Work Home - Home Work

As some of you at work might have noticed, I am not seen in office, occasionally offline on communicator, sending emails from my phone, online at ungodly hours and continuously setting up conference calls to catch up. In short - I am Working from home :)

Many of us have the privilege  to keep an office laptop providing the so called flexibility to work-when-you-like at any convenient place. The added benefit to this is the option to Work from Home (WFH). Even though hubby and I are in the same field (IT), employed with quiet good companies (let's just assume this for now) and have similar privileges,  our typical day is vastly different -

My day - Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready, drive (traffic  these days is more stressful than watching a soap on TV) and then get started with work! Numerous breaks (don’t judge me!), drive back, cook, eat and continue with more work until midnight!

His day - Wake up, eat breakfast(not forgetting the gazing at the newspaper), get back to his room and get started with his work! A lunch  and a dinner break and he is back to his spot until I signal my end of day!

Personally, I have never understood how anyone could be productive working from home.  One reason could be that when I am at home, I forget about work from home and instead indulge into working at home.  In addition, my nature of job is to collaborate with people; working from home is simply counterproductive.

Well, that’s just me! The better half however, is the complete opposite. He has utilized the option to WFH to the fullest. Sometimes days, weeks and even months pass by and he would happily sit at home and go click clacking on the laptop!  At one point, I started to doubt if he was still employed ;). Of course the paycheck at the end of the month was very re-assuring :).

No matter what I think about WFH, this option now has come handy when I absolutely need it and whether I enjoy it or not, I do appreciate the importance of this benefit :)

Phibe! :)

5 days to go for 2012 and 5 more posts on the blog to hit a century :) though I would love to welcome the new year partying I have a feeling that I would  probably be writing a blog post when the countdown begins :-). Actually! Not a bad idea at all :P. Whether I party or not, one thing is for sure, I will complete my 100th post on this blog on New Year’s Eve :-) With that hope and spirit, here is my list of 5 things I wish to do :)

Streak my hair purple: I am crazy about purple and all its shades. I have collected loads of purple stuff in my wardrobe and have never gotten tired of adding something new. I have driven shopkeepers mad asking for a specific purple shade dress or purse. In fact, my parents simply jump at the sight of anything purple saying "Sakina's favorite color". Recently when I walked into the beauty parlor, I spotted a huge Schwarzkopf hair color poster with a lady having purple highlights! And boy, did I get tempted? Yes! I sure did! I decided to streak my hair purple or rather highlight them on my 30th birthday. But...I couldn’t and that’s why this one goes as a top item on my wish list :)

Buy a Purple Honda Civic: I love Honda Civic! The sexiest car I have ever seen and dreamt off! And the sexiness just gets sexier when it’s in purple! Most of you who know me have seen me getting completely distracted when I spot a civic on the road, especially when it’s purple! Oh and I also have a Civic poster on my desk which acts as a Motivation factor! ;) I just hope I get my hands on this car before the Honda guys decide to make it ugly :(

Get a Tattoo on my neck: Ha! This one is recent too. I remember hating the idea of torturing yourself and permanently encrypting something on your body. But hey! We permanently have ear piercings even though they tend to hurt, so what’s the big deal with a tattoo then, right? :) I want a nice cute small tattoo done on the back of my neck :) preferably in purple :D Any designers?

Write a book: From the time I started blogging, I have been wishing that one day I will write a book. I have written a lot about myself on this blog, may be one day I will publish an autobiography ;) or may be my love story or may be about purple ;)! Who knows one day I will be the next popular writer in town. Hehe :)

Open my own boutique: Fashion designing has been my dream for a very long time. I still hope that one day I will officially open a store and sell clothes which are “branded” by “Sakina” :) A day when people would come to my store and are ready to pay a fortune for my designer Saree” :). A day when people passing by my shop look at the mannequin and say “Awesome Ghaghra”! Well I can go on and on, but you get the point right?  

