The Goa trip that went South & then went YEEEHAAA!

This is an amazing trip, which got me broke to rich and helped me fulfil my childhood dream!

It all started on Saturday morning with me having Rs 1500(Thank you Subbu, Moorthy and Vasu for the contributions) in my pocket and 3 tickets:One from Nizamuddin to Madgaon and 2 tickets for consecutive days from Madgaon to Trivandrum. The idea was this: My team - The great Maa II, consisting of Mayank, Atanu and Me(with a good deal of support from Akanksha) had sent an entry for Revving Up!!! - The Case Study competition at GIM, Goa and I was to present the case if our team got selected, but then we weren't sure if we would get selected. I was sure, but Maa wasn't :). So we had tickets for me to directly go home or stay back 1 day and present if we got selected.

Fortunately we got selected and the 35 hour long train journey went well and then I reached Goa, only to find that I was BROKE :(. Now that got me thinking what is the reason for my constantly bad financial condition. I'm in constant debt and can't find a way out of this situation even when I've won a good number of events/quizzes this year(2011). But I guess if I start on that then it'll be another blog post completely. Main issue for the day was I was left with Rs 120 at the start of the day when the event was happening. I had to get back to the railway station at night to catch my train back to Trivandrum and it's a sweet 40 km ride from GIM till Madgaon station, which comes to 600-650 in a cab. Basically I was begging around in Facebook/Gtalk and all other possible means to beg.

The day started well with me getting up ahead of time and getting ready by 9 AM and reaching the hall to find it quite empty. I like all the CONFIDENT MBA's started to look up the slides and added some finishing touches here n there. Then frankly I did get nervous waiting for the PPT to start, so I started chatting with the other teams and had a good time till I was called for the PPT. I was the only TEAM with just 1 guy here and with more than 80 odd pairs of eye balls pointed towards the slides and alternating between me and the slides I started. Initially it all went really well and I was fortunate to have a good panel which didn't interrupt and blocked my flow. That got me going and I was at one of the best presentations of my life I would say!

I finished with the judges quite impressed and asking the very first question which got me really happy, the question was "How many of your team mates worked in Automobile industry?" and when I said none of us, he was even more impressed. After a few questions more he was satisfied about the work we had done and then I got back to my seat waiting patiently for the other teams to finish up their ppt's and went about on a Hyper Facebooking spree. Some 20 comments and 2 updates later the time for the final announcement came. By this time I had 1900 in my SBI A/c. Thanks Sriram and Ajay Aliyan :)

It was a proud moment for me and I could say a very happy achievement for my team when the whole crowd said "IIFT...IIFT...IIFT" when the judges asked "So who do you think is the winner...". I was having the best smile of my life and the smile widened when I got the winners cheque and the three Nano shaped pen drives as special gifts :). It was literally like the cadbury's ad where "dil mein laddo phoot rahe the", the Rs 20000 cheque was just the icing on the cake :)

The glee wasn't contained in me when the HR told me that I have got a spot-offer and asked me to consider joining India's largest automobile company. It was a dream come true for me, a dream that had been in place in my head since I was 4 years old and got onto the hood of a Tata Truck during one of the 1st trips to my dad's workshop at Air Force Station, Avadi. A dream that made me pursue Mechanical Engineering, but wasn't fulfilled at my BTech stage. Even though I got into Tata Steel during my internship and then got a PPO, the happiness that I've now is much greater because this is a dream for me to follow what my father did for 21 years of his life and make it bigger and better :)

Thank you Mayank, Akanksha and Atanu for giving me a chance to fulfil that dream, thank you GIM for giving me a platform to present our ideas and most importantly to IIFT for giving me this awesome chance. Now I really feel my MBA did add a lot to my life :)

PS: 1st job of any Marketing guy is to promote his company; so here goes - Kindly visit www.tatamotors.com The site is updated very recently and hope you'll like the changes :)

PPS: This can also mean that CGPA doesn't stop anyone from getting their dream jobs in an MBA :)

The Lover

..........She held onto him tightly as he zipped through the traffic with finesse, like a pro race driver. She was always thrilled when they both were on a bike, and it gave her goosebumps when he drove fast and cut through the traffic. It was drizzling slightly and even though it could be bad for their health, they just wanted to go on and on. As a child she’d always wanted to drive a bike, maybe because she saw her dad driving the new Yamaha RX 100(15 years back it was new), from her childhood. Now she loved sitting behind this guy, whom she loved, as he throttled the modified 2000 model CBZ with its stylish toe shift system. She could feel him taking the bike to its limits; she loved it when the roar of the wind drowned the roar of the engine.........

