Sunday, April 23, 2006

Rant

A hot Friday afternoon (at least outside the office) and a routine meeting between onsite leads and the offshore leads is on.

The Senior Project Manager (henceforth SPM and who is based at the client location, of course) is seeking update from the offshore team.

SPM: "So where have we reached?"
S: "We are currently at 463, hopeful of reaching 470 by EOD today."

EOD for people who struggle with acronyms like me means End Of Day.

SPM: 470 is all well and good but we were supposed to be on 480 by the 21st.
S (thinking): yeah the hell we were...
(missed a bit of the conversation here)....I don’t care, I want 480 by 9 AM client time on Monday.
S (the hell you do): "We will try but it is going to be difficult!"

SPM (annoyed): "What S that was our target."

Meeting is over and S gets back to his team and informs them about the ultimatum.
X: "How can we achieve the target today?"
S: "What is basically implied is that we have to work this weekend as well!"

Grumpily everyone agrees....

Saturday is through and we are still 8 short of the target...and going back home S decides to chuck work and sit back and relax on Sunday. Ferrari is even ready to resume battle at Imola he thinks. To hell with work and targets...they make him feel sick anyways...
Yeah that’s the way it will be...



Sunday 2 PM: S is in office, trying to find euphemisms to describe his annoyance with himself (through this post, perhaps) and wondering why the hell his code never works the first time...grrrrrrrrr...

Thursday, April 13, 2006

It can happen only in India

One person dies - at a fairly ripe age of 77, of natural causes - another 5 end up dead for no reason...
I am sure RajKumar is not feeling too good about it...after all who wants to be the cause of death (directly/indirectly) of other people...

So he was a regional actor, of some acclaim I presume considering his mind boggling popularity, and his demise was bound to leave his fans distressed but why all the vandalism? The tech BPO capital was held hostage for 2 days...Has burning buses and public property become the new way of showing grief?

Reminds me of the stories I read around the time RajKumar was kidnapped by Veerappan (I was in Delhi then) - stories of non-kannadigas being attacked especially Tamils...

What would have happened if he had died then...natural causes or otherwise?...No I wont even contemplate that...

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Times gone by...

For the past few days memories from childhood have been playing in my head - all the mischief and crazy things I used to do...thought of writing about it here but guess that would be too boring...

Instead a dialog, a parting shot, from one of my favourite television sitcoms (from that time) will suffice -

"Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house like a lot of other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder."
- Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years

update : 8 APRIL,2006

Continuing with the theme of nostalgia - came across a few lines by TS Elliot in "The Rotters' Club" which made me scramble to the junkyard that is my bag in search of a print out taken some time back - Four Quartets.

The lines were from the first of the four Quartets, Burnt Norton -

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable


....
....

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

I don't like poems, they seem so feeble, so delicate...but now that the book is over, I have decided to go back to that print out and try and understand it a bit better.