Silent Ramblings

'Eudosin d'orheon korhuphai te kai pharhagges'
'Prhones te kai charhadrhai.'

ALCMAN. (60 (10),646.)

(The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and caves are silent.)

Starting lines of Poe's short story Silence - A Fable. Reminded me of my blog. Its been as quiet and calm out here as the lines suggest. There has been no zing to spice up any reminiscences to mention here as of now. A few people have been wondering where i have disappeared. To them, i say, in the words of Joe Strombel - "Give me a scoop, and i will give you a blog."

Its been boring these past few days. Nothing much has been going around. Almost had a near 'tryst with peanuts' again. Thankfully, recovered quickly with timely medication and a day off from work. Apart from that, the last excitement was in the shape of a lame fresher's party given by the company to welcome new hires. Obviously gone are those days when such parties used to be fun. Now, it was a necessity to get the party 'done and dusted' in order to boost employee morale. Still, I consider it a change for the better given the situation over the past few months. Some nominees have gotten around in trying to address this problem, and events are enroute to see that it gets implemented.

Oh and yeah, given that "the day ended" on 13th Sep in Jeetender 'badminton' style (read as Dhall gaya din ...), we celebrated with a trip to the sparkling vineyards of Spain. And i always thought the men fought in Sparta, while the women led combat in the Amazons.

The most buzzing thing these days is sports - Cricket and T20 - managed to catch Zim 'massacare' the Aussies (though not without some drama) - and then India's late night fight back to win a dramatic match and maintain a 100% world cup record against our neighbours. As Rameez Raja quoted, "Can India-Pakistan matches ever not be without romanticism?"
Champions League is back on track this month on, and i cant wait for Rooney-Ronaldo to return back to Porto and Roma and blast off. ManU are ticking me off by slender goal-margin wins. Its time to cut loose.
TT fever also has gripped the office. With a tourni likely to kick off soon, its time i spent practising getting my smashes on the table rather than at my opponent. It brings a new dimension to 'hitting below the belt' tagline.

I intend to watch 'Memento', considering rave reviews from fellow mates. If it does turn out to be a cult movie as they say it is, i'll be pleased. Anything to break this boredom from silence. And when i say silence, its not as if its got boring and dead all around. Its just about breaking away from the monotony, and trying to do something different, something interesting, something challenging, something exciting, something fruitful. Not all of them together, but probably even one will do.

Till i find a more suitable topic to lambast about, adieos !

Pigs with Rocket Launchers

Felt like taking a break from all the sombre stuff. So here is a post plagiarized (again) from a friend (a college junior and sister-school junior as well), who decided not to put the post up on his blog becuase of acute paranoia. He feels when applying to company for the post of VP/CEO etc, the company might perform background checks like the CIA and rake up demented dirt on him. And all this future planning when he is still in the 3rd year of engineering ...

But since i liked the post, i decided to put it up here with due acknowledgements. Most of it is verbatim, though i have added a couple of sprucers to it on my own. Here goes ...

So I came down to think about it. I do like Pigs. If I could really get down to making a comic with Pigs who had Rocket Launchers.
Characters and props I would need:

1. The SuperPiggy

• Simple Pig from the village.
• Wields a rocket launcher.
• Meets the WisePig who transfers all his wisdom to the SuperPiggy.
• So the SuperPiggy is extremely wise.

2. SuperPiggy's Love

• With beauty that none of the other female pigs posses.
• With a heart so pure.
• Our SuperPiggy is bound to fall for her.

3. An evil Pig

• Thinking up of a name is so tough.
• Suddenly I am filled with a lot of respect for all comic creators around the world.
• Okay I cant really think up of a name, but here s what he'd (or she :D) be like.
• Okay she.
• A female pig who has the power to draw male pigs towards her and brainwash them.
• Her piggish sensuality has left all male pigs wanting more.
• With her super piggy abilities (what evil powers would we like to give her?) and evil heart she has been able to make the biggest Pig army of the world.
• Well every Pigess (I daresay?) has a weakness. I need some help with this point people!

4. So the setup

• Okay how about a Japanese village as the perfect environment?
• We can then teach our pigs all kinds of Japanese "Ninja" Tricks.
• Our SuperPiggy can wear a black band on his forehead and go HAAAOINK! Just like all the ninjas do while fighting.

So now i need to think up details to continue this comic strip like Kekta Kapur continues her serials. My friend tells me people have already started creating the images for the strip. I can see where the TRPs are headed. Obviously we don't expect to do a Calvin and Hobbes. But dear paranoid friend of mine. Even company CEOs read Calvin and Hobbes. If Bill Watterson thought like you did, where would humor go?

The Portrait - Musings of AAA batteries personified ...

I am sick.
And I am tired.
Not of my own life though.

But of every Tom, Dick and Harry blabbering away like a "AAA" battery on a topic they have no inkling about (i hope this particularly quoted sarcasm doesn't go waste on the people intended, though i doubt since they have limited comprehension of what black humor might be), trying to make a tea-party out of it. Well it made me change one of my gibberish mood swings to this - "Money people earn for work they don't do ..." - and then probably go on to act as if the work got done because of them. Well, its not hard to put 2 and 2 together for people who inter-visit 'common' blogs often.

