Monday, May 25, 2009

Jobless at job!

Some time back, Rat wrote a piece on few things to do when one sits jobless. But by jobless she meant having no job, by will or by force! In that case, there is no problem. There is nobody to boss you around and you have all the time in the world. You can do anything. But what if you have a job but are jobless at it. So many constraints are thrown in. You have a boss to whom you have to report to. You must at least act as if you are doing something. You have to do that acting inside a four walled office. You don't have a choice of timing. For instance, I have to be jobless from 9:30 to 6:30, no matter what! So, in order to help my fellow comrades who find themselves in more or less the same state, I decided to compile a list of things one could do (read as things I do) when one is jobless at job. Attention people who are passing out of college and joining some IT company this year, start taking notes :P
  • Browse the internet. Yup, there lies a huge storehouse of information, both useful and useless, that is enough to keep you engaged for several lifetimes. But try to find out useless information. Its more fun that way :) How to find it? Of course, Google is your God. Warning: Highly addictive and interesting in the beginning but gets boring and dumb sometime later.
  • Coffee time. One of the classic excuses to waste time. This works even if you are not jobless. In case you are jobless, make this exercise interesting. Make it a point to have every variety in your coffee machine once a day. When you are in office, coffee machine is your girl friend, visit her every hour. If you can extend every coffee break to half an hour, abracadabra, half a day is gone!
  • Eat slowly. I mean the lunch. Take your time, enjoy your food, come back late. Go to the food court when it is most crowded, therby eliminating your chances of returning soon. Who knows, you might even get to meet that special someone! ;)
  • Chat. Chat, chat and chat like a girl. Google is like a Hindu god, it has a family of smaller gods that are equally helpful and the world's favourite is GTalk (may be lord Ganesh :)) Use it to the maximum. Ping people whom you have not pinged in two lifetimes. Bug them until they block you. Comment on everybody's status message. Chat with your relative in the US, chat with the guy in the next cubicle. Chat until your keyboard breaks! Warning: This plays dangerously with other people's patience. Be ready to be beaten up!
  • Talk, for free. Don't register your mobile number under 'do not disturb'. Let them call you. Have fun at their expense. Make the conversations as romantic as possible. If a girl calls you, ask her if she will marry you. And the best part is you don't have to worry about losing your callers this way. There are a whole bunch of people giving free credit cards or with new mobile schemes or offering pension plans or some crap for which they will always call you. Have fun :)
  • Extracurricular activities. You can always indulge in extracurricular activities like playing games, watching movies etc. They say extracurricular activites lead to overall personality development. Don't ask me how, I have absolutely no clue! Warning: These stunts are performed by highly trained professionals in nonsupervised environments. Do not try these at your office! :P
  • Sleep. What? Do you want me to explain how to do it? Come on. This is the by far the most gratifying timepass in the world. The best part is you don't even feel time passing by! Warning: Not required. I know you guys have been doing this from school. You must be experts at this.
This is all I could think of. I have implemented almost all of them to varying degrees of success. The effectiveness of each option is determined by so many localised factors and so I cannot guarantee anything. I would suggest, implement each of them on a pilot basis and go forward based on the pilot test results. Good god, seems I have already become a manager...! And yeah, imagination is the only limit to innovation. So imagine, innovate and don't forget to update it in the comments section. Lets spread the knowledge...

Cheers :)

Friday, May 8, 2009

A grown-up thing!

Here is the plot... I am currently stationed in Gurgaon, doing my summer internships, for a period of two months. I stay with a couple of batchmates. Corporate life is kind of the same. Office starts at 9.30, ends at 6.30 and life has become a lot more monotonous. And with me being the eternal hardworker, I generally reach home before 7 pm. From then on, waiting for the clock to show bedtime can be quite an ordeal. That too given the fact that I am neither committed nor married, killing time is tougher than killing myself! Actually I have put in a lot of effort to become either of those, but to say they have been futile is an understatement. All that cannot be described in a blog. I have to write a novel. Will write it after I actually get married. The novel 'My stepping stones of success' will be released as a commemoration of my success!  :)

Lets get back to the story now. As I was saying, passing time has become really really tough for me and it is being aggravated by the lack of internet. There are a few tools to help me though - the table top and the lap top. The first one is a TV and the second one is a computer. (With quite a number of dirty minds reading my blog, I have to make myself clear ;)) But a continuous dose of either of them for 4 hours is beyond the tolerance level of anyone. So we often take a stroll around our place.

I know what you are thinking. 'You are 24 years old and still going for late night strolls with guys?!?' All I can say is, lipe eej haad. One day one of my roommates said there is a Porsche parked close to the place we stay. We decided to check that out and directed our legs to stroll towards it. We saw it, admired it, dreamt of buying it etc etc. Then we discovered there was a children's park right behind it. Given the fact that only people who are either jobless or have girl friends are up at 11 pm, the park was completely empty.

We decided to relive some of our childhood fantasies and went to the park. Boy oh boy, did we have so much fun? Yeah, we did. Swings, see-saws and slides. They just rock! Swings are stil the same going back and forth, but a lot more fun. Three 23 year olds swinging merrily into the depths of the night is quite a spectacle :D But the slide was a lot more scary. It was not even as high as me. But it gave butterflies in my stomach. It was that friendly old slide. The one I had conquered umpteen number of times when I was a kid. The one in which I disregarded the ladder and went both up and down on the slide. The one which was sooooo high but was scaled by the courageous me! I guess some of the friendly ones turn scary when you neglect them for so long. And not to forget the see-saw. The mere thought of being on it makes me smile. How happily did we go up and down without realising that was what life is all about! But there were only three of us. So one of us had to do see-sawing that Zoozoo style! That was great fun and we even took turns at it  :)

It was just a matter of 30 minutes or so. But it gave a memory for life time. We grown ups doing crazy things in a children's park, in the darkness of the night, oblivious to everybody and later blogging about it. Hmmm... Hey, do you think the title of the post doesn't match it's content? I don't think so. After all,

What is the point in growing up if you can't be childish when you want!

Cheers  :)

P.S: Pray to God that someday I get to write that novel. You know what I mean...