Herd behaviour

Well, I am now officially a project manager. I was shown my new desk and sent to scavenge everything else. So I went around looking for unused phones, monitors, cupboards and chairs. Lunch break is a good time to build your inventory. A lot of things in the office are unused when everyone is queuing for their roast (sliced pig bum). I also found something that looked like an iron whip with a lock at one end. I swear I don't know what it is but I have a suspicion that it could be something to induce bondage tendencies. A closely bonded workplace is always a good place to work in, isn't it?

My work is very simple. I have to come up with an idea that is as revolutionary as the iPhone. In the mean time,I have to take the other less revolutionary ideas, develop less revolutionary products out of them and get the hapless sales guys to sell them to unsuspecting customers.

If I come up with an iPhone like idea, my job is done. Why would the company want to keep me when it has got what it wanted from me? So I guess I will have to keep my mouth shut and not blurt out that one brilliant idea.

Getting the less revolutionary products out to the market is not as big a deal as I initially feared. I do not have to go to a workshop and build spaceships with my own hands. There are worker bees who will do it for me. My job is to make the worker bees build the spaceship that I want while they want to be busy collecting nectar. Similar to a Shepard's job making sure that my cattle graze only in the neighbour's property so I can sell my grass to him. At least now I can explain in a line that my job is similar to a Shepard's job but instead of the cattle, I Shepard men and women!

My herd is a motley group of friesian cows and break-inspector buffaloes.(Have you ever crossed a herd of buffaloes without slamming on the break? For those of you who have never seen buffaloes on road, you definitely don't know how mince meat is made. The burnt rubber after taste must have crossed your mind at some point of time).

Anyway, my friesian cows, like all friesian cows give me more milk than I would have ever imagined. And my dear buffaloes, like any thorough bred buffalo will not move an inch even if I threatened to whack his back.

Now I have this idea. What if I give one hard knuckle in the head if I can't get something done from them? I hope they are grown up enough not to complain to the teacher that I hit them in the head.

Short of brilliance

He was not the best player in the team. Infact, he was only the 7th best player in his 6-a-side football team. He stood by the sidelines and hoped that someone would ask him to substitute for them, as he watched the other players run around. Nobody ever seemed to tire. Or at least break a leg so he could play. He stood there as the cold winds tore into his jacket and crushed his bones. He stood there as the rains drenched him to the skin. He stood there for the entire winter and it was the last game of the season that day.

The captain walked in with a new lad and said 'This chap is new to town. And can apparently pass a thing or two. He will come in as first change if someone has to walk out.'

The captain broke his leg that day.

can't pee under pressure

"You have not posted anything for over a month now." I was not surprised when my one loyal follower asked me. Yeah! Apparently I have had someone follow my blog. That was exciting. But even more exciting was when another one said the same thing. And another, and another. And slowing the excitement marched away and in place was an unsettling eerie thought that I had to account for all these people. I know I don't have an obligation to write for anyone but I was once an avid reader of pagalak's blog where he was spinning a beautiful story (part 1, part 2, part 3) which he suddenly stopped and got married. It has been two years since then and I still longingly visit his blog with that little glimmer of hope that one day he will complete the story.

I don't compare my posts to his stories. My posts are neither heart rendering or thought provoking. But my posts were regular. And regular things take people's time and space that their presence is never really acknowledged but their absence is almost strongly felt. Just as how I have to open my gmail account every two hours to delete the only 5 spam messages I would have received in the last two hours but feel very dejected when the spam filter does a very good job on one given day.

But now with fingers pointed at me and echoes of 'where is my trash' ringing full and long on both ears I am under extreme pressure that the head does not spin any more junk and my fingers run to the delete button as soon as I muster to write a sentence or two. It is like, however hard you memorise the poem the previous night, when the teacher's polished cane points at you, all verses melt and flow out of the brain like raindrops seeking the sea.

Raindrops seeking the sea. That is a lousy similie. See, that is what pressure does and I am clearly wilting under pressure. But do you guys remember that girl who was in our batch and whose name was or is similie?

And to add salt to my wounds there was someone who has read some of my scribblings from a time when to write was to pick up a pen and draw impressions of what can achieved by the click of a button these days said that my writing lacks the passion from those days. Believe me, I am trying, it is just that the girls don't really get it.