Here is wishing that at least one wish out of this wish list comes true before I die :)

Rambling thoughts

Well here i am finally, trying to write what i feel like, but don’t think my mind is in the right state of mind to actually make my hands write something decent or something interesting to keep you sticking to your monitor and continue reading. While reading the below post, please understand that I am using this space to blabber and vent out some things which have bothered me for a while! This post no way indicates that I am depressed and need a counselor, so just read it and forget about it!
People say i have a perfect life! Well i don’t think anything is imperfect about that statement, but when i really think deep, i kind of tend to disagree. One day my friend told me "Sak, I envy you! You have a job every techie wants, you work on a product everybody likes, you married the guy you always wanted to, you got amazing in-laws, you have the coolest parents on earth, you are Miss Popular and you have whole load of friends!" Wow! First, I would like to say a BIG Thank you for summing that up! Honestly, I had no insight! But then, when i actually read that statement all over again, i feel if that's the case, i should be happy all the time and should be the most satisfied person on earth! Shouldn’t i? But at this point of time, while i am actually writing this, I am not in my best of moods and surely not close to being happy!
You may think, “come on Sak, what's wrong with you?” The answer to that is, “Nothing”! If life was always happy and settled, then probably i was not living! So, analyzing the statement my friend made, "I have a job every techie wants?" - I doubt! May be every techie wants to work in the company i work in, but surely does not want to do what i do every single day, especially my developer friends, they would completely hate it! "I work on a product everybody likes" - well I don’t want to use this space to comment on that! So let's move on..
"I married the guy I always wanted to" - Absolutely! No doubt about it, I wouldn’t have fought and consistently and patiently waited for him if i didn’t know that he is not the one! He is the best thing that has ever happened to me and will be! But the sad part is, he is in a job which makes him travel, i mean travel a lot! I hate it when his boss calls and throws a bomb on him and asks him to go to US for a month! I have to not only support his travel and help him out but also have to behave sensible and mature and understanding wife who will be ok to see him go for a month! uuurrggh! "I got amazing in-laws" - Well if the guy is good the parents have to be better :) don't you think? They surely are amazing; I have never seen such understanding and accommodative parents in-law! They have accepted me the way I am and my work and have never complained about it!
"I have the coolest parents on earth" - well not literally, but yeah they are! If not for them, I wouldn’t have gone for all the random treks, trips and weekend outings and had the small accident which got a permanent scar on my face! They were also supportive when i wanted to stop with 10th Std and jump into Fashion Designing! (But that never happened :(...never mind!) So, yes my parents are the coolest parents, they are the most welcoming and warm hearted people i have ever seen, they have never frowned when we had friends coming home to eat Biryani and Kulfis and never complained when they saw 50 ppl in the house practicing dance and ruining the carpet! Yes, i have had my share of tiffs with them too, and may be that way we understand each other better and I get to have a small say in what goes on in the house!
Moving on to the last one: "I am miss popular and have a while load of friends" - Yes and No! My husband keeps teasing me with this "Sak knows half the world, and the rest of the half knows her!" I don’t know whether to be proud about it or not! I feel ironic, the reason being, I have 650+ friends on my Facebook account, I had close to the same number before i deleted my Orkut account. I have 300+ contacts on my LinkedIn and my Google account is overflowing with 900+ email ids and all i was looking for is 1 friend! 1 friend with whom i can share every secret, who knows me from child hood, who kicks me when i am acting weird and pats my back when i do a heroic job! A friend I would call immediately when i have something special to share! I am a loner in this crowd! At the end of the day, everybody has their own life, their own priorities, their own groups and parties to attend! It’s easier these days to say "hi" on the internet than getting somebody to come and meet you! (No bajji, I am not talking about you!). I have been trying to get our college re-union done for more than 5 years now, in my last attempt; exactly 3 people came from a class of 65! My bro is trying to do a re-union of all ex-colleagues from our ex-company for couple of years now, and we always land up with not more than 4-5 people! Our outing plans with friends from work have been canceled many times because of other priority stuff!