She had a lot of knowledge about bikes; as far as a 20 year old girl is concerned. But then that wasn’t the single reason why she was different from other girls of her age. She hated the company of TYPICAL girls. Maybe it was because she spent 12 years in a girl’s only convent school, or maybe due to the fact that the two women who’d been closest to her in her life; her mom and her elder sister; were such nice people that she hated to be categorised into the so called NORMAL GIRL STEREOTYPE. Now this doesn’t mean she doesn’t live like a woman. She does have feelings of a woman, and the best feeling of all in them was that she was in love with this guy. He wasn’t the best looking guy in town, but then she wasn’t the best looking gal in town either. So she thought she’d go for something other than looks in her dream guy. Actually it wasn’t until he proposed to her that she though more about love and marriage and family and all. Because he was the first person who’d made her feel that she was a mature girl, a girl who could be made a wife, a girl who’d be a good mother to his kids. The day he proposed to her, she wasn’t in the usual dilemma of a girl if he was the right guy for her, instead she was thinking, was she mature enough for something serious like this?

That was 3 years back, now she had no doubt in her mind regarding the fact that he should be her life-partner, for he was the lone person who understood her without even her telling him the problem. To add to this, he had a great job now, working in one of the best Investment Banks in the world- Barclays Plc. He was a globe trotting MBA hotshot thanks to his IIM Ahmedabad PGP. In some way it was she who’d inspired him to pursue an MBA, even though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone. It was his wish to match her parents’ question of status in the society that made him quit his decently paying job and write numerous mock cat’s and ace the CAT and get 4 IIM calls(ACLI, if you ask). He always had the ability, but it was the focus provided by a desire to marry her that pushed him forward. She could still remember the day that he proposed his wish to marry her. YES, it wasn’t the typical, I love you and would you be my girl. He was bold enough to ask her, “Would you be my Wife?” It was on the 26th of June, 2004; the day that he got a job in Maruti. Maybe it was the feeling in his mind that he had a secure job, a soon to be completed degree, which would make him an engineer. So the next thing would be to have a girl. But he didn’t have interest in going for a college love story, especially since he had just one more year left to complete his B Tech. So he carefully evaluated a few girls. Yeah, even she knew that she wasn’t the first choice in his mind, he’d been frank enough to tell her that, and that was one other thing that she appreciated about him, his frankness and his boldness to tell anyone what he felt; even though he was painfully frank at times. He was a nobody in college, except for some people very close to him, hardly anyone knew him. He was someone who was THE guy when it came to certain things; like technical paper presentations or when someone's car broke down or a bike had a starting trouble; he was the guy who all remembered.

He had a great smile, a smile which in spite of his average looks made him handsome. He walked with what many would call a "happy bouncy walk", which as per some books and psychologists reflects a positive personality. Yes he did have a positive mind-frame when it came to talking about and certain things. But he was totally clueless about how he can have his future planned out.

Like all engineers he had a degree which said he was an engineer, but then he wasn't an engineer who knew each and everything in engineering. He was someone who could be called as a practical engineer; someone who knew how to repair a damaged TV,a broken down car, a malfunctioning amplifier and once he even changed the entire computer network of his department lab. These things aren't what many would call as great set of skills, but to have all these in a single man, that's where the greatness lies.

She on the other hand was what many would call a straight A student. Bright in academics and extracurriculars. She was the star of any programme in college. Be it a dancing competition or a Just A Minute event. She could baffle the audience with her sheer passion in the dancing and the amazing vocabulary she had when it came to speaking in front of a crowd. It wasn't just these, she could very well connect with the crowd and create a happy mood where ever she went. This was one of the prime reasons why he was attracted to her.

