Good riddance to bad rubbish!

All those miserable moments when I was pissed to death with ZD are all now nothing but some silly old memories! But there are SOOOO many of them :-))

Her ability to sniff out food, pig out when someone else was paying for a treat, to yell at Sunil when he went to ask her contribution for a team treat, her brazen IMing with one person about person's friend! Telling everyone about her MASSIVE workload and everyone else's slack!!

Well - she was lucky that she managed to succeed at Ajeeb-O-Gareeb thanks to AK and Venky's God complexes. They had a thing for the US team and I was tarnished by association. And, of course, I didn't help my own cause. But then, if someone has decided that they won't see anything good in a person or situation, they will find faults!

She manipulated and plotted to get a position of power but alas the reporting changed and she knew she could not fool people who are veterans of this field.

So what is my learning?

- Trust your instincts
- Run at the first (if not that then at least sign 3) of trouble
- Job hoppers - hop for a reason and usually they are at places they have fooled initially but when the game is up they can't deliver the goods, take a paycut, so they wrap up and find another place to con.
- Never align yourself to one side in a political situation. You are hated only by association.

How Ajeeb-O-Gareeb works -

A friend of an enemy is an enemy
An enemy of an enemy is a friend

So even though I was already doing all the work a certain prized position entailed, I passed it up - saying it is not needed. Then I was stabbed by a pretend-friend and boom I am rendered useless. All that plotting and manipulating - if those silly STUPID managers had focused their brains on something else, it would have served the larger cause. But nah! you collect all the loser and give then fancy titles and see how humpty dumpty falls!

Catching up

Thanks all ye kind people who have been asking me about my blog! I know it's been ignored for a while but I never planned it that ways.

So the top happenings since my last few posts -

1. Moved closer to office so no more commute. I miss that at times.
2. Earned my first stripes at new place - helped with a release
3. Did audio and video for a product- so so so so much fun! ID meets TW - wah wah!
4. That horrid lady goes back to her old base - there was such a collective sigh of relief at Ajeeb-O-Gareeb. Yes, yes, curious people from Poona - I will tell you more about this later.
5. Bought a house finally!

PS - thanks to that Moron who told ZD about this blog and her posts. Now I miss all my faltu conversations with her.

Lazy contributers ...

I knocked off the lazy bums off the blog. Rolz expressed interest and soon she will have something about some painful people she had the extreme misfortune of meeting and working with ;-)

Enjoying the commuting

It has been a while since I have been using the official mode of transport and this is to report the latest ...

I have no idea how a cab driver's brain operates, really. The specimen of the subspecies who drives us around is truly a masterpiece.

He loves being obtuse ... it's like a religion for him or maybe it's his driving force. His moods and the current playlist govern our safety and at times I am sure even our mortality. You know about his eclectic taste in music that we all have to suffer in silence ...

Now our route has changed so I save a good 20 minutes, which is an eternity. Don't believe me? Just try setting your alarm for 20 minutes earlier than you are used to? Hah! That frightened you off!!

I have a new gang - gang of gurgaon :-) we have our own very special highs and lows - no jam on MG1 whooooo hooooo!!! Girl-from-sect-4 gets a better job - happiness, she leaves the cab and we can change the route - ECSTASY!!!

We have a favorite punching bag - let's call him discman(DM). He is a chronic smoker and is having a harrowing time at work - he stays late and is always running late. The cab driver is furious at having to wait and to compound the story, DM's Sony discman, I think, doesn't have anti-skid, so he shreiks at cabbie to go easy on the hideous pretend road that connect discman's house to the mainroad. DM also likes to sit ONLY on specific seats in the bus (in case you are confused - our cab is a minibus) and to my horror he always sits in the seat just ahead of MY favorite one. No that's not the horror - the horror is that he likes to push the backrest of his seat ALL the way back until it's maxed out!!!

