Hafta wasooli

Bhai is back to work!

The first week at the new office was fun. Boley toh - solid hafta wasooli!

Day 1 - Monday
I was shown around the office and introduced to my colleagues, many of whom I already knew. I was pleasantly surprised to note that my cubicle is actually not a cubicle, but a cube! (Okay wait, which is the bigger one? The point is - I have the bigger one!) In fact, it is so big that I can keep Frodo, Fat Chick AND Nemo on my desk and still have plenty of working space!

As I admired my new desk, new stationery and new computer, the manager suddenly screamed, "Oh my goodness, where is your computer????????" I had an urge to point at it and say, "Ummm... It is right here, woman!" when I realised she was actually looking for the CPU, which was nicely hidden behind the flat panel monitor. And that's when it struck me - the first image in my head when I hear the word "computer" is that of a monitor, but to her, it was the CPU. Though technically she was right (ex-engineer Sayesha thunked herself on the head with her signature hypothetical rolled up newspaper), I wondered if there were people for whom other parts counted as the 'computer'. The keyboard, even the mouse perhaps?

I was given a copy of the training schedule, which nearly caused me to faint. 9 days of training! 9 days of training from morning till evening. 9 days of no work! 9 days of sitting in the training room and listening to the trainer. How would I survive it?

I did not dare to go to sleep in the middle of training for three reasons:

1. My new boss (she joined on the same day as me) is also undergoing training with me, and any sleeping activity during training could severely affect my annual appraisal.
2. There are only two of us in the training room, and thus any sleeping activity would be highly visible.
3. Most importantly, I was really keen to learn what the trainer had to share.

The day-long training was exhausting, made tolerable only by the very pleasant and likeable trainer. There was a lot of information to absorb, and I was lost several times but I was told that things would start making more sense as the days went by.

Day 2 - Tuesday
Things did start making a lot of sense, though I still wasn't happy about the no-work status. I welcomed lunchtime like a child welcomes summer holidays. We even did a bit of window shopping after lunch. The office is located in a central area in one of the most impressive buildings of Singapore. Actually, I have never seen a more beautiful office building than this one. As I admired the exquisitely designed lobby, a colleague told me that if you ordered drinks at the bar there, an "angel" suspended from a metal cord would descend to your table with the drinks. Holy cow. Now that's what I call getting really high.

Day 3 - Wednesday
The manager told me that the trainer was on sick leave! Yipee! I didn't yippee the trainer being on sick leave, I just yippeed the fact that there was no training! I was free! Free to work! So I went around begging my team members (who are eventually going to report to me) for work. It's not every day that your boss comes to you begging for work so they were more than happy to hand me a thick stack of manuscripts to work on. It was enough to keep me occupied till the end of the day.

As I worked on the manuscripts, I sent a few silent curses to Nirwa. Reason? She'd written something about the song "Nani teri morni ko mor le gaye, baaki jo bacha tha saare chor le gaye!" in one of her emails and I could not get the damn song out of my head. It was really distracting to work when a song like that is playing on loop in your head. By the time I was midway through the manuscript, in my head I was already at the song's antara "Achhi nani pyaari nani rusa rusi chhod de, jaldi se ek paisa de de tu kanjoosi chood de!" noting very carefully that it was actually pronounced "pa-ee-sa" and not "pai-sa" in the song. Sheesh! Damn you Nirwa.

Thankfully, I was distracted by an email from a colleague asking us to suggest a uni-sex name for her cactus. Someone suggested that she should name it 'Cactus' with a capital C. Apparently, said colleague has a tortoise called Tortoise. After a few crazy emails with suggestions such as 'Tez', 'Spiny', 'Prickly' followed by the cactus-owner's surname had circulated, she picked "Mr Pricks." Since the unisex requirement was out, I suggested that 'Hardy boy' sounded better (since cacti are one of the most hardy plants) but allegations of the name being too porn-ish were hurled at me! What the...?! Nobody read The Hardy Boys in school?? What deprived childhoods man... sigh...

I found out that I get upto 50% discount on the books my company publishes. Though the company's blogging policy (Yes, they have a clause about blogging in the IT policy!) prohibits me to disclose the company name or website on my blog, all I can say is that a clue about its identity is hidden in this very paragraph. It's for the smart ones to guess, not really for dummies. ;)

While roaming around trying to find a lunch place, we passed by Maggi's, a Thai/Chinese eatery. We'd eaten there before. The food wasn't great, but the view was spectacular. The view of the very good-looking Caucasian guy we spotted, that is. Apparently he was a regular there. We'd actually secretly taken his picture using a colleague's phone camera. The girls had of course found enough reason to quickly scurry inside and grab a table, while the guys started whining about how girls could get away with secretly photographing guys using mobile phones, but when guys did that, they were branded perverts. We told them we agreed and found seats from where we could get a clear view again.

Lunch discussions hovered around the results of the recent Miss Universe 2007 pageant. I overheard the guy at the table behind me exclaiming, "Finally an Asian wins the Miss Universe crown! It has never happened before!" I wanted to dunk his head into his bowl of hot tom yam soup and scream, "Which continent do you think India is in, you dhakkan???"

Day 4 - Thursday
Vesak Day - Public holiday! Read Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Interpreter of Maladies' from cover to cover. Beautiful writing style. Watched Rakhi Sawant's Koffee with Karan interview on Youtube. Went for a walk to the beach, and caught up with ex-colleagues. Chuckled at the sight of a bunch of people wearing Shrek ears and playing Twister.

Day 5 - Friday
I opened my office email first thing in the morning and saw an email from a colleague sent to everyone. The email had been sent on Wednesday night, had no body text and a subject line that went "I'll be OOO on Friday." I wondered if there was an office Halloween party that I was unaware of, and dressed rather inappropriately for, when it suddenly struck me - OOO means "Out Of Office." Sheesh.

Went over to say Hello to Mr. Pricks. He doesn't really look like a cactus - more like a cross between a miniature cactus and a miniature aloe vera plant.

Got full marks in the training assignment. The trainer said, "Well done." I said "Dhakki tiki". In my head of course.

So that was it - my hafta wasooli this week.

As for weekend plans, guess I'll just be OOO. :D