Take what you need, and be on your way. But stop crying your heart out :D

Bisawa got yelled at today. For some reason this wasn’t the first for the poor soul. It was the fourth day in a row and it probably isn’t a great idea to get yelled at by your boss. Especially if they’re guys who’re so senior and top up the organisation chart you’d need a damned telescope to trace their reporting hierarchy.


Sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do. For close to six months now we’ve been here and seen things that probably wouldn’t be
1) Believable to the normal soul
2) Imagined in the wildest dreams
3) Soft/tender enough to let a fresh grad take a whiff of the nice rosy world he’s going to go on into.

Instead, it was a harrowing, pressurising road strewn with politics, ego battles, incredulous stupidity and along the way, a few breakdowns. I can’t really claim that we are despicable “gents” broken down by the proverbial “System”. We are still very much alive, if a bit sleep-starved and crib on elongated intervals of time about things uncared for. It’s a funny thing to realise that you go to work everyday knowing exactly what you are supposed to do but the minute you get to do it, you’re faced with every possible uphill roadblock mankind has ever seen. Geez, sometimes I wonder if I descended from some Greek solve-puzzle-kill-monster God or something. (Heh...yeah baby, Hercules was my great great grand-dad!)


If I stretched out my life in Singapore on a palm and wondered what I had managed to add to the repertoire of 22 years of mindbogglingly useful yet worthless experiences, it might be easy to jot ‘em down : Awe, at the ease at which you can do things. Awe again, at how controlled the Chinks can get when it comes to realising that most of their lives are governed and pre-determined. Surprise, that there are still semblances of racism in the best of employers. Sadness, that even if I were to be handed over the reigns to my homeland, I wouldn’t be able to make a rat’s ass of a difference to make it like Singapore. Freedom, at the things I could do with my newfound salary. The hollow feeling of being aghast that even the biggest of bank balances can go kaput in a few bad decisions. And most striking of all – the feeling that I know now, how people would think before they actually thought it themselves. It’s a peculiar thing.

For some reason I saw most of my bosses and co-workers to think it was something which came with “experience”. “Heck, I know he would hate it if you do it like so-and-so”. Very impressive, and sometimes may well be true enough to save the skin off your backside. Balls, I say. I think it’s just this mish-mashy behaviour inculcated by nearly every organisation to insulate one in such a way that we do what someone wants us to do and probably not the right thing. I did dream a couple of times of doing the thing which I promised myself – that I would say anything as long as I knew it was right, and be sure to call a spade a spade. Christ – writing a blog makes me remember about lots of shit I’ve been meaning to do, and didn’t. Goddamn depressing :P.

And here I go back to being Murali :D ....

I just discovered I am becoming fat. Okay – to all those enlightened souls who can look at a photograph and make that deduction, please – spare me. And for those who saw me live recently and then remarked that, go to hell, you’re blind :P I mean, it’s a body condition thing. I don’t have eyes on the back of my head that I’m not noticing that well-conditioned tyre of blubber just above third base  But heck, it’s brilliant these days that I see my reflection in the lift and go...”Heh heh heh...Gee man, I’m WIDE! :D”

Shruthi was Godly in gifting me a beanbag. At first I thought it was small and couldn’t serve my (now enlarged) bottom. But boy, was I wrong. Not books, not dogs, ladies and gents – It’s the beanbag which is a man’s best friend. It’s like they say you know – your ass never felt better. All of my friends who pop by my room, have a seat and give that expression of pleasure....”aaaah.” like the ultimate pamper :P.

My boss is one heck of a character. One moment he keeps asking me the same lousy question precisely once every 23 hours – “Is your project moving in the right direction?”. Jesus Christ, one time I felt like saying “No. It refuses to move. Now move, your moustache is too close...ACK!!!” And there’s this other time I heard he covered for me in a meeting with his boss. Then reminds me every 13 hours, “You’ve been here for so long, you haven’t delivered anything!” Big deal, Johnny Smartass. Six months ago I didn’t know that you could pull along just fine even if you didn’t know a cheque from a picture of your long deceased great granny. Now I do right? So duh...wait up!

I want to see my friends. Yes – all of you bastards reading this. I know this is random. But I don’t care. It’s been too long. And too long is too bad. I want to see you all get fat too! Want to see Subbu get rid of those locks of hair and become all serious like the family guy he’s going to become :) . Also waiting to check out his new gyaan on applications and why Leopard OS is much better than Debian because of a program which whistles instead of an alarm and says “Wakey wakey, bad boy” :D .. Want to see Shruthi burping and saying “Another packet of Lays please. I promise this is the last”. Shrek tut-tut-ing and asking me the most benignly idiotic question on earth – “Have you been exercising at all?” or “Dude a DX-10 doesn’t need specific Pixel Shader support, it comes with the charged up turbo rendering spectrum of the new nVidia design....” (Dude if I happen to look cross eyed at that time, then I’m not doing playing Troll you know, I am just concentrating). Want to see Baachan after all that mugging – I am guessing wispy (pilaka) juttu and dark circles approximately an inch in diameter. Probably Kiran who might’ve grown another inch – yes, fucker, you can get to that palm tree top you saw as a kid. Walker after his new found love, might’ve gotten rid of his Coolie no. 1 knickers. Dude, you seriously gotta sell ‘em to me. Anand and the lousy guitar – must get pictures to show Stephen. He should know what he got himself into after hiring him :D.


More later...Weekend, here I come!!