They both weren't what anyone would call a great couple. People were surprised when they told that they are together. Both their friends thought that they could get better people and they both deserved better. His friends thought she wasn't the type who'd make a perfect match for him and her friends didn't think he can match up to her talents. But they both somehow knew that the other was the ONE! This relation went on for a year until the time came for him and her to leave for their respective jobs. He went to Delhi since Maruti was his firm and she went to Mysore for joining Infosys. They both left on separate dates with promises to talk to each other daily. His training started and he was posted on the shopfloor at Maruti's Gurgaon factory, while she was posted to Bangalore after her training. They used to talk daily unless work was too much and they just didn't have the energy to talk to each other.

Like this one year passed and they hadn't met. They planned a meeting by taking leave together to come back home. So on 25th June, 2006 both of them reached Kochi, their hometown. They met the next day at Marine Drive and walked and talked for a long time. She felt happy to see him and he was delighted to see her. While talking and walking she noticed that he had changed a lot. He had put on some weight and his way of walking had changed from the happy bouncy walk to a rather slow, heavy walk. She heard him describe his work and how he used to be commanding workers in the assembly line at Maruti. He was talking with the same animated style that he had, but she noticed that he had an air of authority now which made him feel like the boss of things.

He noticed that her dressing sense had improved and she kept good care of herself and he felt that a good part of her salary was being spent on make-up. But then he thought, "WTH, why should I bother, as long as she's happy am happy". She also looked slimmer than the last time he had seen her, maybe it was the work catching up with her, or maybe the low-on-sleep lifestyle thanks to the job.

He then asked if she wanted to go for a drive. She had never come for a drive with him back in college days as she feared if she'd be seen by someone whom she knew, or someone her parents knew; eventhough she always wanted to do it. Today she somehow didn't think of what will happen IF... She just said ok and they both walked towards the parking and he started his bike and came to the place where she was standing. He stopped and flipped his visor off his helmet and said "Need a lift?" and she laughed and replied "your stupid sense of humour is still intact."

They drove through the Park Avenue and within some minutes they reached the highway and that's when he started speeding....................

...........she held onto him tightly as he zipped through the traffic with finesse, like a pro race driver. She was always thrilled when they both were on a bike, and it gave her goosebumps when he drove fast and cut through the traffic. It was drizzling slightly and even though it could be bad for their health, they just wanted to go on and on.

Both of them were talking about the good times they had back in college, about the jokes that happened and neither of them had a worry of what was happening in the world around them. They both had reached Vytilla where they were waiting at the signal when she suddenly saw that in the car stopped behind them in the signal was her uncle. She was worried if he had seen her and started to panic. He was also worried and she just wanted to get away from the place unnoticed. She had never thought about this until now. She wished she had never sat behind him in the bike. As soon as the signal was green she was telling him to hurry on and get ahead of the car as far as possible. He sped on, but still her tension wasn't relieved. She wanted him to get away from the car as soon as possible. In all this tension he was also getting worried and he lost focus from driving and also the rain started getting heavier.

They slipped on the road and the Scorpio coming from behind them crashed into their bike and she was thrown off the bike. She fell some feet away from the crash where he was jammed between the Scorpio and the road. Eye-witnesses said the crash was very bad and the girl died on the spot due to a head injury, he was alive when he was being taken to the hospital and all the while he wanted to know if the girl was safe. He was worried what her mother will say when she reached home so late. He was asking questions what happened to his girl, the girl whom he had loved. He knew something was amiss when no one told him anything about her. He had multiple fractures and internal bleeding from the accident and before he could reach a surgeons hands he also was dead.

At the time of death the only thoughts in her head were, if only she had not accepted to come with him in his bike, and his last thoughts were if only he was able to get her away from whoever was in the car behind.

If only the world didn't have a problem with two people falling in love with each-other irrespective of their backgrounds, they would both have been alive today.

