At the peak of boredom

Wrote this while being jobless at work today....

I do not have work. I have not had much work in more than a week now. Having asked around for work, some work, any kind of work, innumerable times without any success, today I want to cry because frustration is killing me.

I hear the word positioning. Target audience followed it. It makes me miss VVR Sastry and his 6-hour long marketing lectures. Not that I ever disliked them, but my boredom is making me miss him like I missed my first crush when he left the school (in the era when teenagers did not own mobile phones to bombard each others’ inboxes with SMSs). Never mind the exaggeration.

The deal is that in our make-believe corporate world back in college, we are all CEOs and VPs - marketing. That is the reason why I enjoyed working on all sorts of case studies and presentations. Sadly enough, this is the real world. VPs are still making the presentations with all the interesting information. I am the intern. I should do the leg work. Nah, don’t really mind it because I know this is the real world. But I am not even getting the leg work!!!

I wish this office was pretty. I would have started bringing my camera to kill time. Unfortunately, I do not see any opportunities to enjoy doing that. But for your information, I am getting my Canon 75-300 tomorrow. Exciting. Uncontrollable, impatient excitement. Do you have any idea what it means? I have lived without zoom for an entire year. Oh man! I think I will stop looking for a prospective boyfriend once I lay my hands on this lens. Ah!

CNBC in the background has Raghav Bahl talking of Forbes’ launch in India. I remember the day I was discussing with Jayant how business journalism’s scope, and the money involved in it will go through the roof in India very soon. That was when I almost became a business journalist with Businessworld. Time!

People around me are highly frustrated too. As usual, IT issues are screwing their happiness. I say as usual because I remember we (old colleagues and I) used to go insane handling our massive Excel files in Watson Wyatt because IT support was never any support in solving issues. I can’t forget the day when an IT guy there told me in a tone that was funny to him that I’m stupid to expect my system to work well if I have macros enabled on 10 Excel files in one go. Here the IT guys ask people to not expect the internet to download annual reports or attachments in excess of 3MB on their Outlook. Ouch.

So you see, I am jobless enough to go back to 2007 and pick such a random incident and write about it here.

My neighbour’s desktop has a fancy wallpaper of a car. I think it’s a Porsche. On second thought, it is not that fancy. I can click a better picture of the car in a better location and make it look better. But since nobody is asking me to do that, we shall let this be.

The one sitting next to him has some Arsenal players’ picture on his desktop. This office collectively supports Arsenal. My brother should be happy.

Fish! It is still only 3:00 p.m. I have at least three more hours to kill. My MiG is out of fuel. :-/

Stuff

The "masochistic" pleasures first - Didn't sleep for 42 odd hours, with no food for about 24 during that time. Yea, discounting a couple of minutes' nap in between and a bite into someone's snack in the canteen. Exaggeration makes it sound cooler.

Was called "marketing guru" by some people in class. Without going into the validity of things, it sounded supercool in my head.

Both the above points are related to the subject that I quite enjoy studying and working on. You thought I'd give up on my sleep for something frivolous?

Got over the unrest that my mind was creating about a specific something. It's a relief.

I want to take out time to type out the conversations that have been happening on paper in classes that my friends and I are rarely interested in.

Did manage to play Holi. I was the bhoot that I used to see my brother become on many Holis. I was also lifted and thrown in a pool of muddy water. Twice. And I stayed away from bhaang.

My hairstyle is at its boring best right now and I don't know what to do with it.

This is the longest that I have been away from home and family. It's beginning to get to me.

The current state of my plant is reflecting the phase that I am going through in life. Or so I'd like to believe. It's eerie.

I'm permanently broke nowadays. It's weird.

My tickets for home are booked.

Asthma is getting to me again.

I've begun to judge those faculty members who cannot teach without their PPTs.

Not having something to put on my FB status message space tells me that I'm not managing my time well.

I don't want to stop writing. In fact, I'm quite disliking this disjointed post. But I need to work. So I'll come and write another time. Till then, tada!

Reezarch

A little bored and sleepy. Right now I am sitting in a building that is yellow in colour. It is the second one - another place where I interned earlier had yellow buildings. The insides of every room are different here, and my room has an orange wall. Other rooms have red and yellow as well. It's niice! :-)
The culture here is different from all the other office places I have been in earlier. Indicus was also informal, but there the intellectual discussions never stopped. Pearson had people so loaded with work that most of them usually cribbed together, or the fire exit lot stayed out with their cigarettes and coffees often. Watson was most 'corporate' and professional. When people worked, there was pin drop silence around. When people were in the pantry, the talks were casual - movies, food, gossip, etc. And since I had my own gang, we always had our own thing happening at all times.
Here, there is no rush for anything. People work, but stay at ease. Lunch is generally quick, so the conversations are also limited. But since I am still new here, cannot comment much as yet.
The problem with research work is that even though the ideas are fun, all the reading and digging for information can really get to you. And somehow I keep coming in contact with some sort of research or the other every now and then. Right now I am working on Dalit issues, and just recalled last night that the deadline for the semester's research paper is less than a week away. Quite screwed if you think about it.

I also opened my personal Outlook account after three years, I believe. There were the corniest of emails from 2005 in it. The good thing is that I was not the only stupid one. There are a lot of emails from Jayant Singh, Amiya Sharma and Ishani Behari too. Hee hee...

Ok, I should get back to work. Will be back soon.

Title dedication to the Research prof who has apparently found a new job elsewhere.


Make that VERY sleepy!!

Edit, 15th Nov - How could I forget to add. This place has a very strong culture of shaking hands and hugging. ALL the time! :)