Friday, March 28, 2014

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 2 -

Missed the first part - Click Here.

So during the travel, lots of colorful people board and alight the bus, there are usually quite a lot of group of 2 peoples around who are usually their working colleagues and most often these 2 people are of opposite sex. That's where it gets interesting. Few of the conversations (which I overhear) they have are funnier and I really do not know if the conversations are worth the time spent during this travel. In the end it does not matter since its the best way to keep yourself entertained in the middle of traffic.

So here it goes - Generally I have observed in their conversations, always the female counter-parts are whining about their work, managers and other colleagues when the male counterparts are always like super-dudes who give moral support and supposedly guide the female counterparts on how to react to those situations as if the males have got lots of experience in this field. That's the interesting part of these conversations, normally females start off saying - "Oh my god, just when I was about to leave - Manager comes and gives me work. I had to beg him to let me go home and had to convince him that I would do it first thing on the next morning." So Male counterpart - "Dont worry yaar, managers are always like that. You dont have to beg for that sake. Since its beyond office hours, its your right to get up and keep going. Dont even bother to such things. Next time he says any such stuff, call me. I will speak to him." I laugh in my mind for this advice thinking if the situation was a vice-versa (i.e. If manager had given work to male counterpart), would he have reacted the way as he was advising. I would bet he would've begged too or kept his mouth shut and worked out the night to complete the task. However when it comes to moral support, all sorts of advises come along.

Similarly another instance - females talking about their colleagues spending more time during coffee and tea breaks whereas this female supposedly is working harder but never gets the credit for her work and stuff. So she wants to revolt and demand manager on why this injustice towards her by giving her more work. For this, the male starts off suggesting her to go on and talk to her manager and do this, do that... blah blah. So lot of times these are very interesting only because the suggestions and advises that come out for moral supports are not always followed by themselves. 

Sometimes it is tempting for me to interrupt them and ask then to stop talking the nonsense or whether these are general guidelines available somewhere only for the sake of talking or is it really that they generate dynamically when they hear the question. More than the stress beating techniques, it feels like - how to impress a lady in next one hour or so. however I resist my temptation to talk to them in the fear, the fear of getting to listen about "none of your business", "get lost", "Excuse me, who that hell do you think you are" kind of stuff. Generally it will be like pouring the oil into a burning fire. So keep myself out of it, enjoy the conversations and be happy.

As the travel in bus ends, nothing would change in male or female counterparts either personally or in their professional life, yet they keep talking on the same piece of crap every time they board the bus until they get down at the destination. However whether it helps them or not, it certainly does help me in killing the time and virtually reach my destination happily thinking about all these things are worth their talk or not. Certainly worth my time for listening to them tough.

This is what has been making my travel a fun stuff until now. So keep looking for these group of 2 coming together. Once I get closer to these people, I close my book, fold my bag and keep my ears open....!!!


Saturday, March 22, 2014

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 1 -

As the previous 2 new years my life has just started to expect something major happening on a new year eve. However, this time it has been a sudden gradual change which has started from this new year and has been continuing since then. 

My workplace is hardly 5 kms from my place and I usually enjoy travelling this distance on my own vehicle so that I can control my in-time and out-time. However a week before this new year, I got a sudden news that I would need to go to client place for the next 3 months on account of a project. Normally this is not a bad news unless your client place means it is in same city and an additional 20 kms to travel. Again, under normal circumstances, this 20kms does not matter much, unless you are living in a town where travelling this 20kms takes 2 hours on public transport and 1.5hrs in your private vehicle. I had no choice but to accept my fate (rather curse) and move on. 

Few points to consider before moving on were -
1) The client place starts the work as early in morning as 8am. (In my work place it would be around 10-30am).
2) The client place does not work on saturdays (however, since we are moving on to work with them, they somehow decided to work on saturdays instead of letting us OFF).
3) To reach the client place on time, I need to leave my home by 6-45am. (Something which I have never done before in my professional career on daily basis).
4) I would need to take public transport (read Volvo buses) to reach the client place. (Taking private vehicle was ruled out since it would just empty your pockets on petrol cost and driving in the traffic was stressful in itself).
5) There was nothing I could do to avoid this transition. (Blaaah...!!!)

So I decided to get my monthly pass for Volvo and started the hectic travel to the client place. It seemed like 4 hrs of travel time was too much to take in without any entertainment on the way for first few days, so I decided to take use of my library membership to the full extent. So my usual travel plan would include getting on to bus as early as 7-15am and start reading the books. The same plan while returning from client place as well. This routine continued for a while but somehow due to the hectic travel timings, my sleep deprived body started to argue. It was then I decided to take full use of the morning 2 hrs to just sleep away in Volvo amidst the cool A/C. This also turned out to be routine for a while until one day everything changed for me.

Usually I started cursing this routine thinking it some kind of a punishment to me and having to cope up the client pressure as well as balance the work and family life. But then few things changed. There is a dialogue in movie "Paan singh Tomar" where the militaty captain says - "Pehli baar dekh raha hoon ki koi saza ka maza le raha hai" (Translates to - "Looking at someone for first time, who is enjoying his punishment"). It started happenning to me as well. I got used to this routine and travelling became more fun. How? - Well all happened when I started to observe the people in the bus on how they talk, what they talk, their reactions, their emotions etc. Normally all people on these buses which I travel are from one or the other IT companies which can be found in abundance near my client place. 

Would like to share some of these experiences in the next part. Click Here