Dude is a sweet guy who has a GREAT ipod that, thanks to his sister, has the latest songs available for our listening pleasure. He is supersweet in that he lets all of us hijack his prized possession :-)

Tintin is the cab kiddie who is an intern and loves reading Indian authors unless she is happily snoozing away. I used to think I could sleep whenever wherever but nah! she is the QUEEN.

Vee is another kiddie who is an intern at some setup that has some IT jobs outsourced to from our office. Another gadget-happy guy. He is a walking talking hindi movie songs encyclopedia. He is also the RTO-runaway.

He can see a car number and tell you its time and era of purchase. And his know-how of songs is AMAZING!!! Any song our cabbie plays -- who incidently has the entire collection of obscure B-grade movies -- he will rattle off the actor, actress, singers, situations, et al!!!

We have this picnic on our way back and last week there was this jokes session. It started off quite sane and then ... well... you can guess ...

Madness ....

I have fun but I seriously want to not have to commute so long ...

There are more people who I'll write about later ....

When you are object of someone's obsession

This post MUST start with the official note of asking you all to remember the disclaimer and swear that you will NEVER ever be fooled by someone as ridiculous as ZD!

I read these and HAD to recall ZD - the one and only!!!!
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/custom/msn/careeradvice/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=691&SiteId=cbmsn4691&sc_extcmp=JS_691_advice

(Were you thinking of someone when you read this first one? You don’t have to answer, I know who.)

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/custom/msn/careeradvice/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=275&SiteId=cbmsn4275&sc_extcmp=JS_275_advice
(Here she is again!)

I have been fooled by a great many bunch of people and well I am not a typical gullible fool but the level of exasperation I reached thanks to this one was enough to drive me over the edge. Add to that the backing she got from the three morons at Ajeeb-O-Gareeb! I will tell you more about them soon.

exNIITians make me happy

So peoplez I'd regaled you with tales of NIIT and exNIITians a while back and how nostalgia is a chronic, never-abating disease with us?

Well if you would have been there, you'd have known what FUN we had. All those affairs of the heart, political scheming, the changed gender balance in the late 1990s, take all the fun and nonfun soaps on TV ... now add some parts of Discovery (the roaches, rats, and lizards) and even then you'd not be able to compare the fun! The highs of being able to get a decent samosa sandwitch at 8pm in the D185 canteen :-) ...

Anyways onward ho ....

In my new setup there are just two non NIITians, the rest of the team is all from NIIT. Different eras and different teams. Now this makes people who are also from NIIT, exNIITians, and the rest of the world think that it is a natural progression and is as easy as snapping your fingers (You can't do that?! Oh sorry! Replace some other activity here).

WRONG dead wrong!! They interview you till you are ready to fall apart - they check and cross-check every bullet on your resume. They have HR people who do that entire psycho angle, emotional intelligence thing on you ...

Short of pulling out brain cells and placing that under the microscope, they are very thorough. After so many years in the workforce, just going thru that intense interview was so much fun. It's nice to be challenged and then actually come thru. Like the HR lady said - be proud be VERY proud.

Oh I am and that very pleased AFTER joining the place. Won't praise too much cause it is still early days and I am ...well... jaded and cynical and I'd hate to be happy and go to cloud nine and then have my world come crashing around me ...

So all you exNIITians there - this is really a good place and I don't just mean the paycheck. And if you are the sorts who is the typical NIIT sorry you really won't cut it. You have have to have that extra something. Now don't ask me what that is ...

If you are not an exNIITian .. be warned you will be BORED at the lunch table .. we do three different eras' gossip and most of it even I don't identify with :-)

I finally met some decent NETg people - well as my pal says a place like NIIT couldn't have survived and thrived without great people and that applies to NETg too!

The bunch here was TM level in the era of the lady who went to Singapore so you can imagine ....

You hear more about the late-night excursions of the Don Juan PM, the lady who was in love with the drinking champ, ....

