3 X 2

Today I got myself relocated to our office in Bombay. Bombay being my home town and place of birth has always been my favorite city. In fact I have also limited my job options just to be able to live in Bombay. I live in Bombay as much as Bombay lives in me. For me, in the true sense it is a Maximum City.

But for the first time in my life, I got a rude culture shock from working in an office in Bombay. To begin with, I suddenly find myself displaced from the corner cubicle into the middle of a long row of 3 feet wide pigeon holes (PH). One may choose to call it "Quarter Cubicle" or "Shoe Rack" if not pigeon hole. If I stretch my hands then I will probably poke the next 2 guys in their ears, I had to refrain from any stretching exercises through out the day. I kept my cell phone on silent mode so that the hardworking pigeons do not get disturbed. That too didn’t help because my phone being on vibrator mode, when I got an incoming the four blokes around me seemed to tremble with the vibrator effect.

I switched on my desktop and tried moving the cursor, the mouse just won’t respond. I sucked in my stomach, squeezed myself under the desk, and groped behind the machine to make sure that the mouse wires were well connected. I think I even scared a lizard while I was feeling the behind of my machine. All wires seemed well connected so I again trudged my way back on my chair. The sudden relaxation of my solar plexus might have passed a gust of wind in the floor, if you know what I mean. After 15 more minutes of fiddling the guy on my right rudely asked me to stop screwing with his mouse (no pun intended). It was then I realized that my mouse was between the monitor and phone, on top of my file and right under my elbow.

Since it’s my first day, so the unused pigeon hole also has a conked off printer, some abandoned printouts and a phone with no cord (no, it’s not a cordless phone) to give me company. I am hoping that by Monday this mess will be cleaned up and the cubicle will appear bigger. The tray to keep my keyboard was hanging on just one screw, but thankfully the carpenter was available to fix it soon. Someone has locked the drawers and probably swallowed the keys or thrown them in sea out of spite. I will have to get duplicate keys done.

As I retrospect into my career, I can say that the one thing that definitely shrinking as I move ahead is the size of my cubicle. Sometimes I think that this is the corporate way of making sure that my ego is just big enough for the size of my cubicle.

Waka Waka FIFA

Football frenzy is almost over and will be long gone by the time anyone reads this post. WC '10 will probably be remembered for some weird reasons... an Octopus and a Parrot making predictions, Upsets and First time Finalists, Referee blunders and a promise by FIFA to consider the use of technology in forthcoming editions, just to name a few.

But this post is not about what happened in FIFA WC '10. This is an imagination of how the corporate world can be influenced by such mega-events.

Animated Coaches screaming their lungs out and making gestures that only they can understand can influence Project Managers and Team Leaders sitting in the big cubicles. Some poor techies are working their ass off to make a piece of code work and the PMs jumping around and yelling abuses. Unit test cycle fails and the next thing you see, some PM throwing monitors and keyboards on the ground cussing team members and yelling at the quality team (read: referees) for giving NCs.

Floating octopeds in Business Development teams immersing food packets in boxes marked "Fixed Price" / "Time & Material" OR "Onsite" / "Offshore".

Technical Consultants flipping from seats in fake injuries when their leave is not approved and they are asked to work extra hours on a Saturdays. Fall on the ground, roll a bit clutching the stomach or calf and if no one notices then sit back on the desktop resuming work.

Shakira couldn't "Waka Waka" for IT geeks but a little bit of jiggling before appraisals will not hurt those HR guys and supervisors.

There could be many more intersections between the corporate world and the world cup, care to contribute??

Getting inducted

I would like to see this post as more of a Time Capsule. And after several more posts and years later, I would like to revisit it to see if it still makes as much sense.

I am writing this with a view of sipping the first hot cup of coffee of the day and contemplating how the rest of the day would churn out to be. This is about my first few days on HSBC rolls.

The first thing that strikes heavily on the mind is that the organization makes every effort to make the inductee PROUD of being a part of the family. The position they give you, the facts about the bank they throw at you, the proud history, everything that brings in, as they call it, a Feel Good factor in you. I think it is very important to make the new family member proud of what he has gotten into.

I also felt that the team members are very friendly. They are not reluctant to walk across the cubicle and exchange a few pleasantries. The seems a conspicuous absence of distrust or politics. Some mates infact seemed a bit relieved to see me. (quite unlike some of my previous work places).

Being a back office / data centre of the worlds largest financial institution invites some extra precaution on the security front, which can sometimes be a bit irritating.

All in all, my first 72 hours seem to promise a good future and possibly the positivity that I always yearned. But a little voice inside me keeps telling me that at the end of the day, I am still working for someone else and not for myself. Whether the feel good factor in HSBC will suffocate this little voice or whether my anti-establishmend, free spirit will get the better of me .... only time will tell.