Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Work

Here i am ... in my company , which saved me from shame (?!), gave me true purchasing power, and made me believe that i am really worth something ..

Its been 15 months in the same project .. 12 months on the same desk , same location...
people came , people left , people went onsite , people cursed and banged the door, people got appraised , people were given T-shirts ....

Ultimately one statement still holds true
" You can play around with the intermediate tollgates, delays in requirements should be adjusted and the final delivery date will ALWAYS be the same as decided".
Even the death of an employee should not effect it , because we are a process driven company , not an ethical or humane company ..

General rules as elsewhere apply , if you lick ass, your mistakes will be covered and you will be praised for other peoples work ...

English is the best language for making you work more, because of inbuilt words like "VALUE ADDITION", "PRODUCTIVITY" etc....

For the past 6 months the worst has been happening ,
Along with the pressure to finish a 6 months project (with proper requirements) in 1 month (without proper requirements) , you are also supposed to educate an idiot sitting at onsite about the work that he is supposed to give you and try and explain over phone (takes usually 4 to 5 hours a day) why you need a particular info.

When i look around, i see that we have grown ..
yup, thats true, back in november 2003, when we transitioned from noida to chennai, ours was a decaying account .. we lost almost 4 projects ("MELT DOWN" is the term used, obviously because we have a lot of third party consultants onsite who are only happy to blame offshore for everything). Yup, everything was bad ...

Now, my team itself has grown from 6 to 16 ... and the account just crossed 120 or something .. thats really good .
The strategy has been to recruit freshers , because they wouldnt complain even if they had to work for 24 hours a day . In college, if you are working on your project , you wouldnt know if you worked for 24 hours ..because you love the work ...

Here , you are supposed to develop an application in 10% of the time it would actually take, deliver it first time right, on time , and other crap .... because you are really competing for the 5 inch pizza that the Client throws with other CMMI 5 dogs in the arena!! Yeah, we have only rusty rocket launcher who is licking ass onsite, but to make it a profitable buisness, you have to squeeze out every ounce of energy from the offshore team ....

There used to be some people i respect , but they all left the company ..

After recruiting freshers , the first thing you do is make them good for nothing ...
i dont know if this holds true everywhere ...
The first 6 months would be spent in EXCEL Sheets and Time sheet filling for the whole account and other value addition activiites like communication initiative !!!... and then you make him work on 12 different projects ...

The aim of this is that if you are working on 12 differenct technologies , you really know nothing of anything .. you just know something of something (HA HA , i love this statement) ...
ie, you know little bit of java, little asp, little oracle , maybe little soemthing else ..
so , if this guy wants to hunt for another job he cannot , because he has not specialized in anything ! he just knows what to do with the given work in his project . in short , he is just fit for the project he is handling ...
Now, if he thinks of learning it during the spare time ,that is during saturdays and sundays or maybe after work .. it wouldnt take much time to realize that it is impossible ... because he will be working 14-16 hours a day and on saturdays and sundays ..
maybe he will get a sunday off .. but that will be spent sleeping .. or getting all the lost sleep ...

Diwali - The festival of Noise !

Diwali should be rightly renamed as the festival of Noise , because its current description of "Festival of Light" doesnot suit it anymore...

approximately 16 hours before the real Diwali day, i , stimbi and Rayi were put into a prison (our own home) .. and there were kids , grownups, women, dogs and everyone lighting crackers .... babies were crying , bikes were falling into pot holes , debris of the crackers were hitting wind shields ...

one 16 yr old was particularly amused at "mega-bombs" or "gunds"... he was cracking them non-stop for almost 24 hours.. the only breaks he took was a 2 hour sleep (4 to 6 am) and a tiny lunch break of 15 minutes ...

The Noise was repetitive "padaaaakh..." .. and the entire building shook .... and i dont know if i am a a heart patient , but we awaited for each bomb, (interval of 2 minutes each) ... and i couldnt control my heart from jumping .. my ears being hurt and mood getting changed ...

the sad thing is that there was nothing i could do about it !! and fuck! i still remember the torture ! even after almost a month , which means ... it was really something !!

i would really want to tie up the bastard in a cracker room and set it on fire.. and his family too.. or maybe tie a maala padakkam (chain of bombs) to his wee wee and make him wait till it reaches him...!

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Sauve-moi(Save me)

I saw the movie at one international film festival in trivandrum some months back. I was attracted by the young faces in the poster and in fact took half a day leave from company to see it. And it was surely worth it.

The commentry given by imdb:
SAUVE MOI (Save Me) is a simple-but-excellent `slice-of-life' story about French-Algerians living near the Belgian border. Mehdi(Roschdy Zem), who has lived in Roubaix all his life, meets Agatha(Rona Hartner), a seemingly-carefree drifter from Romania who has wandered throughout Europe. He introduces her to his group of friends, including Cécile, his current lover, who befriends Agatha. The Algerians, living in a localized area, find difficulty finding even menial jobs. There is cooperation and moral support among Mehdi and his friends. It seems that this worthy film about an unpublicized ethnic minority in France has been ignored by the art film critics.

I read the commentry just before writing this blog. After reading that only i knew they were talking about French-Algerians. I was thinking that its the story of the simple people in a french city which was not that prosperous. Any way the movie was good. The actors were good.
The movie starts with the view from the moving cab , mehdi being the driver, a nice sequence with the cab moving close to the different groups and they staring at us with a strange looks on their face which lies between interest and disgust. And the view every time swings away from them. Then we see a building from a long view which gives the impression of a railway station or aerodrome. Intro our beautiful heroine, Agatha draped in a long frock dress and may be some funny coat. The buildings that we see around are neat and old. Mehdi picks her up in his cab and drops her off at a hospital where she wanted to go. There was a conversation and we get the idea that she has come here to visit a doctor whom she has worked with as a nurse, hoping for a job or something. And mehdi leaves her there only to pick her up later on the road when the doctor fails to remember even her name. In fact mehdi comes back to pick her up, searching the near by roads, until he finds her.

I liked the opening sequence very well, the understanding between open minds, being too touching. Agatha got accomodation at mehdi's friends attic, in a house with no electricity, and there are funny scenes with them trying to steal electricity from neighbouring old couple, then policemen gently reprimanding them. They had this small community, with one middle aged fellow looking like our raj kumar with tvs 50 like bike as a elder brotherly figure, a few young men and women and an old couple. And they were building a house for one of the fellows. Mehdi is having an affair with cecile who is mehdis brothers ex girl friend and now married to another fellow friend. Ceciles huband is really distressed because his boss is stealing half his salary(and his wife), and this leads to our rajkumars intervention resulting in the death of the boss, but that comes near the end of the movie. Agatha with her sprity nature easily gets into the group and we can see a lot of characters getting attached to her. There is this scene with her singing a local song, and that was good.

Agatha has plans for going to romania, and for that she needs money. Mehdi in the mean time tries out his hand in a new job, which involves helping a fellow, who was some kind of money collector. Soon mehdi gets angry with his way of extracting money from the hapless and ignorant people and quits that job. He was trying to get enough money so that Agatha (and himself) can get out of city. And near the climax we see Agatha getting money from an elderly fellow in the group and leaving for romania without Mehdi.

The youthful spirit of Agatha, is surely going to get any one who watches the movie. It inspires you. The same spirit helps her overcome the bonds of love. At one side we see her independence while on the other side we have this caring community of simple people. Perfect contrast except in the matter of love in their heart.