Now, if this how my life is, I am surely not happy at the moment and surely want this blog post and the day to end. I feel lot better just writing this down and I know when I come back tomorrow and read this post, I would be having a hearty laugh! This is hoping for a brighter day tomorrow!

See ya!

Hibernating

I feel extremely stupid in ignoring my own blog for so long. This blog has given me the hope that I can after all "Write" :) I may not be the best writer but I can at least make sense to myself ;) So what has kept me away from this blog for so long? Lots of reasons :)
1. Work - All work and no blogging makes Sakina a dumb girl :( I have been genuinely busy with the new happenings at work and have found very little time to come here and pen a few words
2. My sister - Yes Mallu, All because of you :P My sister was here for couple of months and whatever time I got was spent on her. Don't worry babe I enjoyed every moment spent with you :)
3. No words - Seriously, I have been struggling to write something decent out here. There have been so many times when I have started to write something and then deleted the entire post in a jiffy!
4. New Venture - I shouldn't blame my new venture at all for this, but I have to mention what I am busy doing besides work, right? I recently started writing on my friend's website www.chennaiwithin.com. I haven't written much there, but I am sure I can contribute lot more going forward :)
5. Vishnu - My beloved better half! I don't feel like staring at my laptop and writing something when I have the option to glare at his monitor, pull his hair, close his mailbox, paint his nails (I did that only once on his feet) and disturb him while he is busy working ;)
6. Motivation - I kept feeling that nobody cares about my blog, or reading my blog. Then I knocked myself on the head and said "What the heck Sak? You never started blogging because somebody cared to read! You started blogging cos you wanted to!"

Hope I don't go back to hibernation and feel stupid again.. I want to write and I will :)

There is...

There is an un-riped cherry on my nose
There is moist in my eyes and a change in my voice
There is a small pain in the grey cells and my body feels warmer than before
There is something running faster than my blood inside me..

OK! Stop imagining - I was talking about my cold and running nose!

Hair cut - Again!?!

It was back in November when suddenly I got my almost-waist-long hair cut into a "Bob". To me, this drastic change is not new and this is surely not the first time I got my hair chopped. My first big hair cut was back in school when I had very long hair (little below my waist) and the next day I walked into the class room with a boy-cut! The hair dresser was in tears when she cut them. Well, I had to do that cos of the never ending "lice" in my hair. I am sure all of us in school have had those dreadful black color creatures running on the scalp (yuck!! :-(..) Since then, I completely lost patience of growing and maintaining long hair and cultivated a liking of chopping my hair when it is least expected :)

The longest I have resisted and kept my hair growing was from Sept 2008 to Nov 2009. My hair grew pretty long and I kept longing for a haircut. Every time I stood before the mirror, I would ask myself - "Should I get a haircut?" and my mind would say, "Do whatever your heart says" and my heart would reply, "Do whatever your mind says". I ditched both of them and asked hubby, he simbly said "Cut it if you want, I wouldn’t mind either ways" - hmph! “Neutral answer” I thought. Then went to the Mom-in-law and hinted that I badly wanted to cut my hair. She said "Your wish dear, I like it both ways"; again the same kind of answer. One fine day, I finally made up my mind and got over my long hair avatar!!! Yippeee :).. and this is how I looked ;)

Trust me, I was so glad and excited about the new look! Almost everybody at home liked it (May be they were just nice to me). But when I returned to work, I got surprised looks and funny comments. People saw me in shock and moaned for my loss of hair. In a few days I felt bad that I actually cut so much of my hair and all my excitement of the new fringe and bob had drained down :(
It is 6 months since that happened and guess what - my mind is already thinking about a hair cut! (I told ya!!)....so I went to my favorite parlor, sat before the mirror and ordered - "Cut it!" - She asked me a zillion questions on what cut do I want?? How short? How small? How straight? How "U"? How "V"??...phew! After 15 mins - I came out with a new hair ishtyle...Tadaaaaaa! :)

This is so called "Layer cut" - Not so long, not so short. Takes advantage of my wavy hair and makes it look like a step cut :)..Now waiting for the world to react ;)