To conclude, I am self-diagnosing that I have a writer's block. It is just that it is a big heavy block and someone has slammed it right onto my knuckles.

p.s. : The title ought to be 'can't pen under pressure', but you see, I am also afflicted by a very common attention mongering syndrome and vulgarity buys a lot of attention. It is also easy to tap 'e' twice then to search for an 'n' at the other end of the keyboard.

Cubicle change

After the analyse-my-urine incident, I decided I have had enough and decided to get a job that did not have anything to do with analysing. So I consulted a dictionary for the antonym of analyse. The dictionary suggested that I get a job that did not have any thinking to do. That was around the time when Jinku said his manager did not have any masala in his head.

For those of you who are not familiar with the role of masala in the head; masala is the primary intelligence ingredient in an Indian head. The more masala in your head, the more intelligent you are. Getting masala in your head is not genetic but is by eating spicy food. Masala is infact the base that is used to make any spicy dish. So the more spicy food you eat, the more intelligent you become.

I am not making up a story here. Statistics shows that more people get into the IITs from Andra Pradesh than any other state in the world. And IITs are supposedly the toughest colleges to get into at an undergraduate level and requires high intelligence levels. It is also in Andra Pradesh that you get the spiciest cuisines in India (you infact have a nose-watering experience than a mouth-watering experience). If you can not piece-up the rest of the co-relation, you should crank up the spice a bit in your dinner tonight.

Anyway, Jinku is not the first person to curse that his manager did not have masala. So I decided that becoming a manager was the best way to get away from thinking and therefore analysing.

What resulted was a flurry of applications to all internal jobs that had a manager in the title. My project manager interview lasted close to 2 hours. I had decided earlier that I will steer the interview in such a way that the interviewer only asked me questions to which I knew the answers. But it was a disaster. Every time I tried to steer the interview, I was outmaneuvered. I mean I answered questions such as why do you want to do this job? (Should I have told him my analyse-my-urine story?), what are your long term career objectives? (I don't think I will ever get away from this question) and what experience do you have in project management (Well! I project managed to run a half marathon). I have no idea on what I answered and I was not thinking at all.

On the way back to my desk, ruing my fortunes, I realised that if the interview did not allow me to think, then there would certainly be absolutely no thinking to be done on the job. The perfect answer to my analyst problems!

The first day at the new job started with a meeting at 8. I presume the alarm did not go off. Half way to the office, I realised I had forgotten to take my laptop with me. I saved the embarrassment and went back to get it. But it is not until 10 minutes into the office I realised I left back the keys to the desk. I couldn't have asked for a better start!

Metamorphosis

4th standard was a very special year. It was the year when I transformed from a boy to a man. Or atleast that was what I thought then. It was a year of changes. A year when I had to face many unpleasant challenges for the first time and also a year when many pleasant firsts occurred.

The new school in the new state did not provide with the luxury of skipping my second language classes. Instead, I was to face the most terrifying Tamil teacher I have ever had. She screamed at students, hit them with whatever she could get hold of and flung homework notebooks on to their faces.It did not help that I missed the previous two years of Tamil lessons. How I loved those Thursdays when I did not have Tamil lessons!

It was a year when I got my 'own' membership card at the local library. It saved me from the tyrannical Tamil teacher as I quickly learnt to read and write reading Siruvarmalar at the library. But more than anything, I loved the freedom of going to the library by myself and picking the book of my choice.

I wore my first analogue watch that year and the teachers asked us to bring fountain pens to school - the first thing that marked the men from the boys. A yellow belt at the Karate class also meant that I was the second strongest man in the world next to my black belt Karate master.

My freedom grew boundless when one afternoon my dad got me a top-of-the-line Hero Ranger bicycle after only 3 hours of pestering. At that time, owning a Hero Ranger was like owning a Ferrari now and owning a Street Cat was like owning a Lamborghini. Owning any other bicycle was just useless.

It was also the year when I swore at my science teacher on his face. A girl had sucked at him to give her mistake ridden test paper a 100 and my mistake less test paper a 99 so she could get the first rank. She got the first rank. Well, she was not a she actually. She was a he. But he deserves to be called a she, doesn't she?