me and manager) are not expecting much from this appraisal.

Monkey v/s Donkey

2008-09-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

"it refers to a person only capable of grinding out code, but unable to perform the more intellectually complex tasks of software architecture, analysis, and design."

That's how wikipedia defines a Code Monkey.

"It refers to a person who works in (fairly large) corporations doing the grunt backend processing for clients (IT enabled support), at odd(ish) hours, and forever hoping for better things to come"

Is how I define an IT-Donkey, for the time being.

I look up to Monkeys as more gifted beings than Donkeys. I hope to be promoted to a Monkey someday.
In my tenure as a beast, I havent written a single line of code. Nor have I seen anyone from my team writing code.
Ohh..I do (occasionally) write a couple of queries here and there, which anyone with around 30 days of education can write.

IT-Donkey®

2008-09-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Yep. Thats what I am. An IT Donkey®. Probably one of the hundreds of thousands of them in India. People who work in big offices of IT Companies, doing all the grunt work for their mostly foreign masters.
The kind of (mostly) menial work that the companies realised wasnt really worth spending so much money on getting it done in their home countries. And hence decided to ship it to places like India, where more than willing companies gladly accept it.
That results in people like me, the IT Beasts of Burden. Doing a large amount of work that seems fairly pointless to them, but there is a chance that its important in the overall scheme of things. Just like donkeys being used to ferry large amount sand/bricks/mud etc. at old time construction sites.
I feel just like the above donkey. He cannot sit back and marvel at the creation that is unfolding in front of him. Ferry things all day long without even remotely being interested in the proceedings.
I have been an ITDonkey® for more than a year now. If you havent already guessed, the experience has left a fairly sour taste in my mouth.

Life

2008-09-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Actually, the "Life" of an IT-Donkey® is a bit of an oxymoron. Thats because they dont have any. Atleast....This one doesnt.
Life can be defined in a few keywords :
Sleep,
Food,
Office,
Online,
Err...thats it.
Colleagues at work ask me (usually on fridays) ask me Where am I going on weekends... And my reply is 'Online'. That usually stumps some of them, for a moment, but most usually laugh it off. Nobody believes that going online and doing nothing is indeed what I do on most weekends.