Is my state travelling backwards in time?

Gone are the days when we used to sit hours in front of the television enjoying the feeling of being a couch potato. I was travelling to my home town recently for a long week end. I reached my place by 5 am, hired an auto and enjoyed the chill air that is pure and pollution free and is only available early in the morning. I could see the place was immersed in total darkness despite the Summer climate. I had tried to explore the reason but couldn't understand what was going on around me until I reached my home.

I went inside my house at 5:45 am and could find a dim candle light at one end of the floor. I could sense the smell of burnt mosquito coils that almost gave me a suffocation. I was told that there was a routine power cut more frequently and everyone in the state have already learnt to live with the schedule. The power cut prevailed from 5-6 am in the morning and i was desperately waiting for 6 am. More shocking it was when I had learnt that the power cut schedule was torturing people especially during the nights. For every hour we had power, the consecutive hour would be a deprived of it. I liked the way people were socializing amidst the crisis, managing the household chores within the available time slot following a strict schedule. I personally see people in my house chatting for hours together, smiling and spending time with each other that took us off the mechanical life.

This is the scene of the existing power shortages throughout Tamil Nadu in India, the capital city Chennai is no exception with a power cut for a maximum of 2 hours. Two hours is not a big deal when compared to the other places in the state however with the schedule between 8 to 10 am, imagine 3 people sharing the room rushing to office juggling with the turns. I was experiencing this hectic schedule for the past 30 days. The other side of the coin: I was always early to the office, what would some one do if there is no power when they sleep over time. We wanted to avoid a situation where we are left with no water being in the second floor of the flat, could not imagine us carrying water in the buckets and taking it all the way upstairs (did I say that we have experienced this situation before and the trauma still exists LOL)

On the other hand, my Office was left with no other choice than to ask people for suggestion to tackle the power shortages that have become a prime problem in the state. Out of all suggestions, few were picked and implemented, the office timings were revised as 8am - 5 pm instead of the standard 9am - 6pm model. Gyms in the main locations are closed until further notice. Fans, lights and Television in the Cafetaria are being operated only duing the lunch timings. People everywhere are trying ways to save power as much as they can. This is the situation of a normal office-goer in everyday life. The worst part is where people do small scale business amidst the power deprivation.

We, people of our state are waiting in hope for the crisis to be over. Even if the situation is going to be normal, people will definitely miss the new life that they have had during the crisis where they have adapted to time management becoming social animals and still manage to live a peaceful life. I still wonder, are we travelling backwards in time when people had no luxuries as in our age but still had a healthy, peaceful and inventive days.

Caught red-handed

How will you react when you are caught red-handed at work and how often do you get caught? Tough question it might seem, but I had one such experience in the year 2009.

Well, to start with, I was on deputation at the Client place and was supposed to  resolve a serious production issue one afternoon. I was trying hard to get at the resolution while holding a "Squeeze Grip Ball' in my right hand. I was squeezing it just to release the muscle tension but gradually could not resist myself playing with it throwing and catching up in the air keeping the distance as short as possible however it completely took my concentration off my work.

My Client manager (in his late 50's) who sits right next to our bay was responding to important emails, contacting their immediate clients trying to keep them calm, checking the emails to not let the situation out of hand. Sometimes he seem to bite his nail whilst thinking deeply that came natural and habitual to him, here I am talking about one similar nail-biting situation the other day. I was enjoying playing with the ball, squeezing and giggling whilst chatting with my friend sitting next to me, that is exactly when the ball went out of sight. I had no idea where the ball rolled to, so I started searching it right under my desk.

I was searching the ball desperately when I noticed that the ball was under my Manager's chair, he seemed to have traced where it came from when it rolled over. I was hesitant to go pick the ball but made up my mind to face it. Trust me, my client had a very good sense of humour, always cool and a very diplomatic person I had ever worked under. He exclaimed, 'You playing football at office?' in his own style with humour when I went to his seat to pick it up, when the managers who sat next to him all burst into laughter. I was a bit embarrassed, but smiled back at them enjoying the situation feeling a bit relieved. My colleagues who witnessed the scene started laughing and teased me as well. That was one incident which I remember caught playing at work when I was supposed to be working seriously ;)

Dealing any situation with a very good sense of humour is a rare quality found and we admired the Client Manager who had always diffused even a tough situation with his good humour.

Nincompoop

Happened to see the word 'Nincompoop' in one of the official emails in my office. I had no clue what the word meant until I googled it. The very first thought in my mind was, 'NincomWHAT???' :)


One thing the sender of the email hadn't realised when he had placed the distribution list in the TO field was that after 30 circulations of the email, someone would type a word that was so harsh on people involved in the email. Seems little did the sender know the significance of blind copying the DL as people started clicking 'Reply to all' repeating the same messages 'Please do not reply to all'  one after the other. Almost most of them in my company were silent spectators of what was going on. Suddenly there was one email from a colleague who works from London stating, "We work with people who are nincompoops (stupid/foolish people)" in an attempt to notify the mistake people were trying to do.


I had  learnt a new word from that email but kept wondering how people could be insensible while sending out official emails involving vast audiences.