There are a few that are very vague but this one stands out clearly. I was a small kid and walked into the kitchen of the little apartment where we lived. My mom was cooking dinner and I had come in specifically to ask her a question “Mummy, how old am I?”
She replied that I was about to turn 4 years old!! And so my earliest clear (as crystal) memory is at the age of 4, asking my mom how old I was.
What’s your oldest memory?
Well, like I stated earlier, I left with 4 colleagues on the Trichy-Kochi Express on Sunday night and we reached Trichy early Monday morning. A company cab was waiting to take us to the company guesthouse. A hot cup of tea was the first thing on everyone’s mind (coffee for me) and then after discussing the agenda for the day, we retired to our rooms for a bit of rest.
By 9:30 am, we had shaved & bathed and headed over to the Trichy office. We were taken round the four floors of the center, which is bigger than the one we have in Cochin. Once that was done, I went to sit with my counterpart in Trichy, a guy named Akhil who I had worked with for 6 months in 2007 in Cochin. We caught up and then tried to compare notes. A quick lunch in the cafeteria was followed by more work and a couple of meetings.
At 7 pm we were whisked away back to the guestbook so we could get ourselves refreshed and then it was off to Hotel Ramya’s where a drinks & dinner awaited us. Fish fry, crab, chicken tikka, sausages and some other stuff were accompanied by whiskey & brand – I had beer. I had a biriyani for dinner as did a couple of others and then we retired back to the guesthouse. As soon as I had washed my face & feet and laid down on the bed, I fell into a deep sleep until 4 am when thirst woke me up.
Tuesday was more of the same – we had a huge 3 hour meeting with the HOD team of the Trichy center and had a late lunch. A couple of more meetings later it was time for us to head back to the guesthouse and get ready foran early dinner and then a drive to the railway station. By 8: 30 pm we were on our way back to Cochin, happy about the warm welcome and the visit we had in Trichy. But I was glad to see my room at home again.
Well I’m back home in Cochin and in my apartment after two days and a night away. I travelled by train to Trichy (Tamil Nadu) with 4 of my colleagues on Sunday night. We departed the station at 10:20 pm and reached Trichy 8 hours later. We left Trichy at 8:45 pm last night and I stepped into my apartment at 6:30 am today. Although I enjoyed my visit to Trichy and the Trichy office, it sure feels good to be back on my native soil.
The trip is worth a few blog posts and I’ll write all about it later today. But first things first – my dad was back home yesterday and he’s fine. After a whole bunch of tests and consultation, he’s just got an allergy problem and that is causing his respiratory troubles. He’s been given a bunch of medicines and told to take walks everyday. He also has to take an inhaler for his breathing issues but that is a temporary situation.
So my major worry is kinda solved and we can relax again. After 4 nights sleep on different beds – 2 nights on a train, one in a hospital bed and one on a hard bed in the company guest house in Trichy – I am looking forward to a good night’s sleep tonight. But the day is just starting and I have to get ready to go to work. So have a nice solar eclipse day and I’ll catch you on the flip side.
An update on my dad – I was with him the whole night and kept him company. I reached the hospital just after 9 pm and stayed with him for a while, until I felt hungry enough to go and get some dinner. Since the hospital cafeteria was closed (at 10 pm) I wandered into the nearby new hotel which was started by the same people who run one of the two bars that I normally frequent (Oberois).
While eating a light lunch, I was on a call with a colleague from our HR department, discussing an Employee Engagement activity that is to be held on the 24th of July. EE wanted my inputs on the new hire and that went on for almost 45 minutes. I made my way back to dad’s room and settled in for the night after I had a little chat with him.
By 6 pm we had 3 nurses come in (at different times) to take a blood sample (nurse Vampira), blood pressure (nurse Stressa) and urine sample (nurse Piss-me-not). I’m kidding – all 3 were sweet little nurses, not much older than 23 or 24 and it amused me when they kept calling my dad as ‘achaa’ (father). It amused the hell outta him too. Once all the tests are done by tomorrow, he can come back home. It should have been completed by today evening but there is a huge waiting list.
By 7 am I was back in the apartment and got ready to go to the office. I had to work today till 6:30 pm and then rushed back home to iron my clothes for a journey – I’m traveling to Trichy (in Tamil Nadu) tonight and my train leaves in less than 2 hours. It’s an official business trip and I just couldn’t get out of it. With my dad having all these hospital tests and the training being delayed at work, this just isn’t the right time for me to be away from Cochin. But I understand that it is important for me to be there for 2 days.