PS: This was a post which I had started writing more than two years ago in 2008. I didn't know how to progress and how to end it, and I hope I've done justice to it.

My Generation

Don’t make someone a priority, if you are just an option......

I absolutely love this saying that I cannot find an author to give credit. It rings true everyday of my life. I have used this saying more than a couple of times in my GTalk status messages and also in my facebook, twitter and orkut pages. But till today I hadn't given serious thought to this line. You might ask what happened so much today to make me think about this sad fact of life. I believe it hasn't been a smooth sailing for anyone in their love-life, who ever says that they've the perfect love story, are either lying or are acting in a movie.

Now coming to the saying- Whether they are friends, family or a special someone they really can’t be that special if you are just an option in their life. I feel that people do make you an option in life, especially in your work, your college(at times it does feel wrong), your social circle and so on. It has been the norm in the fast moving world that we live in. I still remember the term Friendship of Convenience when it was told to me by a teacher at the TIME centre I had attended. He told about people being friends for just the sake of using eachother when they need something. People who think like:

How can I use him? He is well connected, financially well off, resourceful, he is a doctor, lawyer. Build and maintain the relationship, some day he could be useful. Usefulness goes, friendship goes.

I hadn't got seen much of FOC(not pronounced as the F word, but just F.O.C) in my life until I joined my work and their again in my training programme the company HR head told about the same term. He rather gave a 30 slide PPT on how to do the same quoted lines I've given above. But finally he told the term Social Networking, rather than FOC.

I had heard about networking since I am a part of the Orkut era, the Facebook generation, the guys who wake up and tweet their status and check their mails before going for a piss and will even F**K for the next best thing. Now when my generation decides to make friends it is a simple step. There are a thousand different places where you can meet people, maybe real, maybe virtual. But anyways you will always find people; more so because you live in a world with 6.6 Billion people. But still people will be happy to talk to some unknown on a website rather than with their next door neighbour or even to the people living in their homes.

There is a saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend." Common enemy goes, friendship also goes. True Friendship cannot survive without the element of mutual respect and that I feel is the one thing that lacks in these ONLINE, always there for you friends :).

I am not pointing fingers at anyone, I am very much part of this generation, I get happy when people say they "LIKE" my stupid messages in Facebook, or when someone RT's my tweets; why go that far, I ADORE the one's who comment on my blog and for me and my generation this has become a way of attaining social recognition, of having a status that they won't get otherwise. Especially fat guys like me who would not be able to make it to any happening parties or be invited to movies or hang outs because of their looks or because they can't dance that well and so on and on........

Now I feel I've digressed quite a huge bit away from the saying at the start the blog; so let me just FOCUS and get back to the point. (MBA has been doing its good bits to me too, don't you see the jargon's I've used till now :D). So I was talking about someone making you an option when you make them or rather plan to make them a priority. I feel that in the family life the FOC should just F*** off and you should have sincerity in your relationships. I can't imagine a father having a caring relation with his children only so that he thinks they treat him well when he's old. Going by the present way MY generation is going ahead I don't think even if we care for our kids they will take care of us when we're dying. Maybe this fear is making my generation to run more after the all elusive MONEY.

I still remember my dad's words when I had told him that I want to quit my job and go for an MBA, he was shouting into the phone that I am mad to leave such a well paying job and I don't realise the value of a government job. It is true, my generation doesn't know the value of a government job. Even after working in a government company I feel that I would do good in a private firm because their I will get recognised for my work. Its true that private firms reward people who show dedication and usually in govt. firms and departments good dedication means trouble for the person.

But then when I joined my course in July and in the discussions in class when people diss about government jobs and the work culture and how corrupt the officers are and that if the country is allowed to run by private firms then we'd beat US in a matter of years and all that wonderful ideas go around. Only the handful of people who've worked in govt. firms and have led a non-corrupt, non-maligned career(albeit short) will disagree and try to persuade that NOT ALL the officers are like that(heck I too was in that category a few months back, so how can I agree??).

