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 :)

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 :)

The Maid Madness

A lot of us here use the services of a house maid in order to cope up with household activities. Maids are these days an inevitable part of our lives. Most of the households have job-going family members and rely on the maid to take care of the household work.Throughout my life, I have always seen one maid or the other at home. During my childhood, mom taught me to call the maid with respect as "khala" (Khala in Urdu means aunt). I have never had problems calling them that, as they were extremely caring and loving. I had my favorite "Mahboob khala" who took care of me for God-knows-how-many-years. She was/is my favorite khala till date. I have never seen such a loving maid ever in my life. I do not remember why she ever left our house, but yeah, she still keeps in touch with us.
Gone are the days when you actually emotionally bonded with a maid, that is a long gone era. Now times have changed..Maids hardly turn up to work, and if they do, they disappear within no time!They demand money as if the money plant in the house has grown in kilometers! They have charges based on the locality you live in, if you are unfortunately staying in an "IT" area - you are dead! The maids there not only ask for a fortune, they have a very low retention too! The worst part! We making them a priority and "adjusting" our priorities and work based on their availability, see how:
- You try to be caring and make tea for her - she will come to work during lunch time!
- You Wanna go for movie? - Only after 3, the maid comes late and leaves only by 1.
- You Wanna take your mom to the doc? - OK, send her alone, somebody needs to be at home to welcome the maid!
- You Wanna go grocery shopping? - let's do it in the weekends! (the maid can help out in some vegetable cleaning)
- You Wanna go out of town? - give the keys to the neighbour and make sure the maid comes!

If all of this is not enough, there are more irritating things about them; it is their creativity with excuses! If you have dealt with a maid before, you would have heard of any/most of these:

- You are unwell and desperately want your maid to come - she wont turn up, and the excuse next day - Both my kids were at home and wanted to spend time with me!
- You have guests coming home and specifically request your maid to come early - she wont come! why? Cos her husband was at home and didn't let her come (what!?!)
- You call the maid's cellphone (Thanks to Ambani, every tom, dick and harry has a phone) - she doesn't answer, why? she forgot to recharge her phone balance!
- You are ready to fire her cos she has not come for a week - she comes back with the excuse that she went to kovil cos her husband was extremely unwell. (For a week??)

Bottom line, I am just too frustrated with my "beloved" maid and I had to vent it out here! My weekends would have been lot more peaceful and simple to manage if not for her! God bless her, her kids, her husband, her sister, her neighbour, her whatever for making my life so challenging!!!

It's self-daba time!

Its mid-year review time at work!! The time of the year when you are officially asked to spend time on what my friend calls it - “self-dabba”. This opportunity comes twice a year in my work place and all of us put as much hours as possible to make our self dabba look perfect! Well I wish it just ended with just a self-dabba process :( They make us write good and not-so-good things for everybody else on the floor too. If you did not know already, it’s easy to write good things about yourself and much easier to write not-so-good things about others!! :) - It's human nature yaar! But, during this time all of us go against this natural behavior and are asked to write the exact opposite in detail!! Hmph!
So, for the past week, I have been writing a lot about my co-workers. It took me lots of time and effort to actually dig all my mails and come up with "fair" reviews. A lot of us think "kuch bhi likh de yaar, ye thodi na self review hain" – That’s the exact problem!!! Because it's not about me, I cannot take the liberty to just blabber what I believe I did over the past 6 months. The person for whom I am writing is probably much better than me and I would have to kill-my-ego, kill-my-attitude, kill-my-fears, kill-my-straight-forwardness and write a diplomatic, logical, crisp, justifiable, reliable review. What a huge responsibility it is...!!
Well, after finishing my co-worker review, there was another bomb dropped in my mailbox; A request from my manager to give feedback about him. I think it’s a good thing to give "Upward feedback", but it is equally bad too. This is not my first time I am giving the upward feedback but when it was, I thought, "arey wah, yaha pe toh manager ki bhi waat laga sakte hain", then my brains replied saying "yeh toh locha hain re, yeh toh mere big boss ke paas jayega" - I have to kill all those things I mentioned above 3 times more to come up with a small paragraph about my manager! Luckily, I didn’t have to struggle this time, I am pretty new to my new manager and vice-versa, so very less to write and lots more to avoid :)
Phew! Now I can finally sit and do what I love to do the most - self-dabba!! I wish it would come as easily  as blabbering in this space! Wish me luck!! :)

New Arrival!

I have worked for days and nights together for numerous launches which happen at work. However, this time, this launch was neither official nor it took me so much of labor. Announcing the ALL NEW TRAVELOGUE - My Incredible India Discovery! And, if you haven't yet noticed, this blog has a new tab on top - "My Travelogue" :)

I am very happy creating this new blog as it opens up new doors of creativity and writing! I have recently made "blogging" as my hobby and now it looks like this hobby is gonna go a long way! Please drop by at my new blog and also drop any feedback/comments! Would love to hear from You!

Enjoy reading!

Nothing official about it!

Just about when I thought my team is growing big and we have lots to do together I was suddenly moved to another team. This new team was once the "neighbor" team on the floor and now the neighbor has open doors for me to stay in. This surely came as a shock to me, it felt as if i just joined this place all over again! My "adoption" process from one team to another happened few days back and I was formally handed over to the new team by my old manager - literally like how a baby is adopted from the-mother-who-gave-birth to her and the-mother-who-will-raise her!

Thank fully, My desk location has not changed and I am still sitting with my old team mates. But lots of other things have changed, I no more get emails from my favorite boss, I no more exist in the team group emails, I no more share work with my team mates. I don't even get the heart or motivation to go and talk to my new team mates (I don't know why). Nothing against them, they are good at whatever they do and they are welcoming too, but I am just not ready to enter those open doors..

Some of you must be thinking; :Sak, Don't get emotional about it, it's after all your work place and as long as the pay cheque comes in, be happy!" Well you are probably right, but not completely! I don't (nor does anybody else) work in isolation. And yes the pay cheque is why everybody starts to work, its finally the environment and the people which motivates you to get going and do the best at work!

I hope that this remains as a temporary "phase" and though i am not trying right now, I would be out of this soon.

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

It's like filling petrol in your car, to discover the petrol prices have slashed down the next day!
Its like getting a phone call from your boss when you are ready to leave for the day!
Its like fasting on your Birthday!
Its like running out of battery when your favorite song is about to play!

- This might surely sound like the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette...the way it goes:

A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of your dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic...don't you think
A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think...

I have been having far too many "Ironic" moments at work and I am no more surprised why it happens to me always! Have you ever had a high-priority-customer-ticket to resolve exactly the same day when your project is about to go live??! Isn't it Ironic..don't you think?