The things people do to meet deadlines...

Back when I worked in Dubai, we used to get deadlines that would make any self respecting human being blink a couple of times, shake the coconut from left to right and again from right to left, say "you must be stark raving mad if you expect me to finish the job in the time you're saying I should" and repeat the process all over again until reality sinks in.

Doing something for a protracted period of time makes a person get used to the activity, so it is that managers get used to dumping work and ignoring above mentioned gawking and us Senior Associates (Sr. Ass' for short, no really, no pun intended - were called that) would stop doing the gawking routine, accept reality for what it is and set about our tasks valiantly.

Occasionally, in extreme cases when, at 11PM, the deadline is for 8AM the next morning, we would use the ol' noodle and fill up a file with information that has, lets say, some scope for improvement on the quality front, just to buy time until the file comes flying back to us for not being "up to standard", only to rectify it with all the relevant information and submit a fresh file.

The biggest advantage of the above approach is hidden. By submitting something that has scope for improvement, you manage to pull one off on the unreasonable manager because he is going to go through all of it, only to have to go through it again, this time when he is under pressure. So if you disregard the abuse, it is good fun, atleast in hind-sight

All this, just to meet the deadline.

Why am I saying all this? Remember my promise of 3 posts a month? Today is 30 April and I've only had 3 in the kitty this month. Pulled a fast one on you didn't I?

Should I bring out the bubbly?

My name is Anand and I'm (supposed to be) a geek. And in Geekland, today I got the ultimate reward. I'll get to it in a bit. First, more on why I'm a geek.

Geek is a label that my sister lovingly stuck onto my forehead while I was with her in Dubai. I think that label is wrong more on account of her being 'um, lets say, "technologically challenged" rather than on my being any sort of technical gee-whiz with soda bottle glasses. You see, back then, when I was in Dubai, I was a man of simple means, living the bachelor life in a single room with no TV or girlfriends to keep me company. So it became that my means of entertainment centred around the Internet and appliances that make it possible to connect to the Internet - i.e., computers and related items.

I was quite content using my office laptop with a tethered connection for these pursuits until the suits in my office decided that using the office laptop for personal purposes was blasphemy and blocked all the fun software - messengers, video players and the like. For some sadistic reason, there were some software that were not blocked, but an email was circulated saying you may install these software, but if you get caught, somebody's gonna get hurt, we won't say who.

I needed a personal laptop now and not wanting to settle for anything else, it came in the form of a Mac. Soon I was blissfully spending nights watching movies online and even downloading some of them. Problem solved? No. My Mac has a 13" screen, so keeping it tethered meant the screen was faraway and audio sounded wonky. So I got a wireless router and sound blasters (again of the super fast and super fine quality varieties respectively). Problem number 3 was that I was running out disc space thanks to my fire-at-will downloading, so I needed more hard disk space and that came in the form of a 500GB WD MyBook (back then that was the most space available). The only drawback to the above was the minefield of wires that necessitated tip-toeing into my room to avoid an urgent meeting between face and floor. So that's about my computing pursuits.

Next on the list is my love of good mobile phones running Windows Mobile and lovely, fun filled hours spent customising them with custom ROMs that I tested for some 'fellow' geeks at an online forum. The result - three phones, with one almost always connected to my laptop. That's it.

When I started this blog, I also included a stat counter so I can see which countries people are visiting my page from and get some cheap kicks out of that. So in geek terms, I am really only a teenager who is experimenting and nowhere near the professional that I am portrayed to be. I can see true geeks nodding in agreement and I am thankful to them.


But please, pretty please, call me a geek! Why, because I got the reward mentioned above. With frowning eyebrows, I can see you asking me what that reward is. Here it is: my page is listed 6th out of 4.2 million web pages, I am on Google!












PS: I will not rest until I reach the number 1 spot. So, to answer my question, no I will not bring out the bubbly on this occasion, but yes, I might just treat myself to another custom ROM...

Of chips and teenagers

This one is ‘dedicated’ to that soul who put up his status message on Google Talk as “Kovai A1 Chips…Yummy!!!” – You know who you are. Hope you get the loosies from OD-ing on those chips.

With that out of my system, I can now move on with what I want to say now.

While Lovedale was a lovely place – peaceful and calm, safe and secure, paradise on Earth etc., - to cut a long story short, it was the perfect place to grow up. Nevertheless, there was one major gripe I had with the place – the lack of eateries. It wasn’t possible to sneak a visit to a nearby restaurant to grab a tasty bite, heck, there wasn’t even a decent place to buy snacks apart from the school Tuck Shop, but I couldn’t go there because Joe Uncle, the Tuck Shop manager was also the local ration shop keeper and in that capacity was good conversation terms with amma, worse still, he would go straight to appa, the Dean of the School, and spill the beans about my snacking exploits, leading to a money laundering style enquiry on where the money was obtained from and why I was wasting it on such frivolities as snacking, so that was a no-go. The only other place was Pitchies below Prep School. The risk with that place was that to sneak down to the shop from Prep School, I had to pass by Mrs Vaidyanathan’s house or if I took the long winded route from behind Prep School, I’ll have to pass Raghavan uncle’s, Jadgeesh Pandey’s, and finally Ms Virk’s house, all of which would for sure lead to the enquiry mentioned above.

So here I was, a boy in my early teens with hormones or plain hyper activity making my ravenously hungry all the time with just 3 square meals a day to look forward to (5 if you include morning and afternoon tea). Yes, I know it sounds shallow, what will people not getting 1 square meal a day and all that, but try that argument with a hungry, spoilt 14 year old and you’ll be amazed at the power in those little arms as they give you a fat lip.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be snacks at home – appa would stock up on snacks like there was not tomorrow, but they didn’t feel the same as buying your own on the sly (though this didn’t really prevent me from stuffing my face, it’s a question of satisfaction, you see). There was only one exception to the rule – banana chips from A1 Chips in Coimbatore. Appa was not only the Dean, but also head of the school’s purchasing committee and that capacity resulted in him having to go down to Coimbatore ever so often to buy provisions for school. Each time he went, he would come back with A1 Chips (approximately 1kg each trip) and it would last, on average 2 days in the BBC household (appa’s nickname in school).

The only time I did OD on those deliciously crisp, yellow fellers was when I finished an entire kilo in one sitting without sharing. Needless to say, the following two days were spent in the immediate vicinity of a toilet.

Now, I can only dream of those chips for I have searched high and low in London and just cannot find any crisp that can hold a candle to A1 Chips. I miss them and just when I think about moving on in life, I have the status message “Kovai A1 Chips, yummy…” staring back at me, I want those chips!