My generation takes pride in the discussions and dialogues that we all carry out, but still we either never vote, or never care to know who wins the elections. As far as we are concerned it is always one corrupt guy to another, one uneducated fool to another and one idiot to another. But like the Tata Tea campaign I ask isn't it time to wake up and do something about it?

But then I myself am not doing anything about it other than proudly showing my finger off about the vote I cast, then why will anyone else do anything about it??

PS: Title credited to The Who for their wonderful song - My Generation.

*Disclaimer: I am being overly emotional tonight. These are the rantings of a person with absolutely nothing fun to do right now. And instead of getting studies done, is making non-sense blogs.

Rom Coms - The Female Chauvinists' way of getting even

I've watched a lot of Romantic Comedies(Rom-Coms as they're known) over the years. If I remember correctly the very first i saw would be Pretty Woman. I saw the movie when i was in 9th standard. I saw the movie at a cousin's home. He was an engineering student and had this movie's cassette(yes, VHS cassettes were the norm those days, not CD's) with him.

I loved the movie and fell in love with the too-good-to-believe gentlemanly Richard Gere in the movie and wanted to be like him from that day. He had the charm to get any woman he wanted and yet he didn't want any. I wish one day i could raise myself to such a level and then say NO to my mind when i see someone and my heart says YES.

The greatest surprise in the movie wasn't however Gere, it was the every lovable, innocent-yet-charming in her own way, Julia Roberts. I just couldn't control my laughter at the scenes where she barges into the meetings and then takes him off to shopping and all. But at the same time tears welled up in my eyes when i saw the emotional scene with Roxette's It Must Have Been Love in the background.

Since then i've been a sucker for Rom-Com's and have a huge list of those movies in my collection. The movies in this range from 50 first dates to Zack and Miri make a porno. These movies haven't helped me a bit in anything other than feel good at the end when the guy gets the girl. The movies always have a lopsided hero-heroine composition, be it Pretty Woman with a Ivy-League MBA falling for a Prostitute or 50 first dates with an amazing chick in Drew Barrymore falling for an oaf of a man in Adam Sandler.

Always these movies presented a totally unrealistic view of life(atleast for a guy living in India). They always gave ideas that were stupidest in the best of situations and still the guy ALWAYS got the girl in the end. There was a time when i used to believe that such a situation would happen to me sometime in my life and i'll also get that brown-eyed girl with the most amazing smile in the world.

I think these movies are The Female Chauvinists' way of getting even at the so-callled male dominant world. These movies make the innocent guys (like me) believe in stupid things that would never happen. This makes the girls they fall for behave in the most outrageous ways and then assume that things like that would come out to be all fine and dandy.

But sadly the world, especially this part of the world(also known as India) has people who've never had such experiences in their entire lifetime. Yours truly is a living testimonail of these girls getting rid of guys like me after getting their most essential needs satisfied(may not be the need you've got in mind). But still these experiences have never let me down and am still in search of the brown-eyed-girl.

Hope these movies don't make a mess out of the life some other charming young dude.

It happened to me..

I've been not very active in the online world since last week; the reason being I've been going to duty in B Shift since 15th of this month. It was my last request to my boss as I wanted to sleep peacefully(*till 10 AM) during the last fortnight of my life as maintenance engineer. Ofcourse I can't tell him that I wanted to sleep, so my reason was "To enable better transition of knowledge to the guy who's come in to fill my spot, he should come in general duty(8AM-5PM) and I'll assist him in B shift(2-10PM)". So I was going to the office the last few days with books, newspapers, magazines and what not to keep me busy after 7 PM, as most of the jobs are complete by sundown and even if there are jobs continuing they usually don't require my physical presence at the work site. So I just goto my office(if you remember the pics from previous posts you'd know) and pull out the reading material I brought and go over it. In the last few days thanks to B shift I've managed to read half of "Love in the time of Cholera"; a book I've kept with me for so long, but couldn't get to read. I also took my net browsing thingy to the office and used to sit in the planning office and chat with people/read blogs/scrap on orkut and what not.

