Work and the Tea Shop...

Nowadays we have started visiting the tea shop near our office more frequently, almost 5 times a day. I wonder why… probably because our team management shifted to some new guys; probably we became complacent; or probably we just got too tired; probably all the above.

It is that phase of a project where you think you have done it all and you expect something in return besides just getting your salary paid. I personally have been given high ratings in my appraisals and have been promised a lot of special skill bonuses, so I would not crib too much.

But then, work has slowed down tremendously or that is the way I feel. The bunch of people managing our team are more focused on just taking control over things, thereby not giving us the freedom on our work and that rapidly decelerates the progress. I am sure this phase would not last for long. Things will improve… and the guy who runs the tea shop will quickly realize that when it happens.

Lesser Mortals

A couple weeks ago, as I entered my home on a Sunday evening returning from yet another weekend at office, I saw this program on TV. It was some event where A.R. Rahman had just performed. Singer S.P.Balasubramaniam was standing beside Rahman and was ushering him with blessings. It was so nice to see a genius like SPB being so humble and all. It was an all nice moment when suddenly, standing to the left of SPB, actress Suhasini spoilt the aura... She started her usual banter of how Rahman does not know the meaning of Ego, Arrogance or Pride etc.. all in her usual tone of sarcasm.


It was not just me, but I am sure a lot of other people would have frowned at this inappropriate lashing at you know who. Some lesser mortals never know how to keep their tongue behind their teeth...

Flex Time

The last 3 to 4 weeks were terribly tiresome. The application that we were building was already running on a stiff deadline and we had entered into the meat of it at this point. It was thrilling to execute everything that was earlier planned. I kept foraging my desk draw for the invaluable information I had had hurriedly scribbled some weeks back. They help me to remind myself of what exactly was discussed. Somehow, no soft copy could do that for me.

Anyways, working late night continuously has helped me gain some decent level of fluency in coding with Flex. The Java Web Services were pretty straightforward.
Also, since I was at times given company by my colleague who is from Orissa, I have learnt how to swear in Orriya. I often swear at the Flex builder for being so shamelessly slow or at some of the insipid methods or definitions in ActionScript.

Somehow a few of the bigger challenges have been taken care of. There are a few more to go before we reach the comfort zone. Of course, when the testing phase is on it could all come down – but then that is a different story altogether.

Dhoni - Astonishing

Due to various reasons I was not following cricket so closely for the last 2 or 3 years. What I missed was the big wave of the IPL 2008 and the T20 World Cup which India had won.

Along with all that I had missed the growth of Mahendra Singh Dhoni to where he is right now. I wish to hear from some of my cricket fanatic friends on how Dhoni came up to be captain surpassing people like Dravid, Sehwag and Yuvraj.

Anyways as I try to catch up with more cricket now, I can easily tell that I am not surprised a bit about his batting abilities. His level of consistency really astonishes me. When you look at the scorecard, his scores would almost always be atleast in the decent 40's.

Somehow he strongly reminds me of Michael Bevan, former Australian batsman. It will always be a pleasure to watch the game of such class players.

What real experience gives you

A good friend of mine once told me something about work, something which I already believed in and I found it so nice to know that he shared the same opinion.

To quote him:

"I take up any task at work as if it was my first assignment. It makes me cautious and gets rid of any complacency. I get my confidence to grow as the work moves on"

I pretty much do the same. It helps me in a few things -

1. It gives me room to pay attention to detail

2. When I work with someone new, they immediately find it easy working with me.

3. Chances of failure would be minimal

This is what, I think, experience had really taught me.

Now, to explain why I am telling all this. It is because of this incident that happened at work all along last week. There was a key portion of our project which had both technical and functional challenges to tackle. The requirement was not clearly defined and the scope was too vague to say the least.

We had been discussing this over and over for the last 2 weeks, and had been merely recording our discussions and kept pushing it over to the next session as it was never really nearing completion.

This is the point when this person from another team was shifted to our project. Since all the other resources were tightly held up with tasks, we decided to assign this task to this new member of our team.

He was a confident person, but anyone could easily sense the air of pride around him. He asked a lot of questions, but nothing really related to the project. But that was totally fine, as long as the work gets done.

But what stumped all of us was the first discussion we had with him in which we tried to explain the task that we had just assigned to him. He never really seemed to listen to what we had to say and quickly jumped to provide the solution. He was clearly trying hard to impress, so we could forgive him for that. But it was his tone and attitude which was totally looking down upon us which pissed us off.

We decided to hang on with him for now on the hopes that he would settle down as he starts facing the wave from the top management. Sadly, that was all one could do even if you wanted to help him.

It happened exactly as we had expected - One tech discussion were he presented his approach and he was totally ripped apart. Now, he was ready for us to work with. He is not as unapproachable as he was before. I am glad that it all went fine.

Could it get any better?

In one of my earlier posts, there was this interesting comment from a friend of mine:

“.. it is not often that people write about how wonderful their days were..”

- which I think is perfectly true in most cases. So my dear friend here goes.

1. At work, we made a presentation of a small system (which we had been building in the last few weeks) to the Finance team and they were totally bowled over by the perfect way we had trapped the system requirement in our design. Yeah baby!
   
   
2. There was this other project which had to be designed based on the R&D done over the past few weeks. Working non-stop for 2 days at a stretch, I had proposed a design architecture factoring in all scenarios – and it got approved. Fist Bump!
   
   
3. Good riddance of the cold – I am now healthy as a horse. So is everyone at home.
   
   
4. All my iPod’s are fully charged, and I am listening to ‘em as I type this.
   
   
5. My phone line is restored, internet is back.
   
   
6. I caught up with some old friends online and also some people from my previous employment. It was so nice to see emails from all of them. Fills me with pleasant memories
   
   
7. My friend who was hurting from an accident is now quickly recovering.
   
   
8. I hired another guy to get my construction work at home and that will be taken care of.
   

Funny how things can take a turn around in just a few days.

Now I wonder – Could it get any better?...

My Newest Blog - http://dreamrecalls.blogspot.com/

I am a big time dreamer. Seriously…I feel like there is this guy inside me who meticulously weaves all these vivid illusions that feel so real and authentic.

If one could compile all the dreams I have had, we could make a hundred movies on almost all genres. More than just the number of dreams, it is the sense of exactness and the attention to detail given by this guy inside me.

I decided to write about it and went on to create a brand new blog devoting it entirely for some of the strangest, funniest, erotic, horrific and mostly nonsensical dreams I have had.

While setting I up I wanted to use a nice looking template. I had to spend quite some time to get that up and working. So much so that I think I should post a note on my technical blog about it.

But anyways, please do visit my new blog extension at:

http://dreamrecalls.blogspot.com/