Being Myself ....

Sometimes, I wonder what is being ‘I’, what I am? Silly isn't it. But I don’t know the answer really. And I believe, to have a precise answer for this is utmost important. But even if I get an answer, who is going to testify and approve the sanity? So what should be done? Who can help me with my self-realization trauma? Can my family members help? Can my colleagues at the work-place help? Can my friends (I am short of this rare commodity already) help? Of-course they would love to comment and endorse strong views over me, for being judgmental comes naturally to all the human beings. People love to judge people. But … Ok, let it be, before I get diverted further, the ‘question’ here is how will I get the answer to my ‘question’? Not sure.

Theoretically speaking, who am I? A ‘software professional’ who believes in having the feet firmly stuck to the ground; who knows only one way of survival that is ‘hard work’; who personally and mutely rubbishes factors like ‘luck’, ‘fate’ etal; who hates boasting about self-achievements and absolutely loves cribbing about self-issues and problems (only superficially. Because I am seriously interested in a self-introspection here, hence trying the best to be truthful… pardon me.); who loves maintaining a low profile and concentrate more on walking the talk; who hates judging the people around and plainly ignores judgmental views (being judgmental is preposterous and barbaric, a symbol of illiteracy. Call these views ‘Taliban’ic, I would still take that … amen!! And because you did so, you are judgmental … ‘Catch-22’fied?); who occasionally is extremely low with confidence and self-esteem (so low that sometimes even the blood group changes from ‘B+’ to ‘B-‘ … funny. Cheapster PJ.); who hates getting angry, forget about a public or even private display of anger, absolutely 0 decibel levels here; who is a strong believer of the theory that the most difficult animal to be tamed is a human being – no matter what happens, a perverted mind will remain so vis-à-vis a person with beautiful thoughts will remain so; who believes that ‘piece of mind’ if traded is always cheaper at any price; who plainly loves his family and will forever – family is above everything; who is absolutely lazy and extremely introvert at times; who takes time identifying a bonding with people; who believes that every individual has something good in him or herself and one should always try to concentrate and take a cue only from those good and great qualities and ignore the shortcomings.

With all the crap jotted above, the only conclusion that I could draw is that it is inconclusive to precisely categorize and define myself. And surely, I need some ‘judgmental’ external views for refinement and reaching a conclusion … amen!!

This one is tricky …

Well this is actually the trillionth time that I have written this line – ‘This is actually the trillionth time’ in the mode forcefully penning down something again. And believe you me, this one is real tricky. Though I have to say a lot of other stuff regarding – my terrible times searching a new job, me getting into the dream job (my current employer), then me enjoying the awesome aura and ambiance at the new workplace, then me being rated (somehow – miracles do happen) as the ‘best employee’ a couple of times (that might also blatantly justify my being away from my blog for such a long time) and blah, blah, blah …. But let me not deviate from the austerity of this one.

This one is real tough. Tougher than the mother of all examinations the CAT (aka the Common Admission Test) (this is a subjective view so ‘fill in the blank’ as per your whims and fancies.). And the worst part, there are no coaching programs available for this, no online help or otherwise. Not to mention the immense pressure from the parents and the beloved relatives. And everything is so secondary with this; can’t enjoy my beloved IPL or the Grand Slam or even a pity Movie for that matter (Pirates 4 is already in from a few weeks now.). That is exactly why I am planning to post this crap today so early morning (or late night for that matter).

The irony however lies in the fact that I cannot actually explicitly explain this here and invite fresh trouble from the sundry readers (may it be that you have been my best buddy since long – no matter still). But still I want to categorically announce here that something wrong is happening with me, something blasphemous that is breaking the trivial (25 years old) monotony and I am terribly not liking it at all. So in case any abnormalities in my behavior are observed, then I wish to be pardoned for all that. Please bear with me.

Now, also to make any sense out of all this crap, let me try to share a very known short story that is exactly similar to the way I am feeling right now. This is a story of a cute little young bunny that used to work hard at the farms to fetch the best of the red carrots all for himself and only himself, then after a hard day at the farms he used to roam around freely, enjoying his time with other fellow bunnies during the evening. But this was not liked by the evil old bunnies and they planned a trap to get hold of this cute bunny. The old bunnies had their own complex mechanisms to create traps which were unbreakable and beyond the capabilities of the cute bunny. Hence he was trapped and put under a lifetime house arrest. And then he lived UNhappily ever after ….

End of the story ....

There are certain things that are just not acceptable at a workplace .....

This post was not planned! But is an outcome of outrage. Seriously. Is there or not a limit to everything? Seriously. And yes .. so, is a limit to my cautious as well. There are certain things that are just not acceptable at a workplace, even if you go by the least professional standards (and of course we are not talking about the PSUs of India). I mean if you want to categorize unacceptable workplace behaviors into conduct-levels and go by examples in the way that follows, this the-crime-under-discussion will fall in the category of the gravest possible.