Coming to the point, today i was supposed to go in General duty because of the reason that am participating in Mahaquizzer 2009 from Bhubaneshwar and so I have to go in the evening train and stay there overnight. I ofcourse didn't tell my boss about this, the reason I presented before him was that both me and my replacement have our weekly-off's on sunday. So if we both take leave on sunday then no one will look after the plant activities on sunday(*you see plant comes first, even if its a BIG quiz). My boss was happy with my dedication to work even on the last weekend I was working and sanctioned the change of shift without much fuss.

So I was to getup and go at 8 AM to duty today. I was watching 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy, yesterday in HBO past midnight and it was 1 AM when I slept. I setup 2 alarms on my phone and 1 more in my roommate's phone. Today morning I got up hearing the hooter which sounds at the beginning and end of each shift. I was stunned to see that the table clock(a digital clock given free by some supplier as a courtesy gift after a long seminar on bearings) was showing the time as 08:02. I jumped out of my bed and ran to the toilet, didn't bother about other things but started brushing my teeth furiously, cursing Nokia company for making incompetent phones which can't even sound an alarm on time.

I finished brushing in record time of 1 minute 30 seconds and then took my clothes from the hangar and started to put them on, when I realised that my phone doesn't have sufficient battery charge to last the day. So I took the phone over to the charger which was on the table when my eye fell on the clock again. It showed 06:05. I was stunned AGAIN and to verify I checked the clock in my phone, then confirmed by checking my roomie's phone as well.

I cursed myself for this stupidity and was having a good laugh. By this time I was fully dressed and was going to wear my socks. I was laughing for a full minute before I started to undress and go back to bed. I called up a friend and was telling her all this. At first she must've thought "Why is this idiot making me getup this early" and it was clearly evident in her tone. But in the end she too had a good laugh about it and she said she's gonna get up and study. Then I tried my sister, but she conveniently ignored my calls and must be sleeping in her dreamy world now(hugging teddy I gifted her this birthday)

So moral of the story:Don't sleep too late and then get up earlier than you want to, it gives a THROBBING headache.

OMG its 7 AM, I need to go now!

iResign

Warning: This is a Looooooooooooong post and has a lot of me bitching about my boss and my work life in general. So read when you're in the worst of moods and best of free-time :)

Yes! I resigned from my job today. I had taken leave yesterday to work out on THE perfect resignation letter and searched google and a host of other career websites before getting onto something which was a mix from many good letters I saw. In short i copied from many and used my copy - paste skills to the best. I got to see a variety of letters; funny ones, short ones, to-the-point ones, one-up-your-@$$ ones and what not. I even went to read Satyam's Ramalinga Raju's resignation letter. In the search i found a few good ones too. Like Roosevelt's resignation letter, one-liner resignations, even those with abuses and what not!

One even had BLOGGING as its main theme. Couldn't help but posting it here.



The one-liner's were of the type

Dear Boss,

F**K You

Regards,

XXX

Or the best one i got online was:

MC,

Main Chala.

Tujhe jo ukhaadna hai ukhaad le,

XXX

PS: The above letter can be RIGHTLY understood only if you've a good knowledge of colloquial Hindi, especially what MC means :)


Even though i really wanted to write one like the two above, but finally i settled on what's given below:

To

The Executive Director

IFFCO Paradeep Unit

Through Proper Channel

30^th April 2009

Dear Sir,

Sub: Resignation from the services of IFFCO

I write this letter to tender my official resignation from IFFCO, as Senior Engineer (Mech) in Phosphoric Acid Plant, effective today, 30^st April 2009. I also inform you that I would be completing my one month notice period as required by the company policy.

I do this with a quintessential feeling of regret which is bound to come on leaving a wonderful organization as IFFCO and also with a feeling of joy, borne out of taking a new career path in pursuing higher education, i.e., MBA for the next two years.

My association with IFFCO since December 2007 has been a great learning experience and I am grateful to the entire organization and in particular PAP Staff and Workmen for their unrelenting support and understanding extended to me.

I do affirm of providing all possible assistance in my capacity to ensure a smooth knowledge transition, in keeping with the high standards of IFFCO.