I STILL love those times of NIIT. Was invited to a reunion party of STRIDE, but can't go. Many reasons - personal and also I don't connect with them anymore. That connection snapped when I outgrew the psycho mumbo-jumbo that used to happen. The obvious groupism. Innocence IS bliss.

4 weeks up

After nearly a month of the new place, I am feeling kinda settled in. Now u'd wonder what does kinda mean .... Here goes, in no particular order.

I now have an I-card. Unlike other things, this took time here. They are switching from one type of security to another or some such. So, all that I, and all of us "new joinees", had were plain WHITE access cards. How non-fun. I asked for one and the team admin got one made for me. She, I guess, took pity on me and was so pleased to see such a conscientious employee (*batting eyelids*).

I have a picture and to my horror I look so much worse than what I am! I am the before of a fair-n-lovely ad, with Godrej hair dye black, and my pale rust lipstick now looks as if I just returned from a vampire feast!!!

I still have to look up the online directory for the most commonly used phone numbers. In fact I really have no idea what is the outside number/extension for the phone that occupies the second-most prime part of my work station (the IBM comp. being the first. I inherited a really kewl machine from the guy that left here and moved on to greener pastures.)

I recognize the guy who is paged every HOUR! He is the 2rd or was it the 5th employee that this comp hired sooo many years ago!!! He is one of those middle-aged, VERY competent looking, super sincere, sweet guy - he stands outside at 8:30 overseeing the arrival of all the cabs/buses/what nots.

Then he is always someone around EVERYONE and always has a cheery good morning for you. Holds the door for you and is really a reassuring presence.

I have a workstation that was earlier the printer/copier location, but thanks to the ever-increasing need for space, this got converted to a work-station! They have another building coming up, and if the Indian roads/fly-overs were made at this rate, we'd be a better country.

I am officially in the learning mode. It's a very structured place but the content and everything with no real application gets to me.

I have MBOs! Thank you very much :-) My yakking skills will be tested and put to good use in the form of audio!!!

I can't understand most of the work-related conversations I overhear around my work station. The people in my vicinity are of the verification (QA) species and they are also slaying real and imaginary dragons. So cute...

I have to learn a new domain - it is like a new language. It's alternately fun, frustrating, boring, scary, ... and then some more.

I can now find my way to the "old" building and actually find people in finance, HR, meeting rooms named after rivers (narmada, godawari, ...) and school houses (unnati, pragati, ...)!!!

I got my first paycheck yipppeee!!! I filled out the PF xfer form (finally!).

Filling forms is such an ordeal for me! I can never NOT make a mistake esp. in the address area where there is a grib of empty boxes and you actually have to count and fill backwards!

Bleah ...

Telecommuting to commuting - the travelling times

In the new scheme of things, the distance one-way and point-to-point is 52 KMs across three "states" and since driving that distance and blowing up petrol isn't on the anvil, I am using the official cab service.

The office timings are 8:30 am to 5 pm. The cab needs to take a circuitous route to pick up all of us people who incidently stay in totally different directions - Sec 15, 44, 31, 56, DLF II, DLF IV, DLF V!!! So we take 45 mins to go around in this decagon or whatevergon it is and then are onward ho!!! Interestingly, it also takes us 45 mins to pick the last person and reach NEPZ! I am sure we travell at least 30 more KMs to do the GGN yatra.

How the mighty have fallen! Gone are the glorious days of waking up, checking email on the lappy, and then waltzing in to work, or maybe even deciding to work from day, if so inclined! Then leaving from office when the urge struck ... do whatever you want... do the leftover "work" as per your own convenience (translation: when it CANNOT be procastinated any further.) Be the person who practically knew all answers to the typical office questions - what is the site for this, who do I ask for that, where is the latest template, which tag comes here, are we allowed to do this this way ....

