Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Beyond any logic

There is definitely a negative past life connection between me and the entire auto rickshaw community. There is no other explanation I can find for all the inconvenience I am put through when travelling by an auto.

Okay so I am in a hurry to get back home after a long and hectic day at work when my auto driver takes a detour and chooses the longest possible way. Protests, anger and threats to get off are met with excuses till it becomes too late for him to turn the auto back. So either I get off that auto in a god forsaken place, catch another auto and hope it takes me back home FAST or I keep sitting in the first auto, seething till I get back home. If I am lucky he doesn't put up too much of a fight and I pay the regular fare or if he's lucky he gets to take the extra money home. Either way, I am inconvenienced. I am bugged and even as I write this I can feel the anger building up.

It's not just about the detours, it about autos breaking down, running out of gas, stopping at petrol pumps for a refill, rash driving, getting involved in an accident, staring at me in the rear view mirror and at every other woman on the street ... the list is endless. The result - a very very angry me. The ultimate test of my patience was when I had to change 3 autos to cover 4 kms. Imagine the exasperation ! There is no logic nor reason that can explain why all these episodes happen with me. It just happens. Each time. Every time.

The easiest solution would be to quit travelling by auto and get my own vehicle. But I have this strong premonition - on my first day out, this yellow and back demon on three wheels will SURELY come hurling at me!

So now, if I have to go someplace, this is how I calculate my time to reach there: Time = Speed / Distance + Traffic allowance + Auto allowance.
I also don't loose my patience as much as I did before. Instead, I sit quietly and send a sms to my friend saying, " I struck again".

Friday, December 03, 2004

Isn't it always about winning or is it always about winning?

I know how annoying sore losers can be.

Last weekend our friends played a prank on Akshay and me, and truthfully speaking, I did not take it too well. In fact, it was the first time that I lost my temper with anybody and I lost it real bad. Chided them for being juvenile, that their prank was not at all funny and then I stormed out of their house. Took me a few seconds to regain my composure before I went back to their place again. Only this time I was laughing my head off and the stunned audience joined in.
Though I still feel that their prank deserved to be yelled at, I am not angry with them anymore.
In fact, it makes me wonder if I was angry at them or with myself, for being so gullible.
Or was I just a sore loser?

Okay, this realisation did not come to me right after this incident. There was something else as well that triggered it off.
Earlier during this week, one of my office teams did not meet their quality target for the first time in 8 months. The manager-in-charge blasted the life out of the poor guys. It did not end there. He then turned to smatter the Quality team with his tempestuous outburst, wrote a zillion mails condemning us for being so "strict" and being "guided by the rulebook". He was irked that he would now have to sit and formulate an "action plan" and come up with explanations for his superiors, something he hadn't done in almost a year.
I found this really maddening. The only thought that came to me was ' Man, is he a sore loser or what.'

And that was what made me wonder if I was one too.

I have all the streaks of becoming one (if I ain't one already). Pictionary and a round of 29 are the best examples I can think of when I say I play to win. I get really irate when people cheat and suddenly come up with new rules to suit their needs in the middle of a game. I don't hesitate in telling a close friend , " I don't trust you ," when she says "I didn't see the cards, trust me." I get really upset when somebody cuts off my card and the stakes are at 29. Akshay almost apologises before he does that (in fact, he's the sole idiot who's luck runs better than mine in a card game). I don't yell or cry at the end of a lost game but I really, really, feel bad for the next few minutes. I seethe.
And no, I don't yelp with joy when I win, I let my smug speak for itself :-)

So There. I don't want to be a sore loser but do I have the makings of being one? Or is this just some harmless disappointment which everyone faces on losing ?

Monday, November 29, 2004

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Instead of fighting the Monday Morning Blues (MMB) every week, I decided to give in to it. And, surprisingly, it feels good.
I grew up scorning this cliché as an excuse people use to not perform at work. I would never give in to it. So I thought. Work hard for 5 days and party harder over the weekend - that's been the motto all my work life and it worked just fine. Until today.

I had a great time over the weekend with my close friends who were in town. Watched inane movies, listened to high-class ridiculous shayari, chatted, ate lots of unhealthy food, played Pictionary, Lexicon, rock-paper-scissors, nail the thumb, and sang at the top of our voices until the wee hours of the morning. It still surprises me that none of our neighbours came pounding at our door asking us to shut-up (Or maybe they did and we were too drunk to bother). It has left me thinking of ways to get our neighbours worked up.

I am still not willing to admit that this was the HILTof all excitement possible, which is why the Monday morning blues (have endless capacity for such crazy things) . Quite frankly this is how I DECIDED to feel after waking up this morning. I realised that I don't feel like working at all and instead of taking the day off, chose to come to work. Now I am in office but have not yet started working. And don't see it happening anytime in the future of this day.

I have also come up with a great thesis topic that if one really wants to relax then it can be easily done in the workplace as well. We have very comfortable chairs, a high-speed internet connection, good food and then there are people who you can completely ignore and carry on doing nothing because they understand what MMB is all about

Just read up a whole lot of stuff on the Internet on how one can cope up with MMB and what one should or shouldn't do on a Sunday evening. I also read the studies which say that close to 80% people feel or 'sometimes' feel MMB. For the first time I am glad to belong to a majority who I can relate with. My own private survey shows that of the 9 people who just walked in, 8 of them groaned a greeting, complained about the weekend getting over, have gone for a coffee break and have entered tasks in their scheduler which kick-start tomorrow!
One of my able colleagues is taking a 'power nap'. And she has just walked in. Just so that you don't get the impression, let me say with pride that I actually work with a team which is super efficient. They are the most hard-working and productive bunch of guys & gals I have ever come across .

I also read that the impact of Monday morning blues can be devastating. That more people have heart attacks on a Monday morning than on any other day of the week according to a medical research.
So why bother beat the blues? If you ask me, I am glad to have Monday as the first day of the week. It lets me go easy, allows me to "get a feel of the place", schedule work for the next day, and get geared up for the rest of the week. So when I come to work tomorrow I'll probably be working hard and maybe too busy to even remember this .

As for now, I'm feeling very good, adequately refreshed and all set to start scheduling work for tomorrow. Once I return from a coffee break.