Yeh khana hai yaa…

Just had lunch. I ate something the caterers here in office call food and expect me to believe it as well. I must appreciate their guts though, which can only be compared with pravin mahajan's lawyer who goes on record saying his client is "mentally ill". Neway, I expect pramod mahajan to get well and sort out his brother and the lawyer and the mental illness (if any). But I think I need to check out this caterer's kitchen. While the others are still eating let me go and observe the cooking that's going on in there.

I look at the cook in his kitchen, which smells radically similar to a hospital's general ward. He goes about to cook in a manner comparable to scientist working on a formula for a chemical weapon in an underground chemistry lab. While in his innocent dreams he is blissfully ignorant of the pressure cooker delivering whistle after whistle loud as a mill-siren. Just before the cooker goes bonkers and blasts he suddenly wakes up from his dreams like someone who after listening to a Jagjit Singh gazal has just flipped channels to find Navjot Singh Sidhu. He switches off the gas. I am thinking had there been one, the scene would have been strikingly similar to what they used to show in Jaspal Bhatti's "flop-show" where Bhatti attempts some chemistry only to blast the beaker and comes out with glass pieces and white chemical all over him.

While he goes about cooking his dal look-alike in the utensil of the size of a bathtub, I take a peek at the rest of the menu. There lies the good old bhindi distastefully mixed with aloo. Still a better combo then Nagma and Ganguly I guess. The salad contains 5 kg of chopped cabbage mixed with 2 slices of carrot, which one has to be lucky to find out. The Muter-Paneer is all-muter-no-paneer, I bet the best of underwater swimmers wont find any. Finally, there is the forsaken curd, which seems to be lying there from the nineteenth century.

With no more motivation to move around further, I leave the place trying not to think of what tomorrow's ordeal at lunch table would be like. While crossing the dining hall I see a part of the crowd still eating and I pray they never visit the kitchen or else…

Me, Myself and Irony

There is something that has more irony to it than ganguly getting clean bold, blaming the pitch for it in the press-conference and being reminded by the journalist that the ball was a fulltoss. And that something is that I am constantly looking at the gmail chat bar for the past half an hour only to find nobody online. And whenever I go for a meeting or something even more useless but madatory then my best buddies would have their names bright and sparkling accompanied by the green ball. This leaves me with one less choice for wasting my time.

By the way, there are several measures of high quality waste of time. One is what I am currently doing. For an unfortunate reader who will put in "protinex powder" in the google toolbar and arrive at my blog, I am taking the pains of putting down this post. Anyway, I am sure blogging community would be going by the rational that god wasted his time big-time to manufacture something as a terrible a waste of time as Homo sapiens, it automatically confers the right of wasting time to us.

So herez my tribute to the global-time-wasting community : "5 terrific ways of wasting time" in descending order of popularity.

5: CHAIN EMAILS & FWDS : Irritating, disgusting and frustrating added together and squared would not describe the feeling you have on receiving an email saying "Yahoo would close its service if you don’t fwd this" or "Bill Gates sharing his wealth" or "Nokia distributing free phones" or "your next 3 wishes will come true if you fwd this to 27 people." The fart jokes that not even santa singh laughs on and the PJ series are even worse.

4: MESENGERS : This single most coveted waste of time for office goers. From Advani to Adnan Sami nothing would go un-discussed. The chats can range from how-to-kill-our-boss to come-to-the-parking-lot-at-4-when-noone-around depending on the mood, person and gender.

3: ORKUT / HI5 & LIKES : As if all the messengers were not enough, chatting through scrapbooks can be a real pain-in-the-lower-back, six inches below the belt. (I thought of writing ass, but I avoid profanities in my posts and so there is no instant in this post where I have written - ass) People associate a lot of passion with number of friends they have in their connections and so don’t wonder if you get a friends request from the person who asked you the directions towards the nearest loo in an apparently urgent call of nature.