Now I am the rookie! I know NOTHING and it feels good :-D no expectations and no demands at all. But honestly speaking it gnaws at me most times. I have spent hours filling up HR forms, going thru the intranet tutorials, resolving some tiny little teething troubles, the ticketing system here is FANTASTIC. Want a new lock, raise a ticket, the furniture is amiss, raise a ticket, email acting up - raise a ticket...

But this post is about my transition from driving to office to getting ferried from home to office and then back.

To ensure I reach my designated pick-up-point (yes! that's what it's called; I kid thee not!) I need to be up at 6 so I need to set the alarm for 5:50 (10 mins buffer for the snooze snooze action on the cell.)

Day 1: the cab and the people had no clue about my location (liars) so I went to meet them at a gol-chakkar. D took me there and then I boarded the cab and settled in for the great NCR yatra. Now this cab turned out to be a mini-bus. Seating capacity - 11 people. (The last seat was collapsed to make a bed for the driver) That day there was 14. Three ad hocs. So people had to perch themselves on the driver's "bed". Hee hee heee...

Day 1: Evening - in the evening two people hop off saying they'll take the local transport to reach their places thus saving them 35 mins of scintillating sight-seeing. I stay on cause I have to show the driver where to pick me up the next morning. We reached the society gate - the driver is freaking and I attempt to make his understand that it's a normal route .... idiot

The bus has no radio so we listen to DJ-driver's choice of music that start from being very religious, then goes to happy romance songs, then sad betrayal ones, then regional songs that defy any attempted comprehension!! This all in an hour ...

Day 2: I am late getting to the pick-up-point. Driver freaks and interestingly all people are late that day so guess who was shaking his head, muttering under his breadth (abusing us and his destiny would be my guess), driving fast and furious to reach in time ... yea genius the driver :-) That day he was a tad too religious - the bus was all smoked up with incense and we had bhajans that beseeched the Godess (perched on a lion who lives in the mountains) for fulfilling wishes and also sang her glory. Not that I am anti-religion but I was sleepy therefore cranky and the smell of incense and all that smoke eeeeeeoooowww.... (Sorry bhagwanji but I just can't handle this type of bhakti.)

Day 2 evening: We start off and start our grave discussions on optimizing the bus route :-) No one slept that evening otherwise people doze off and catch one solid hour of shuteye. I hop off at the point from where I can get a local bus and then reach hope to realize that I hadn't really saved more than 7 mins. LOL!!!! There I was thinking I am so smart ....

Day 3: I reach the stop a lot earlier than the cab - it was now my turn to do the virtues-of-being-punctual-jig! But I didn't push it cause when you are dependent on the cabbie you don't wanna be on his bad side ;-) There were a lot of school kids waiting for their buses and I had this inane need to shake my head in disbelief - I am back in that mode?!

I had brought a cassette from home to avoid being subjected to the nine emotions thanks to DJ driver. I did a complete user analysis - songs that the driver and the passengers would enjoy. And knowing the quality of the music system, I had to pick something that I wouldn't miss when the cassette died! Horror, the cassette is inserted and instead of potboiler Hindi songs, you have English songs :-) The entire group had a laugh .. so we stayed with the soulful renditions of betrayals and all ... I decided to read, but the state of the roads had my eyeballs jumping up and down and there was no way to read. LOL! So it was back to appreciating parallax from the window seat :-)

Day 3 Evening: We decided to change our direction but then stayed with the original route. No public transport we all went to our homes. I finally remastered the lost art to sleeping in the bus!

Day 4: Is today. The morning was uneventful and I am sleepy as hell. My reality show has reached an interested point - the best are getting voted out before the better and the goods might end up winning!!! I was up till 11:30 howling for my contestant. Silly me .... Woke up startled. I was sure I had overslept and not heard the alarm. But then I saw the watch, I had woken up and there were still 10 mins for the alarm to ring.

TGIF I am going to sleep sleep sleep over the weekend. My family can take care of itself, I am not available to do a THING!!!

BTW I love my new office and its people.