:)

January 2006

Keep Smiling!

The days gone by

Techest 2k6
clicked about 700 pics
happening days
lack of food and sleep

:)

A Classy Internship

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Hello people!! I write this coz its fun and it doesn’t bug me if people don’t read it. But it’s not done if you read and do not leave a comment. We can be friends and who knows you might someday help me get a job, the chances of it being the other way round are bleak though but think of it like this... you'll have done a good deed!! So do leave a comment, just anything, be it about your urge to kick my ass.

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The previous summer was a great learning experience for most of my friends who were doing internships at a number of prestigious organizations. Here is an assortment of tips, tricks, tactics and antics to soon gonna be interns who have lied their way through (resumes) to awesome places and are scared of the little or no relevant knowledge they have...

Dear Smartass Intern,

So you impressed your to be guide and saw your way in by lying about how you have dreamt of doing this since you were six and what a great opportunity it'll be for you to further your skills at what gives you almost orgasmic pleasure. You took immense pleasure about how much fun you would be having during the summers while they would be cooling heels back home. But now its showtime and you are getting sleepless nights as to how you would survive the summers with the lack of knowledge that handicaps you. Worry not, here is a crash course on survival techniques for the unintelligent intern which can almost get you the employee of the week award at this organization of yours if followed sufficiently well!!

Day One

Grab a good breakfast, because a) breakfast is the most important meal of the day, b) your office location might rule out the possibility of lunch c) your firm might be a place where frivolous stuff like lunch is smirked upon. A definite sign of such a lunch-frowning company are vending machines dispensing soups and snacks installed near the exits.

As per norms, the first day should be highly non-productive in which they get one of the full time engineers to give you boring hour long demos of operations in the plant/company. Having finished with the tour you would be left with manuals and technical documentation 'to get the feel of things'. Amuse yourself by highlighting words in the 500 page manual so that they link up to form funny sentences. Future interns will love you for it.

At times hold your head and scratch your beard to display intense concentration. When not doing so, hunch over a heavy book to ensure no one notices your eyelids drooping and grab a 20 min quicky (...thats a nap). Once you've had enough of lazing around flip to the index and locate the single hardest and most inscrutable term listed and confidently walk up to the boss/guide and grill him over it. With little luck he won't know what it is and would try to bluff his way around while being deeply impressed about you already hitting the toughest stuff.

Maneuver with the steps above till you are through your 8 hour day and then leave. You might as well spend another day or two juggling around in similar fashion.

Moving on to the more permanent tricks of the trade

College renders you totally unfit for working 8 hours a day. Thus the key lies in maximizing the 'Apparent Working Time' to 'Actual Working Time' ratio. Reach office 2 minutes early. Run in, open a few excel sheets on your computer, get half a mug of coffee and slouch in your seat. When everyone trickles in, they'll think that you came in really early because slouching is an indication of having been in a seat for a while, and half a coffee mug takes at least 15 minutes to achieve. This is the half beverage technique which can be used in several ways to create time-illusions.

The next opportunity to boost the all important ratio is at lunch. Leave after just about everyone has gone for lunch and come back miserably late, and no one will figure a thing because they'll assume you left really late. Befriending industrious colleagues might blow your cover as these guys would start inviting you to join them for quick 20 minute lunches.

The last and trickiest stunt for the day is when you leave. Leaving after everyone leaves is not an option because staying back is exactly what you wanna avoid. Instead, install a spare jacket, a backpack and a half finished bottle of coke at your work station (note another instance of the half beverage technique). About twenty minutes before quitting time, walk slowly towards the restroom and at the opportune moment dash out the exit before anyone spots you. When everyone leaves, they'll see the backpack, jacket and drink and think you are still at work and have just gone out to the loo. Depending on how dumb your coworkers are, this can add up to 40 minutes to your Apparent Working time. Coming in two minutes early the next day works out perfectly so that you can get rid of the evidence before anyone gets to work.

Getting some work done (thats why you are here dude!!)

The last thing you need to know is the Zen Art of producing results without having worked. Making everyone believe that you are working long hours and stumping the guide over obscure questions doesn't mean you can produce results. Unless lady luck is your girlfriend you would be assigned a project and loads mind numbingly boring data would be dumped over you. Few things need to be kept in mind, (i) don't get carried away and attempt a solution (ii) make sure the work isn't done before the deadline, it'll be even better if you can push those to later dates citing stuff like discrepancy in data etc. etc. etc.

Find 'a good man at heart' with some speech impediment or a very heavy accent and ask him a harmless doubt as to how to proceed about the problem. Put on your concentration face while this gentleman answers you and then tell him (with a helpless face) how you are unable to follow what he says. After a few more attempts, act slightly exasperated and turn the screen towards him, once he settles down to explain using an example your battle is half won. Make sure you keep nodding and make encouraging sounds like "aha, perfect!" punctuated with a few very thoughtful but skeptical "hmmm...." If you rise in confidence you can also throw in some generic help statements like "we should do this in a more object oriented way". Exercising the same routine a few times over, would, in all likelihood see you through. Finally, thank him profusely (always remember its to the credit of the 'good men' that companies hires interns) and buy him a coffee and take a break for you have just completed a good lot of work.

One last thing is to always have a pack of gum or mints at hand. Keep offering it to everyone. You would be recognized as a nice guy around, which helps in ways more than one.

Enjoy your internship and try not to work too hard.

Sincerely
Piyush Maheshwari

The author did his internship in Bangkok at Thai Organic Chemicals Pvt. Ltd.

still awake

Read this somewhere...

how often have you waited for the doorbell
how often have you waited for a call
how often you walked among a million faces
all strangers in the mall

how often have you stared at those lights
how often have you sat there waiting for a breeze
how often have you dismissed those laughters
just to pretend your mind's at ease

how often have you put a hand in your pocket
walked back in at night
with dogs barking behind ..
creaks of the door and no one in sight

well its just one more such day
another such night
theres nothing much to say
just wish for sweet dreams and switch off the light

Breaking News

A boy-girl ‘Break Up’ makes for nice gossip and is an interesting affair. More so if it happens to others. Not quite the same if it happens to oneself.