Level-1-breach-of-conduct *

Occurs every time you take the official stationary back home (remember that office notepad which is now your landline-take-a-note-pad at home or that bunch of pens that proved to be handy in the recent family-get-together-celebration-lotto game?)

Level-2-breach-of-conduct *

Occurs every time you use your desk land line phone to make calls to your friends during the office hours. Or every time when you bribe the cab driver to alter the route and drop you at some other "disclosed" location. 

Level-3-breach-of-conduct *

Occurs every time you take those prolonged sutta or coffee breaks just to discuss (or even watch the day games in the cafeteria) the cricket match India played against Sri Lanka (Having already been registered in the record books for playing the most number of matches against each other, these encounters now look like any other List A match played in the country side. I will praise them some other day.) and your communicator shows 'Away' or 'Be Right Back' status message for almost half of the working day. 

Level-4-breach-of-conduct *

Occurs every time when you submit those FAKE bills claiming for medical or leave travel allowances. Or the FAKE rent receipts with an exaggerated claim amount when you actually own the house (and in fact have tenants already paying the rent to you).

*[Please note that this segregation is not a part of some management gimmick (like say a CMMI Level x or something) but something absolutely fictional. Please feel free to suggest changes to this before I file a claim to register it as an industry standard (LxBOC Standard ... or some other fancy name). And also note that just because I have listed these different ways of mis-conduct, it does not mean that I have actually gone to the level of experimenting with all these.]

But this the-crime-under-discussion hardly falls under any of the mentioned categories. And to my understanding requires a lot of guts (informal) and innovation (formal). Now without any further annoying delay, here is what the-crime-under-discussion is, straight from the crime scene:

No no! not an overdose of marijuana. Also not a case of work killing an employee. It is what it looks like - plain simple sleeping in the office. If you are already doubting that I have faked this image (inspired by the hardworking editors (Image Editors) found at the award winning news channels) to cook up a breaking news , here are a few more untampered snaps:

(Had this had been only the case of a silent sleep and there had been no monotonous snoring chords accompanying this act and had I myself was not feeling like sleeping and thus feeling envy - my left over self esteem never allowed me to take a shot at this; I would have never have raised any voice over this.) 

Now if some of you are already wondering and analyzing all the possible permutations of how is this a possibility and what would have had happened if only I would have tried to bring this matter to light (Yes, I did that after the 'n'th occurrence of this event, where n is a sufficiently large number.): 

But nothing much happened and it turned out that public rage on issues like these is confined only to Bollywood flicks (and now a days, only to Tollywood movies) and what I got was a universal snub:

And when everybody else was least bothered with this, I was convinced that this is a case of 'mass-bribery-to-influence-the-jury'. Now even till this instant I was not in a mood to publicize this act and kept faith in the system and believed that this act will be considered as a sever behavioral misconduct in the office premise and will hamper the annual appraisal claim for the convict.  

But as the fate unfolded it did happened that the convict turned out to be the 'star performer' in the team and got a staggering 43% pay-hike (I don't know which/what calculations led to this figure) and as a reward for my misconduct and unacceptable behavior (trying to hinder the 'sleeping patterns' of the star performer), my appraisal has been kept on a halt since the last 6 months and my confirmation has been delayed till any further notice.

More than awed by how the things unfolded, I was in sheer desperation to figure out what the hell went wrong or right. One of my close (professional) friends, who, somehow felt the unrest and discomfort I was going through came to me and said: 

"The convict and our manager like the same brand of scotch, like the same brand of cigarettes and the same smoker zone, like the same bar nearby, like chicken tikka .... and you my dear friend are a non smoker, non drinker, vegetarian fool ...."

So !!!!

now I know that there are certain things that are just not acceptable at a workplace - you cant afford to be a non smoker, non drinker, vegetarian, all at the same time.

The Maestro Cabbies – Part 1

Because, fortunately, despite of my absolute uselessness and unparalleled technical illiteracy, I have a job at hand; and because I am 'differently-abled' when it comes to driving skills, I had to opt for the company transport arrangement (not a facility mind you, even calling it an 'arrangement' is an 'understatement'). It is not that I have something against the cab drivers or the company verticals but it is because this service taught me that some things know no limits at all, (they remain the same no matter what may happen), that I am mentioning the secrets of its success out here.

