Thursday, September 20, 2007

Lift Me Up

I got a couple of tags to do. But when I came to this question- "If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?", I drew up such a long list that blogger shut down! So have decided to hold on till I feel less hungry (NOT read as never!)

So tomorrow's my last day in this job and I will no longer be a chip off the old block (very cool pun for all who know where I work). Have spent the day writing good bye mails today which I'm very excited about sending out tomorrow. Though what is disappointing is that people nowadays are so well connected that before you can break the news to them, they already know.

I have this quirk to be the first one to break news-good or bad. Hence was known as the gossip queen of campus. There is a certain joy of knowing a piece of fresh gossip which only convent educated girls like me know! There's something about seeing people's mouth drop open when you say "Have you heard...." or the tingle in your tummy when you're listening to a piece of gossip and already mentally making a note of who all to disseminate to after putting down the phone!!

There was a time my reputation was so amazing that people would say "Zee, just wanted everyone to know I'm engaged and thought what better way to get the news to the rest of the world than to tell you." I took my job very seriously and within 5 mins would make sure all relevant people have received every juicy detail!!! Sigh.....those were the days! Now people are too busy to generate gossip for me and so I spend my time blogging....

Coming back to the title of this post which as you may have noticed has had nothing to do with this post so far. The reason I wanted to blog was because I have spent a significant time of my 2 yrs in this job praying for my life. A whooping 5 mins everyday when I got into the lift going up and another 5 mins while coming down!

I'm not on the 60th floor. In fact a 15th of that to be precise. Yet laziness runs in my bones so I never take the stairs. Hence the degree of interaction with the lift is amazing

I'm not claustrophobic but God knows I break into a sweat everytime I step into the tin room. Someone had done a case study on how a lift company was able to satisfy customers better because they'd put mirrors outside so that people wouldn't be bored waiting for the lift to come and so the time the lift took seemed shorter. Apparently, my lift people read the case study and smartly decided to place the mirrors inside the lifts so that you can kill time while the lift kills you softly climbing up the floors at snail speed!

Once inside, don't panic. There's clanking and banging and the lift shakes enough to measure 50 on the Richter scale (just hold the side panel or each other if someone else is risking their life with you) and you can practically picture a skinny little guy huffing and puffing trying to pull the lift up. (No wise cracks you guys! It's not due to my weight! Hmph!)

And today, the switches inside stopped working. So you just need to get inside and wish that it stops at your floor. So while getting out to my car on zero, I went from the 4th floor, to -2, to -1 and wola! Straight to 1! Before I was faced the embarrassment of walking out again on the 4th floor, I decided to get off and use the staircase! Forced exercise I tell you! Someone out there is plotting against me!

The one last thing on lifts.....why does everyone stare at your footwear????? Esp when your sandal is broken.......

Saturday, September 15, 2007

3 cubed

It was a decent start I must admit. As in, I got about a dozen calls back to back at the strike of 12....my niece handed me a self made card with tons of sticky glue and shiny stars.....the boy had handed me a bad full of gifts.... so all was well. Till life decided to say "Are you actually feeling good about turning 27?" And so it began.......

I walked into my bedroom chattering away on the phone when I spotted it...the slimy, ugly, pugly lizard on the cupboard door. What ensued in the first hour of me turning 27 was me standing on the bed and screaming for someone to shoo off the L thing.

If you don't know what the L thing means to me, you don't know me at all. To put it in brief, I have come this close to writing in to Godfrey Phillips for handing me a bravery award for surviving 2 years surrounded by the sumo wrestler L things in Bhubaneswar (which according to some people is near Nepal!!!!But let's not start on the lack of geographical knowledge topic cause for years I thought there was a beach in Calcutta thanks to the Vivek Oberoi Kareena Kapoor song from Yuva shot on the beach!)

Back to the birthday. I spent most of the part getting shouted at by my mom that my room is still a pig sty and if I don't clean it in 2 hours, my friends cannot come home for dinner. So I spent my ENTIRE day cleaning up my room.

Add to this that my maid fell ill. And mum in all her flurry of making kebabs and the rest for the friends' dinner made daal chawal for lunch. This when I was getting a free day from my diet after 3 weeks!!!!!!

And then we'd ordered the most delicious cake which I'd been looking forward to all day and it turned up with walnuts in it (And I HATE walnuts!)

No...it gets worse. Then the electricity went off during dinner. The electricity never goes off this side of town!! So everyone was huddled under the one fan that works with the inverter power and played a guessing game with what they were putting on their plate!

Ok I'm going to stop before I feel more miserable. There were a lot of things that went right too though.....like the lizard hasn't been spotted again in 3 days now, the electricity came back in 1/2 hr, i didn't overeat cause the cake didn't merit it, the dal chawal were rather tasty, I got lots of present and my boy was here after 2 months..... And that I'd got 41 calls from friends by 11am. Lost count after that....

So I guess all's well that ends.......well.....

PS- Thanks everyone for pouring in the wishes on my previous post! That counts as an upside too :)

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Tomorrow

Top 3 things to look forward to tomorrow
1. Presents
2. Day off from diet- Translation: Digging into the chocolate brownie cake
3. Phone calls from people who don't call anymore

Top 3 Things to NOT look forward to tomorrow
1. Lack of presents cause I'm too old for them
2. Cake burning down due to the fire caused by the candles
3. Phone calls from people who laugh at me and say "HAHAHAHA!!! You're 27!!!!"

Crap!

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

I Saw the Sign

People's style of signing off on official mails got me thinking today (I am obviously very jobless...reason below...and so things like this get me thinking...if at all...) of how silly signing off can be. Most of the times when people sign off as "Cheers" I have this vision of them raising a toast. So it's even funnier when the body of the mail is full of scorn and it ends in "Cheers". That's like saying "Here's to your inefficiency! Bottoms up!"

It's even funnier when agencies sign off saying "Warm Regards". You get these scary visions of them giving you a hug! Ok to be fair I signed off that way too for years in an attempt to copy my client savvy boss till someone told me there's no such thing as "warm" regards. It's "best" regards. That of course is better than this colleague of mine, who in her trainee days was often told to reply on behalf of the boss...that is, till the boss discovered she'd been sending mails to clients saying "We will be reverting shortly. Love XYZ"!!

Anyway, been having a blast at work having quit my job last week. It's funny how everyone was curious to know where I was moving to when I quit my previous job. This time the response is "So are you getting married" or "Are you going to continue working?" It makes me feel a. Really old...like it's time for retirement or something and b. Totally incompetent that people cannot believe someone else would get conned into hiring me!! Hmph!

Made my last official out of town trip to...no points for guessing...Chennai. And without fail, yet once again, for the nth time, the office had sent a cab bearing my name prefixed with a "Mr."!For crying out loud! I've decided to sign off from now onwards giving them my name, sex and vital stats if need be!!

So getting back to office...been chilling out... reaching office at 10, leaving at 6 sharp and spending the hours in between listening to the radio and sending personal emails! Exit mode rocks!!! Today in particular I went to office in a chariot of flowers...like literally. Our neighbour's shrubbery has decided to shed on our side....to be more precise, on my car! So in a flower laden car I set out for office with petals flying to the left and leaves flying to the right, with petals streaming down the windshield when I braked and petals flying off when I used the wiper....and all was well till I saw the cows were eyeing my car rather longingly!!(I swear I heard a couple of them saying "foooooooooooooood") Hence now planning to go down and free my poor eve teased car off greener pastures...

Till next time.....signing off
Zee
Female