Most boys don’t do a number of things. They don’t dress Barbie dolls in pink, they don’t cook unless mom isn't around, they don’t check out what other women are wearing, and they don’t talk about break ups. You know, it’s a girl thing. Sana tells Nisha about her breakup with Aman, starts sobbing and Nisha comforts Sana by holding her hand and telling her about Aman being a pig, softly. Boys are not to do it. Aman would say “I had a break up. I am fine.” and play some computer game on his system. Boys are supposed to be these heartless flings who are not pained by emotional mangling. They are supposed to be men, who are not supposed to cry, at least not in the company of any living thing.

So I don’t really know how most boys who have been in a break up feel about it. But I can try to talk about what I feel about mine. It is a personal thing, but then its been a while now and I have tried just about everything to make the 'I am fine' part true and 'move on'. All with little success though. Neha used to tell me that writing is powerful form of expression and can help you grow past a lot of experiences, so here I am giving it a shot.

This post in all likelihood is more for me than anyone else. My thoughts are all confused. But that’s why I need to put them down, in the hope of realizing what I feel. I may not make sense. Your Escape route – The little cross on the right top of this page.

‘Break up’, as a term, sounds too neat to be true. It’s not a Kit Kat chocolate bar which you ‘break’ into two pieces. It’s about ‘breaking’ something emotional which is shared between two people. You just don’t snap the chocolate bar into two pieces and feed one part to Johnnie and other part to Ronnie and go around as if the chocolate never existed.

A “break up” never really breaks up completely. I mention her to some very close friends. Some of them look at me like I just mentioned a plan to commit suicide after dinner. They tell me to get over her. I know they mean well and are my well wishers. But I don’t understand this ‘get over’ talk. Am I supposed to forget her, delete her like some unused file from a hard disk? I still remember my classmate’s mom who would drop me home after school in class first. I still remember the loads of watches dad bought me coz none would last more than a month. The same way, I remember her, and would remember her all my life.

I remember her. Sometimes I feel sad. At two in the morning, I am doing something on the comp and some soft, soulful track comes onto the winamp, and all those moments start coming back, and I just can’t concentrate on my work and have to change the track to some loud rock number which talks about guns and street fights and other unromantic issues. I still lie awake at night thinking of those times. But I am not the one to finger my wounds or write anguished poems about lost love.

All of us have some memories, and I have them too. That’s it. I am perfectly fine. I think I am at peace. I am fine with my past. Because it’s not my present.

Every experience changes one. I once called a beefy guy in my class ‘fatso’. The experience taught me that calling big people fatso leads to a week long body ache. So I have learnt some things from my break up. I have changed. And I like to believe, changed for the better.

I think I expect less from people around me. Some people interpret this more disturbingly, and say I have become emotionally closed. But I am not sad or cold and the people who interact with me would know that. I love people. But at a psychological level, I realize that to want anything from the person may lead to pain. You talk to this person, and you are not thinking ahead, because you don’t harbor any expectations from the person, and this helps you be in the moment and lends a lot more naturalness and ease to the interaction.

With time I have also figured out that it’s not like a cell phone balance where you have a limited balance sufficient to make fixed number of calls. Just because I care for Neha doesn’t mean I can’t care for another girl. I will honestly give my all to make happy the girl who spends her life with me. But I am a little scared. I want to love and take care of that person but want to be this strong guy who doesn’t need any love. Maybe I do need it, but I don’t want to believe that I do, because it makes me feel weak, and feel like a helpless kid who needs someone to love him, and makes me vulnerable to more hurt and pain.

For my parents , most of my friends , the people around me , I am the same , but I have changed , and I hope changed in a way where I can treat and love people with minimal expectations from them , in a more natural and peaceful manner .

All experiences change people. Just that some school bully leaves a black eye which shows and some people leave feelings and insights, which are not seen, but felt.

ps: dunno what made me write this, I am guessing it was this

Long time

A great lot has happened since I last posted.

The Desert Odyssey - Having made and ditched plans for Laddakh, Nepal and Dehradoon I managed an excursion to the much undiscovered Thar. Accompanied by two friends, two cousins and equipped with tents, sleeping bags and compasses we embarekd upon our adventure.

The course for our tour was Barmer to Bikaner via Jaisalmer. Roughly about 500Kms on the national highway off which we took regular detours making our way through the sand. With the numerous stops, it took us two nights and three days to cover the entire stretch. The Indian Army patrolling the entire highway kept slowing us down. Another land mark on our journey was some random temple right in the middle of nowhere where we spent an evening. The best though was the chilling night, spent in a tent surrounded by nothing but sand. It was thrilling to find the entire landscape changed when we woke up the following morning.

The feeling of leaving footprints on sand that has never been set foot on by any other mortal cannot be done justice to with mere words.

Spent most of december meeting relatives and cousins who've gor married during the last three years. Also met classmates who've got married :) yes my classmates have been getting married while I have been scraping through courses all the time :-|

All in all a great December, a memorable holiday just as I had wanted it to be.

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New Year 2006

Wishing everyone a very happy new year! Have a rocking year everyone :)

The sem has started, lots of people have got jobs, awesome jobs all of them. Am looking forward to numerous treats and being surrounded by majorly lukkha fnal yearites in their last sem. Hoping to do well this sem despite all odds, a desparate requirement.

Blogging would be taking a backseat all this while, have written a short story though which I might be posting in a while.