2: BLOGGING : There is no more satisfying way to torture your enemies then writing your totally unnecessary , undesired and unsolicited opinion in 7648 words on how you feel about an even more unnecessary, undesired and unsolicited issue like "lakme-wardrobe-malfunction" and forwarding the link to them. Moreover, every tomy, pappu or hariya in the blogging community who have just read the book "11 ways of coming out of depression" will, with all their sincerity give there two cents on life, death, angel, evil, suppression, depression and human philosophy which if god-forbid Ayn Rand or any of her students read would depress them enough to make them jump off patronas towers.

1: READING MY BLOG : I know nothing else would compare favorably with this . The people who agree can jump to the comment section and the people who don’t can restart reading this post.

Me, office and a cup of tea

Unless you have a handkerchief clad Mallika Sherwat wallpaper on screen, it’s hard to keep your eyes open after a heavy lunch. I would have tried that novel idea today had this been my last day in office. Unfortunately it isn’t. Novel ideas don’t have a place in corporate world anyway, so I am resorting for a regular wake-up maneuver…. A cuppa tea…

As I sip this cup of tea, I have only one plan for the next half an hour that is to do nothing. So I am just looking around throughout the 359 degrees. No I am not a santa singh renowned for his geometry. I removed the one-degree angle towards my boss who reminds me of work. My office isn’t that photogenic a place and my colleagues aren’t walking the ramp at lakme fashion week… This brings me back me back to good old computer screen.

Now, I am looking at the screen but not seeing it, trying to get lost in the air of thoughts, catch hold of one and spend some time with it. So, basically I am thinking of what to think of. At this point I am as tempted to go back home as Ganguly is to go back to the pavilion. Ganguly is lucky for he can surrender to temptations at will. Nevertheless, I have to sit. So why not sit and observe people…

After spending some time observing people one can broadly categorize them into the following categories,

1. THE HUM-HONGE-KAMYAAB ENGINEER:

These types are the ones who would go to Hawaiian islands, sit on the water-front with their better halves with a mug of Caribbean bear and discuss India’s nuclear power situation. These were the ones who used to do all the assignments in college and the rest of the class used to copy. They would always stand second in merit in their schools and colleges, (the topper would typically be a smart lazy bum who crammed all the IMP questions the previous night) Melody here is defined as the sound of servomotor. If you dare ask them what turns them on, the answer would be a cathode ray tube.

2. THE SMART LAZY BUM:

These would typically include people like yours truly, whose only serious attempt on an engineering concept was to calculate the tensile strength of Pamela Anderson’s bikini hooks. These people are great at two skills of management, one is relegating and the other is shunning. Bravery here is to sleep when boss is giving a presentation. Their skill-set includes taking away credit for good job done by THE-HUM-HONGE-KAMYAAB-ENGINEER.

3. THE BLACK HOLE:

I am totally perplexed by these species for they tend to be physically present and mentally absent everywhere. They seem like a toxic celestial dump of energy and the air of drowsiness around them is infectious. They can live for 47 days without making a sound and can stay put for 34 days without moving from their chair.

4. THE BEAUTY MINUS THE BRAINS:

These self obsessed females are living in notion that everybody in the office is staring at them. They tend to check their appearance every 43 seconds and they add to the decoration of the office. MS Word is their idea of a high-end engineering software, formatting becomes a high-tension, pressure-cooker job and Piping diagrams here are cute. They are brilliant at talking provided they are not talking engineering.

5. THE ONCE-UPON-A-TIME TYPES:

These are in the 50+ something bracket. They would call an emergency meeting and talk for an hour about how their son got into IIM (it would actually be IMI or MII or something else which they suitably rephrased) They would boast big-time of there been-there-done-that incidents on the name of experience sharing. Retirement is impending, almost arrived and if it doesn’t come soon enough there would some others who would gladly take VRS to avoid the pain in ears.

Did you hear that…? A ONCE-UPON-A-TIME type just called THE SMART LAZY BUM. Well, if you are confused then I will give you a hint - My boss called me. There are some other species remaining to be described but I better hear out my boss till he is 58 or else…

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Disclaimer: Nothing personal, just fun.
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