Well, i don't want to harp on these petty issues (oops - i really meant people)

All my frustration apart, i do not deny a couple of teeny-weeny truths probably there are in all these writings and stuff. But there has to be a way of putting it effectively across, without making it sound so gung-ho and repetitive and blatantly obscene. Take for instance the chai-waala dhaba postings by Dingy and AJ. I couldn't kind of really find one different from the other. No hard feelings AJ. But man, get your creativity going dude. I am sure you can phrase out the same thing in a much better manner using a decent (if not better) idea.

/* PS with Edits */
I am sorry AJ - it was NOT meant to be a personal attack on your creativity what-so-ever. I simply beg you to use your creative talents on something which is not so trivial. Reading the same issue day in and day out with half the junta not knowing the correct info and trying to provide their 2 cents on everything pissed me off. I apologize if what i meant actually came out incorrectly (which i accept it did when i re-read it) and i caught you in the line of my frustration firing. That is what blogging is meant for :)

I cant respond to comments right now due to some proxy issues on this stupid network.
As i told you, dil pe mat lena - lets put together our heads much more "creatively" and try and loosen Mr. AS of some of his hard(ly) earned money during lunch on wednesday ...
/* End of PS with Edits */

And apart from these 2 blog posts, there were a couple of others, but too insignificant for me to mention here ...

All in all, i decided to fall back to my only form of creativity - poetry writing. I had ended up reading one of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories called "The Oval Portrait". So i decided to use it as my theme to fire up a few lines by myself which could probably describe the situation in a much more positive/optimistic outlook rather than the mundane-sombre-deadbolt approach people try to take. I personally don't look down upon my chai stall. In-fact, i consider it to be a piece of art. As opposed to the contrary notion of a chottu chai waala, tea-preparation techniques can be vocational in themselves. I am sure many wouldn't agree with the lines crafted below, in that light - but to them i say - who cares - i blog because i like to - "i blog because i think" (OK, thats stolen from Descartes, but he is not going to turn in his grave for plagiarizing it)

So here goes my le' imbecile. Without any visible firm bashings like the others !!
For people who cannot link the artist, or the exhibition, or the lady-love to known events and surroundings - well shame on you !!
I truly think that with a little effort and vodka (reference: Unni) you will understand it. There are a couple of interpretations, i as a poet thought out.
Good luck ...

THE PORTRAIT

Oh ! What a painter he was, an artist so fine
He could sketch from gothic frames, to a mural with intricate design
Never did art exceed its greatness so, in that era
Those pictures were more real than Gods Zeus or Hera

Once to the Paris Art Exhibition he went
where he fell in love with an angel, from heaven sent
He married her and brought her home
with a single desire to paint her, standing next to the Elyssian Dome

She was a maiden unparalleled in beauty and form
to be challenged only by the genius' artistic storm
Never did she like his involvment to become so deep
that he completely forgot her, even in his sleep
But a gentle, loving, obedient wife she was,
so she allowed herself to be portrayed for his cause

To capture that face on paper, he would like a madman work
never would he budge from his seat, though the night shadows around him lurk
For weeks together with the eisel in front of her spread
she sat in the dark high turret, a single window overhead
But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which stretched from day to day
that he shut himself up, keeping even his loved ones at bay

He could not see the dark, despaired health and spirit of his bride
who even in this time of gloom, yet had never cried
From the ardour of his work he never rose
to see the shattered, dying countenance of the lovely lady he chose

When finally his masterpiece had been completed
and the bristles of the paint brushes with the oil color reserves had depleted
then did he rise to admire his art, his child
none could achieve such greatness, even with an imagination so wild

"This is life indeed" , looking at the portrait he said
and he turned around suddenly to regard his beloved - SHE WAS DEAD

Say "NO" something to "They" Uncle ...

It seems like this blog is turning out to be a transcript of my proceedings in the office on a regular (daily i think) basis.

Who said working wasn't supposed to be fun. According to a certain Mr. 'They', you should always enjoy working. Thanks to him, the 'day' never goes without some spice and spruce to it.

Take for instance yesterday. Sun-Tzu would have been put to shame over his Art of War book. A master of cornering people and then ripping them apart shamefacedly is somthing our Mr. 'They' does exceedingly well. We were on a conference call with him for a continuous 3 .5 hours, and the ultimate takeaway of the whole meeting was - "So Guys, Hold on. Learn to say NO".

First thought in our mind - can we say No to your "gyaan" and have our dinner. Or, can we say No and move on with the scheduled piece of work, which otherwise could be completed without YET another night at the call center (oops i meant office - though doesnt make much difference - we are after all "Culturally" a BPO company).

We had a long series of lectures over 'incompetent' communication skills, time management, project management, our inability to put our foot down and say NO to client requests, push them back blah blah blah. There were 9 subpoints highlighted by our team where we thought we were facing issues. It so happened that Mr. 'They' blasted us on our own issues. And when he asked - "You with me?", we were supposed to say "NO" ???