Finally, this is to request you to kindly initiate the exit process so that I might be relieved of my duties by 31^st May 2009. I would like to thank one and all who have been a part of my IFFCO work life and would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to them.

Thanks & Regards,

Yours Truly,

Abhijith B

P No. 109231

Sr Engineer (Mech)

PAP Mechanical

Then in the morning I faced a lot of questions when i walked into my office. My office isn't the kind of office one would expect to get after a engineering degree. Its not the kind that one dreams of, not the greatest view, not the best of AC's, not the plushest of chairs. To cut the crap short i'll just put a pic of my office. Here it is:

A typical site office in a factory, but still not the norm, but a bit off colour. I walked in to see my boss, the chief manager sitting in the blue chair above and the shift engineer sitting in the black chair. Discussing about a breakdown that occurred in my section. I was then assigned the job taking making the pump ready by the evening and then i set about the task of finding what my technicians and workers were doing. Then i assigned various jobs to the people and went to the planning office which is more like an office with the AC, PC and cabins, files and stuff. There I took a print out of the letter I'd typed and marched into my Boss's office and gave it to him. He just glanced through it and was just reading and reading, not even asking me to sit. Well that's his usual style. He never asks me to sit when I go to his office. He quickly fires a lot of words and I scoot before he gets time to think what he said. This time he was just reading and reading. I remembered the words from my senior in the planning office who 1st saw the letter and told me to take a dictionary to my boss who's got a great vocabulary and is the best person when it comes to English, especially due to his Bimaru state background or his crude working culture which he learnt after working in a cement plant for 20 years.

Anyways he just kept on reading and then finally after 3 minutes and 21 seconds he asked me to come back after lunch and get it from him. I went out happily after the deed and then i was expecting to get a serious talk from either my boss, the paandi HOD i've, the GM Maintenance(who's the most vocal spokesperson of my company; about how great an organisation IFFCO is). But none of them seemed to bother that i was quitting my job. They just forwarded the letter to the next higher authority until it reached the Exec Director's table. He is on leave and I'm pretty sure he'd not care two hoots if i leave the company. For him I'm just a resource who planned to quit.

Truth is i feel bad that none of these people value my 18 month long stint in this place. It seems to me now that it was a wrong decision on my part to have taken up this job instead of the Wipro job I had. It is true that I loved some aspects of my job; like the good trips I had thanks to the job, the good times I had in the job, the bad days @ work.

But overall I hoped the people here cared for the work I did. This is the main reason I'm quitting my job, NOBODY appreciates the good things I do here. I feel leaving that my 18 month long work-life in the World's Largest Phosphoric Acid plant was a great experience.

Some snaps from my work life.

Overhauling a pump at 1 AM in the morning isn't something I loved to supervise.

That's SULPHURIC ACID flowing down the pipe, yeah the same H2SO4 you learnt about in school, only that it's 98% concentrated. Burnt a good shirt of mine once.

A gas cutting work under progress in a vessel. Was a fascination when I 1st saw these things.

The 1st thing you'll see when you visit Phos Acid Plant(PAP). It really is the world's largest and will be forever, coz no one's DUMB enough to make a single reactor plant with more than 2500 Metric Tonnes production per day. Mine's 2650 MT per day of 100% Phos acid.

This job will always have a special place in my heart, just like my 1st job. Hope the last month here will be a good time as well.

The New Me........

Check out the NEW me :)

Hatred and Me????????????????????

After a long loooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnngggggggggggg gap i'm tagged by someone. :). I'm quite happy because that gives me something to write in this blog other than the misfortunes happening to me! What could i say, even though i was happy to accept the tag from Mr Njaan(What a funny name, isn't it?), i won't say that its a happy tag. It basically is about:

(1) Posting about 5 different characters you hate.
(2) Passing on the tags to 5 different bloggers.
So without much yapping about how much i hate to tell the public about my objects of hatred, i'll start:
1) Phonies: They are right on top of my list because these are the kind of people who don't deserve a life from my point of view. They don't live for themselves, they live to make others belive that they are SOMETHING IMPORTANT. I used something with the understanding that they are what we say in malayalam as SAMBHAVAM. They tend to believe that the world revolves around them and they are the best thing to happen to the world after cell phones. They are of many kinds, guys who behave differently when a hot chick walks in, Managers who don't work and then show up on the site with all kind of instructions when the top management appears to inspect the job, people who ditch you when u need them the most, people who take advantage of you for wrong reasons, even people who show off their costly spare parts in front of a not so welcoming audience and enjoy that glory and so on and on..........