I was actually so impressed with the hospitality and professionalism of the cabbies that I decided to research a little bit on this. The cab service is a tender cum lottery based system (actually the 'weight' of payment 'down-under' is the only criteria) that decides the vendor. Now irrespective of whoever the vendor is, the cabbies never change (they manage their internal poaching, resignations and hiring meticulously within themselves). They are very fond of the company and feel like home while working (even though the employees using the service feel like hell). Also not to mention … okk this description might take the entire post making the whole purpose of writing the post obsolete. So here I have the actual exclusive footage of the most experienced cabbie 'on the floor' …. Presenting Kalloo the cabbie amongst cabbies, the king of jams (traffic wale jams) and the GTA Vice City male lead in physical and biological form:

Now our great man here is a master of his game. If he is the one who has to pick you up, then you are in the safest pair of hands. Whatever may happen, he will ensure that you get a half-day off in the office – so good he is with his mathematics that he never ever hits the deadline of reaching the office. Let me make it more clear with an example – If suppose you have to reach the office by 8:30 AM for some urgent meeting and he is the one going to pick you up, then not only will he wake you up by shooting missed calls after every 5 mins starting from 5 AM in the morning, but also he will ensure that you wait for him under the scorching sun at the pick-up point making you enjoy the chilly summer time. As soon as he enters the adjacent block, you can identify that Kalloo is coming to pick you up; that is the charisma of his deadly car stereo playing some 'hot-Haryanvi-numbers' at non-permissible decibel levels. Few of them are really good – '(free of cost)-(piss-off)' tablets. Let me list them down so that those of you interested can download the stuff (It was surprisingly easy to find these on yt, it seems they have a healthy fan following):

· Are re meri jaan hai radha, blab la

· Medam beth bulero mein, pesal tere khatar layaya 

(Kalloo himself helped me with the lyrics of this one)

Also, believe it or not, he sometimes actually wears a shirt or some clothing as well! Now to get an idea of the impeccable communication skills here is an excrept of an actual conversation between an employee [EMP] (who volunteered only on the condition that his/her name would not be disclosed – Kalloo [KAL]* has friends in political cadres (synonym for criminal organizations) after all):

[*KAL is an alias being used for Kalloo, not some intentional hindi word, even sarcasm should have a limit to it!]

4:45 AM, Monday Morning: KAL shoots his first missed call.

5:00 AM: 2nd missed call.

5:10 AM: EMP calls back –

EMP: हेल्लो, कौन बोल रहा है?

KAL: अरे हम बोल रहे हैं, कल्लू. 
आपका पिचक उप है ना? हम आ रहे हैं ८ बजे, तैयार रहिएगा.

EMP: यार अभी तो ५ बजे हैं, हद है.

KAL: अरे हद क्या है, हमे बोला गया की पिचक उप है तो कंफिर्म कर रहे थे. 
आप चौड़े क्यों हो रहे हैं.

EMP: क्या? तमीज से बात करो यार .. तुम ...

KAL: ऐसा है फेले आप तमीज सीखिए फिर हमे बोलना.

EMP: मैं तुम्हारी कंप्लेंट करने वाला हू. ८:३० बजे की पिक्क उप के लिए सुबह ५ बजे 
कॉल कर रहे हो. 

KAL: हाँ कर दो कोम्प्लैन और देख लो किसका क्या बिगड़ता है. 
व्हो ओखला वाले शर्मा जी का क्या हल हुआ था पता है ना आपको.

EMP: अरे यार नाराज़ मत हुआ करो, जब तुम्हारी मर्ज़ी हो तब आ जाना.

So this way the obedient employees keep coming to the company working their way out, just to be dropped back (though delayed by an hour or two .. so what? Are you going to file a complaint?) later in the day by Kalloo etal.

True Achievement

It is a story never told before, story of an individual who achieved what he wanted successfully, coming over (not overcoming) all odds. This is the story of Me.

When Me was a child, it never looked like he had shades of such a talent. It was only after the schooling that the impeccable talent was unleashed and Me started building up on his gift.

The first time it came into the public eye was the summer of 2003. Against all odds, as a surprise for all well-wishers Me came out with what was unexpected. He cracked the great engineering entrance examination. Err .. not the exam but he cracked all the chances to get through with the superb and immaculate uselessness of his. Not only did he cracked the coveted entrance examination but also the other potential options making it absolutely sure that nothing comes to his way when it is about excelling in his gifted art of uselessness.

After the compromise, next was the continual cracking of the other minor hurdles - examinations and tests. But like any other talented individual, Me too had some downs in his journey and unfortunately did succeeded in a few of the hurdles.

Again he showed the signs of his greatness when he cracked almost all his chances to get through any of the campus recruiters, until finally a glitch led to him making into one of them.

As they say, talent cannot be kept hidden for long, Me too came back strongly to ensure that he ruins all his chances to get into quality work for the living and started up with the back office service industry crap. But that proved only the beginning.