The high point of the call came when he asked our manager if he could do a particular piece of work. We were so into the NO philosophy by this time that after much deliberation, we were put into the classic Calvin situation as shown below.



Considering it to be a trick question, we felt we knew the answer - yet another Calvin classic to illustrate the situation

And then the answer from our side was - NO. We cannot do what you are asking us to do. But, it truly was a trick question, and we got blasted once more for saying a No where we were not supposed to say it.

Coming out of those stressful 200 minutes was a relief - but whatever said and done, throughout the night our team continued to be in a good spirits often joking about the NO factor.

We named our manager "Dr. No" henceforth. And the team singing in Daler Mehndi style - "No no - no no - no re - no re - no re ...". So the 2 important lessons we learnt yesterday were that - first, Pinpoint who is 'they' (else it would give him a complex) when you accuse someone and secondly, Say "NO" something to "They" Uncle ...

No more "Lee"way ...

17th of August will probably be recognized henceforth as the saddest day, a Black Friday, in the history of the 3rd largest American P&C Insurance company, and for our project team as well.

No, we did not screw up the project (whats done is done - it is beyond us now to screw it up further)
No, we did not mess up getting an extension.

What then could be so catastrophic you ask?

Well, attrition (due to work pressure, tough bosses etc.) finally caught up with our project team, and one of our most "crucial" members resigned.

No, not here at my workplace - but - guess what - at the client side ...

Its now doing the rounds in the entire office that our project will probably live in the annals of the firm as the first to lose an analyst from the client team. Well the fault is not (completely) ours. The poor fellow probably succumbed to the blastings from his boss just about as much stick we keep receiving from ours. However, Indians, even with all the cribbing, are known to bow down and slog in with late nights and weekends if required. That perhaps is not the culture I expect in a US office, where you come in early morning and leave early evening. Our poor boy it seems was pushed to the limit and veered off the edge.

It is not that i would miss him because he was so dear to me - even though i haven't met him till now, i feel this bond with him. He brings humor to the calls, and with all his antics, keeps the meetings interesting. More importantly he was always made the fall guy and held accountable for all the mistakes anybody did on the team. I say this as the bare naked truth. Yes, we are highly indebted to him for soaking this pressure up on our behalf as well. Okay, he was at fault most of the times as well, but then give the poor guy a break. We all make mistakes. As long as they are not made daily and you can cover them.

I have seen the guy go from pathetic to awsome in over the 7 months that i have been interacting with him. What started out as a communication problem, seems to have been solved. I have lowered my bar and now think like him and talk in his language (which is a shock to my manager and team-mates). It is difficult. At times exasperating. But the joy of finally knowing you have made a point across makes you happy. You receive your share of taunts - "He understands what you are saying - you must be really retarded for that to happen".

Over a few weeks, i started maintaing logs of our meeting notes. If you thought notes about the project, you are dumb. Your just not 'thinking' at the right level. Notes about the amazing one liner the guys keeps throwing around, that he thinks are superbly intellectual, unknown to him that our team here in the office is on the floors, with their stomachs aching with laughter.

Take for instance the comment on him using a procedure "Funk Merge" to extract some data (which ultimately is so screwed that its taking weeks for his boss to re-extract it himself). For the uninitiated in SAS, there is NO procedure that goes by that name. Atleast not known to us lesser mortals. Given the way he talks and behaves, it was a shock to us to know that he had his "own personal laptop" and "drove a car with bluetooth in it". Whatever said and done, the guy was doing good data quality checks. I mean, OK, if you pull the obviously wrong data in the first place, it shouldn't be difficult to point it out.

We were also stunned by his "I know how CART works comment". Its a complex tool used for profiling/regression etc. which most users still haven't had a hang on, while we, who are practically experts on it, dont feel as confident as he did. He used words like "backfilling" and "re-engineering". He was training people in his company (i cant even guess wildly on what), working late hours, and even weekends. It seemed like the rubber band had stretched a bit too much. The point of no return had come.

Towards the end (i mean just before he resigned), even his manager had started taunting him publically in front of us. Attributing all errors to him, making him write explanatory notes to the VP, perform "sniff tests" and so on. The poor guy always took it in good fun, but he did realize that all his boss cared was for meetings and presentations, and not for him.

On Thursday, when he finally broke the news, i personally was in tears. My team was happy thinking it would be easier for the work to proceed in his absence. But they did not realize that the one link that maintained the axe from falling on our heads directly from the client boss was this guy. For him, he felt that the upcoming presentation to the Board of Directors would take a backseat with his resignation. The VP would have to bring in a new fresher. After all, He was the "Subject Matter Expert" in his own little nichest of niche domains.

In a speech, dedicated to my client counterpart, that Amit made to him over the phone, he called him our "One point anchor".
Come 31st August, we will miss you old pal. There will be no more comic jokes, no musings, no fun, no laughter. There will be No more 'Lee'way for us henceforth at the client side.