2) Reality Show Anchors and Judges: I differ a bit on this with Njaan, he hated everything associated with it, while i believe that some of the participants are genuinely talented, but the anchors are really really crap and so are most of the judges. Some are outrightly stupid and will give anything to make the audience cry, while some are so rude that they want me shove a spade up ther @$$.

3) Gossipmongers : People who spend their lifetime making false newsreports about others and take pleasure in making others' lives miserable. They could be saying anything from who someone is going out with or even may go upto who somebody slept with the previous night.

4) Perverts : These are guys who take pleasure in doing abnormal things, like Mr Moninder Singh who love to do things that one wouldn't even wish that his enemy got. These people have no right to live in this world, if i were the ruler of the country, i'd lynch them personally and then hang them on a noose so that nobody dares to do this.

5) Casteists/Religious Fanatics : People who bother so much about the caste and religion so much so that they'd kill for it. I'm personally against anything to do with caste/religion. This maybe due to the fact that i've had a few crushes broken because the girl wasn't from my caste/religion. YES, Indian GIRLS do think about all this while falling in love(at least gals in TVM do). I've had numerous proposals being dumped by the girl because i was from a different religion or caste. These things are way too old and way too stupid to be observed now. Maybe for some religion is a good thing, it gives them direction and maybe means of living, but then nobody has the right to take lives in the name of religion. This is what i belive and personally i hate people who propogate such kind of thoughts , even if it is my ex-girlfriend.(I'd hate her more for other reasons)
I've been postponing the publishing of this post for a long long time, mainly because i didn't find enough in my head to fill the post with. Yeah, maybe my work has made me hate less or maybe that i'm too unattached from anyone i hated a few years back :)
I don't know whom i should tag in this, coz many people whom i blogroll have already done this tag, or are tagged by others. Still i'll tag some:

1) Hari Vishnu : Coz he gave me another TAG while i couldn't complete this :)
2) Viajero : Someone who's new among my readers, so here's a welcome gift :)
3) Abhilash Sir : I'd love to hear about his list of hatred :)
4) Gasmuttai : An adorable senior, who seems to have forgotten about his blog, so be a reason to start off again.
5) Sreehari : He too seems to have forgotten his blog, maybe the s8 exams are making his so.

That's it for now!

Love struck

Dear me,

Why does it always have to be me who's got to say sorry, can't she get it that at times things work either way? Maybe i've done something that might have been too much for her to bear. But does being the man in the relation mean you've to take all the crap that's hurled at you? I've always loved her because she wasn't the typical girl, the one who'd get happy if i gave her a flower, or one who'd like me to gift her a card. As a matter of fact that's the LAST thing that i'd do. There were times when she loved me as much as i did. But now it seems its more of a compromise rather than real love. I just find myself at a loss of words when i think about the last time we had a good talk for a full week without her thinking there's no future in this and it'll will never happen, or her thinking that she's not good enough for me. I've lost track of the times i'd had to call or sms an apology so that i could just hear her voice, or get even a missed call in return. I don't know what's so special in her that even on my worst days at work, a small 'hi' from her would change my mind. I've always wanted my partner to be someone who's not binding me to any conditions, or asking me to achieve certain objectives. But again and again i chase dreams that were never mine. I work so much to keep this relation intact. But now its making me feel bad, feel sad. Asking myself if it's all worth the pain. My mind says no, but as its with th heart, it says YES. What'll i do if this is how it's going to be? Or will it improve? Or will it get worse? Only you can tell my dear, only you!