So wish me luck on my first trip out of the home state of Kerala in the last 10 years or more (man that is so weird). I look forward to it and hope to be back home by Wednesday to see my dad back in the apartment. I gotta finish packing and get some dinner before I join my colleagues at the station.
My dad’s been admitted to the hospital for some tests as he is has been suffering from respiratory problems and he keeps getting ill. There’s slight variation in his ECG.
I’ve just reached home from work, so I’ll get some things for an overnight stay, keep him company for the night and then get back home in the morning. I’m working tomorrow, doing Preprocess training for a batch of 22. Things are in a mess at the office and it’s going to take some undoing over there as well.
So I’ll bid goodnite to my readers and catch u later.
Strange that I should another friend and former colleague from my years in Idea. I had posted about Alfred a buddy of mine from my days working for the cell phone service provider and today while waiting for the rest of my colleagues before we had to start the review with our clients, I met another former colleague.
I’m not going to mention her name. She means a lot to me and she’s a good colleague to have. She was the first person who I sat along with at the call center in Idea and who showed me the billing software and helped me understand the various tariffs and other details of the process. For this I will always have a special fondness for her. For being an awesome, fun loving and mischievous friend, she will always have a special place in my heart.
But I was quite shocked to see that she has lost a lot of weight! And she wasn’t plump or chubby to begin with. She was always slim and although she had some issues about being on the darker side, she was quite pretty and lots of people found her quite attractive. But I used to keep hearing things about her family life and her husband’s drinking and I can’t help thinking if it has resurfaced. If that is the reason why she was looking so gaunt, it’s really sad.
I hope that it’s not the case. I wish her well and I hope to see her happy in life, raising her two kids and doing well in her job. My thoughts are with you.
It’s finally here. There’s no more escaping it. I got a call today around noon, informing me that I will have to move two of my 3 senior trainers in my team to another department. This is because of their seniority and grade – corporate stuff that deems them to be too expensive to remain as part of the training team. The reasons are beyond me and I’ve been lucky so far – I was told of this movement well over a year ago, when I first took over as being in charge of this team but I have managed to postpone it by sheer luck and some help.
But I think my luck has run out; an official mail has been sent by the DGM of training in Bangalore, to whom I report to, and addressed to the center head in the center where I work. This movement is inevitable and it’s time has come. I do not think that I can change it or halt it for much longer. And I know that they wouldn’t want to move to the department that they are headed to but I think there are no options left.
I hate this – you would have to work here to know why my trainers would not want to transfer to that department. And I know that we’ll still be in the same office (it’s only 3 storeys high) and we can still have most of our lunches together and chat over coffee as often as we can. But it won’t be the same. I can’t believe that we won’t be one team and have fun together.
But I guess that is life in a corporate setting. It’s not something that I can control and I do not care much for it but I’m stuck with it irrespective of whether I like it or not.
A former trainee of mine (this would have been a training batch in October 2007) invited me to chat this morning. We also voice chatted for a few minutes in Gtalk. She no longer works in the same office as I do, having resigned from her post as a CSA a few months ago. I’ve always had lovely rapport with her, even if after our initial 5 day training period, I’ve had very little official work concerning her.
She would always stop to chat with me for a few minutes if she saw me and she followed this pattern after she left by leaving me scraps / messages in Orkut or in an email. So I wasn’t surprised to see the Gmail invite. So after the plesantries were done, she said that she had news! She was getting engaged in late August & her marriage had been fixed for the 1st of November. I congratulated her but I wasn’t too happy on knowing the details
She’s just met the guy for a few minutes before the ‘deal’ was finalized by her folks and his. She wasn’t sure what his name was and it took a few minutes for her to confirm the dude’s name. And she told me that he was working in IBM’s Delhi office but had no clue as to what he exactly did. She hasn’t seen him since that initial day and she wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to attend their engagement as he may not get the leave! What the fuck ?!
I’m Indian so I shouldn’t get surprised when I hear about such bullshit marriages and ideals about marriages. I mean, she wasn’t even sure of his name for crying out loud. I couldn’t marry a girl I barely know. I know it was the norm here and please don’t get me wrong…..I mean to insult the very idea behind it and to hell with anyone’s fucking feelings!
I mean, how does a dad go ahead and do this – Boy, you may not know my daughter well enough to call her an acquaintance and she may not be sure of your name but don’t let that stop you from fucking her during some nights and a few afternoons as well. It’s a goddamn meat market – just take a look at the matrimonial ads that are right next to the classified. Stereo, computer, furniture, cow, goat and daughter for sale. Oh but in the same case, the dad will throw in the money as well!
