Friday evening

Its Friday evening, the best time of the week! I know anyone (including me) reading this on a Monday morning would like to wring the scribe's neck out of sheer jealousy and frustration. But still, dont' forget, there's a Friday evening after every Monday morning (though the intervening period may not exactly be a Disneyland ride) !!!

Hmm, coming to the title of this blog. Three weeks have elapsed since I commenced my internship in this place, which is a behemoth of the software world and whose founder is the richest man on this planet. No prizes for guessing where I am. May be three weeks are not sufficient to get a hang of what life in the corporate jungle is all about, but I'm endeavoring to catalogue the thoughts that have sprouted and repercussions that the past 3 weeks have had on me.

At the start of my internship, my situation was akin to that of a child who has just taken admission in a new school in the middle of the session. Unknown faces, unfamiliar territory and unpredictable proceedings were engendering the proverbial butterflies in my stomach (which was already stuffed with a heavy breakfast :D). The first day was good, and I spent most of the time setting up the dev environment on my system. I stayed at the office for about 12 hours, only to return at 9;30 P.M. "Man, this is corpo stuff", I thought. However, the next few days saw my confidence plummeting and my travails mounting. I was immediately thrown into work, and that too into something I was a complete novice in. "Mannn, THIS is corpo stuff", I thought.

Things got tight as my PM (Program Manager) often walked into my cubicle while I was gloriously chatting away on gtalk or unearthing the sundry truths of orkut. And with my fellow interns galvanizing into action at the drop of a hat, I felt ashamed and abashed. And then came along "that sinking feeling".

Time passed and things started to ease out. In the midst of all the chatting and orkutting, I actually found myself working (ofcourse, to great discomfiture) and actually accomplishing some things (though their magnitude was miniscule). And then again I thought, "Man, this IS corpo stuff".

I've spent the last few days doing nothing worthwhile (except baroquely ornamenting my wretched blog) but my PM has forewarned, "Monday onwards, we swing into action." I hate action flicks all the more now.

In retrospect, I feel it has been a good experience so far. I've learnt some things but a lot many still remain to be drilled into my head. And I'm game for them. For a change, its good to live a sedentary lifestyle (though the gymming at the end of the day is the most enjoyable part of it).

Hmm, but will there ever be a stage when I can say, "Man. THIS IS CORPO STUFF."

Overwhelmed !!!

Its been 2 odd hours that I've been whiling away time sitting in my cubicle, browsing through a multitiude of blogs, and pausing to peruse a few of them, too! And I am overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of what people have to say and write. There were ramblings about the loss of innocence and the proverbial "pause-to-smell-the-flowers" in the jet-age. There were musings over the end of an epochal four years of college, with nostalgic flashes into the past. There were introspective thoughts on the purpose of life, triggered by a heart-wrenching site of a decrepit urchin. There were the silent screams of a recluse who unearths solitude in a crowd. And there were calls of returning to the lap of mother nature, a delicious commentary on contemporary soccer and a retrospect on turning a particular age, feeling one is getting too old for comfort. In short, there was "everything".

OVERWHELMED is the only word that remotely comes close to describing my feeling at this instant. I feel dwarfed in the sheer weight of intellectualism that is floating around me. I realise that people think, people feel and people write. Kudos to the authors of all these blogs for providing so much food for thought that I am now nurturing the fear of surfeit.

Apropos the first blog, I am reminded of a poem I read a long time back in the TOI Sacred Space titled "Slow Dance". It emphasized on the importance of being slow & receptive in life. It is true we have tons of information being thumped upon us for consumption, but it is simply not possible or plausible to gobble down every scintilla of information and knowledge, lest the soul's stomach be damaged :D It is important to take pleasure in doing things in life. I accept I myself am a victim of the "speed" syndrome, but I do try to make a conscious effort to slow down, pull in the reins once in a while and pause !!! Hope, I don't lose my spirit.

These blogs make me realize that I still have a lot to learn about life. So its best to keep your sensors and senses open at all instants, because you never know when a particular incident, a particular sight, a particular insight, a particualr thought or even a particular "nothingness", can change the dimensions of your mortal existence.