The latter half of 2008 can be regarded as the peak of his achievements, when he not only successfully screwed the job but also yet another chance to get into quality education. By this time he was so good with his art that he could almost crack anything, anytime.

Now the year 2010 and he is simply the best, having already cracked almost 250 odd interviews without being penalized with a single offer. Discussions are on to regard Me as a record holder and honoring him with the life time achievement award for being useless.

We wish him all luck and may he continue achieveing failures in life. Amen!

In(terror)view Strike ... # 247

Having been kicked off the venue at JCN (name has been tampered), I was heading towards this great banking firm. With low-confidence at its lifetime best, I was finding it difficult to locate the venue. Thanks to the kind hearted, ever helpful rickshaw-pullers at Gurgaon, they made sure that I never reach the destination unless I use their coveted over paid service. After 45 mins of tussle I reached the venue.

The tower was an awesome 16 floored building with lush green surroundings. Awed with the gigantic fish pond at the reception, my day dreams were broken by the shout from the security personnel. I was thoroughly examined with metal detectors, physical-assault-on-privacy check and it was only after the backpack was submitted at the reception and the mobile phone as well because it had a functional camera, that I was cleared off.

Finally I did manage to get to the introductory presentation though late by around half an hour. They were already discussing the salary and pay packages. 30 odd people (the candidates were already screened via telephonic rounds and resume short listing) accommodated in a small room with space for only 20 of us. By the time I got adjusted and was set to listen to the coordinator it was all over and the first round, a written aptitude test was announced.

Round 1: The Aptitude Test

Absolutely sure of my technical incapability, the immaculate doubt was hovering over the aptitude level as well now. The test was an OK level visual reasoning MCQ, time limit – 30 mins. 15 mins gone and I had only worked out some 9 odd problems of 30. The girl sitting next to me was already on the next sheet, solving 18th or 23rd or 25th or who knows the 30th question already. The well perfected examination jitters came in to aggravate the situation. I rushed through the remaining problems as the test commenced. We were asked to take a coffee break till the tests may get evaluated.  Good time to check out the competitors. Confident faces chatterbox, peacock shoed guys and sophisticated, mascara laden, painted girls a combination not very uncommon in the NCR region. The only thing I was sure of was that was a mismatch. Stained shoes and strained clothes because of the traveling under the beating sun of June. By the time I was low enough to run off the place without waiting for the results, the coordinator appeared and started calling the names. 3 gone, 5 gone, 10 gone, 15 gone .. 25 gone ….. I was not on the list. I knew it, I do not deserve to be here, it was a waste of time and I knew it.

‘All the names that were called just now can leave for the day. They have not cleared the written test. Rest of the people, please wait for the next round.’

Hmm  … Unexpected surprise.

Round 2: The Technical F2F

I was the third of the five people to be interviewed. The panel consists of an old man (OM), a not so old man (NSOM) and a young woman (YW) (women are always young, you bet).

OM: Please take a seat and tell us something about yourself.

Me: (Yaa, right. I am a loser by birth and absolutely a champion of my art, can mess up anything anywhere. Don’t ask me to talk about myself, coz I hate myself.) I am a computer science professional (whose utopian dream of getting into an MBA college of choice has been tattered and here I am, the great loser, seeking a little mercy from you all.) with a 3 years of experience (3 years, fish! Its actually not more than 3 days, I never worked in the office) on web application development, Microsoft technologies.  Completed my schools from Jaipur and (then lost my way and then) college from Noida. Father is a govt. official, mother a home maker and younger brother (who must hate to get associated with me) is pursuing engineering (from an actual college, not a gimmick, like I did).

NSOM: What is a private constructor in C#?

ME: (OMG, what is this? Never heard of this, let go attempting an answer for this) Yaa, private constructor is a constructor with a private access modifier.

NSOM: (‘very funny, even my driver has a better answer’ kind of look) That’s fine, what is the use of a private constructor?

ME: (Hang me!) I am not sure, never worked with them.

OM: What are the things one must keep in mind while writing an application with C#?

ME: (I never kept anything in mind; I just started coding … thats why? I always knew I was missing on something. ) Apart from the syntactical checks … (intercepted)

YW: The IntelliSence is there to take care of that, what else?  (Say something to prove that you have some gray matter up there.)

ME: Yaa, so we should make sure that the code is a managed code that is under control of the Common Language Runtine and …..

YW: You really need to brush up your technical skills, we will give you a call if something positive comes out, you can leave as of now. (Thanks for wasting our time, get the heck out of here and never come back. You loser, even my maid is technically stronger than you are. Get your face out of my sight!!)

ME: Thanks a lot.

Same old story and I was at my best as ever ….