I’m going to training today. To train a batch that is. In the past year since I got promoted toTraining Team Lead and then to Assistant Manager, I’ve managed the team and the day to day activities and stuff. I’ve only taken one Preprocess batch in the last 12 months (way back in September). I might be a little rusty on the slides but I’ve kept my training chops up by taking my team through a few presentations related to training.
Since my entire team is occupied with other Preprocess or Process batches at the moment, I’ve decided that I’ll take care of this batch, that has joined the company yesterday, for the 5 day Preprocess period. I’ve noticed that this group of 22 individuals are of a lower caliber than the ones that we have been getting in the past few months and that worries me a bit. So you can say that I’m going to test out the new recruitment drive.
Wish me luck!
Have you been wanting to shave your head totally bald? I have!
Well ok, there’s no way that I’m going to look as good as this chick after shaving my head. Some people are just good looking enough to actually look sexy after shaving their heads completely bald. Looking cool with a shaved head is essential for anyone before he/she decides to put razor to scalp.
Personally, I would love to feel the blades of a razor on my head. I would love to shave it all off and stand under the cool waters of a shower and let my head breath! When friends or colleagues shave their heads I always feel a little jealous.
download the diving bell and the butterfly online
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It’s also a ‘tit for tat’, a little revenge or one-upmanship at male pattern baldness. I’m not so far gone but my hair is thinning and by the age of 40 I will be bald. If I wasn’t so fat I would have shaved my head long ago and flaunted it off for the world to see!
Well hello! This is my first blog post since upgrading to WordPress 2.8.1. I came home from work at about 8 pm and after a change of clothes, getting a cup of coffee and a snack, I downloaded the files for the latest version and then used Filezilla to upgrade WordPress via FTP! (try saying that 10 times in a row).
I was still using version 2.7 until today, deciding to forgo the updates in that same series until something major came along. 2.8 came and went in the blink of an eye and before you could say version 2.8, here came 2.8.1. I couldn’t make out much of a difference initially; everything looked the same. But as I type in this post, I see the differences – for eg. A Permalink button and the link url stands out as you start typing in your current blog post.
For a list of changes & security bugs that they fixed with the release of 2.8.1 please visit here.
five across the eyes online download This I Believe.
I am an atheist. I do not believe in any supernatural deities. I believe in Science, not the death cult superstitions of bronze age nomadic tribes in the Middle East.
I believe in Logic and Reason, and not in vengeful gods that demand unthinking worship. My “Bible” is the ‘CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics’ and ‘Mark’s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers’. My “Concordance” is ‘The Pocket Ref, 3rd Edition’.
The symbol of my “faith” is not an ancient torture device, it’s a slide rule. The simple three part device that helped build the Brooklyn Bridge, Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building, as well as sending humans to the Moon and returning them to Earth. Algebra and Calculus are my “liturgy”, and Physics is the celebration of all that exists, from the smallest subatomic particle yet to be discovered, to the Universe as a whole.
The “Saints” of my faith are legion. Galileo and Einstein, Sagan and Asimov, Eratosthenes and Fermi, Hawking and Feynman, Dawkins and Darwin, Jefferson and Franklin and Paine, and countless others who have sought and still seek to expand the knowledge of how the Universe works, for the betterment of all, to free the minds of humanity from the shackles of superstition and ignorance, and, finally & simply, “To Know.”
gnomes and trolls the secret chamber dvd I worship no god, nor bend the knee to anyone, man or god. And yet, despite my lack of fawning obeisance to the judeo/christian/islamic deity, I do not rape nor rob nor murder my fellow man or woman. I do not defraud them nor seek to enslave their bodies or their minds. I do not turn my face from them if their beliefs differ from mine, nor do I condemn them if they choose to love someone of the same sex or of a different “race”.
My friends include the gay and the straight, the atheist and the deeply faithful, Caucasian, African and Asian. I help the less fortunate in this world as best I can, and do not seek to convert them to my way of thought by my actions. I help merely to ease their suffering.
I choose to stand in the Light of Knowledge and Reason. I oppose the Darkness that is ignorance and superstition.
And I KNOW that, in the end, it IS Knowledge and Reason that will triumph over ignorance and superstition, and triumph over those who would use ignorance and superstition for their own evil and ego-driven ends.
THIS I believe…
© Copyright 2008, Christopher H. Tucker.
Download the pdf file here
