This was prompted by my epic 30-hour long workathon. In office terms, workathon (¯ wûrk-úr-thöng) relates to a lesson in “How to stay up seamlessly doing stuff you would never give a crap about”.
Apart from drinking truckloads of coffee/Red Bull, one way is by playing some game like YooNinja on your Android or IPhone (You recently bought a costly Nokia? Do you use feathers for writing?) This game involves a fast ninja running through obstacles with two blades behind that kill him if he stops at any moment. It basically reminds me of myself on the treadmill with the trainer behind – but yea, good focus and sharp reflexes pump energy into your eye muscles.
Another is by taking power naps.
During one of my trysts with phantasmagoria, the past haunted me. It was a lecture by my Math teacher in Bahrain, Dr. Paul Williams Ambrose - on how he managed time between teaching at school and tuitions, tuition-book corrections, school-book corrections, coordinator-work, church and playing drums in Pakistan Club (Yea, they never found a Pakistani drummer) – “Such naps are applicable to two situations; one of course when you can’t afford to sleep and two, at a time when you just want to doze for a bit and restart afresh, like in the afternoons.”
He was used to taking 5-minute power-naps; considering the energy he had, it was equivalent to taking steroids recommended by Marion Jones. As kids, most of us took it as some sort of old Tamil-folk wizardry, given his white hair and beard, (no, don’t picture Gandalf, more like Narendra Modi) and the poor placard outside his flat having to bear the sheer weight of all his 11 inscribed degrees, let alone his name of 21 letters.
And it was a small issue. We could just simply change some scripts, rename the file and paste it back. But the Chinese dude was relentless – for the dear of his life he wouldn’t let me do it without the permission of higher Chinese authorities. I chuckled for a while, “You are joking right?”
“Naw…v needo perrrrrmishun!”
“For this baby stuff, c’mon why notify them the problem?”
“Naw perrrrmishun, naw do anything!”
“Are you crazy? It’s 5 in the morning, our deadline is 6 and all you care about is to get permission from Mainland China?”
“Yes yes!”
(Raising my hands in the air)”AAAARGHHH!”
“Waat haapen?”
“OH…THIS??? THIS IS HOW WE YAWN IN INDIA!!!”
For a while I thought he was one of those rare less-educated Chinese retards (you seem to suck in superiority complex when there’s dearth of sleep) who was afraid I was going to mess the whole system up. Just out of feeble curiosity or more of a want to mock, I asked him till what he had studied. He said he was preparing for CCIE. I gaped at him; it was the hardest certification for a network engineer and nay, this guy wasn’t stupid. It was the strictness they maintained in following orders, the Chinese dictatorial way. Chaainees law mus follo ALL TAIMS…oh my, I failed to see the deeper meaning.
The torture was relentless, not only due to the prolongation, but also for doing something entirely-so-worthless, like preventing TATA from losing out lakhs from a corrupted billing server (the thing responsible for billing your calls). On the contrary, if it hadn’t worked, the bills wouldn’t have been generated, and I would have been actually promoting ‘free’-dom of speech for my countrymen (at least for 5 million of those using TATA SIMs).
We should certainly be given capers as uniforms, reasons being;
No, I didn’t get this idea because I haven’t been cured from the wardrobe-malfunction disease. It’s because I’m trying hard to think of a second time I could wear the crappy Kochi Tuskers tee other than a Netherlands World Cup match (be it football or cricket) or the next IPL season. Who am I kidding…I lost my money.
Apart from drinking truckloads of coffee/Red Bull, one way is by playing some game like YooNinja on your Android or IPhone (You recently bought a costly Nokia? Do you use feathers for writing?) This game involves a fast ninja running through obstacles with two blades behind that kill him if he stops at any moment. It basically reminds me of myself on the treadmill with the trainer behind – but yea, good focus and sharp reflexes pump energy into your eye muscles.
Another is by taking power naps.
Three power-naps of 15 minutes spiked my state of consciousness. That experience is trippy-like. The moment you shut your weary eyes (which thank your brain for doing so), the dreams switch on like a movie resuming after a pause button. As you haven’t exactly arrived at slumber, power-nap-dreams seem more surreal, and the memory spookily remains after you wake up. Moreover, these are the best times to verify the concepts of Inception.
During one of my trysts with phantasmagoria, the past haunted me. It was a lecture by my Math teacher in Bahrain, Dr. Paul Williams Ambrose - on how he managed time between teaching at school and tuitions, tuition-book corrections, school-book corrections, coordinator-work, church and playing drums in Pakistan Club (Yea, they never found a Pakistani drummer) – “Such naps are applicable to two situations; one of course when you can’t afford to sleep and two, at a time when you just want to doze for a bit and restart afresh, like in the afternoons.”
He was used to taking 5-minute power-naps; considering the energy he had, it was equivalent to taking steroids recommended by Marion Jones. As kids, most of us took it as some sort of old Tamil-folk wizardry, given his white hair and beard, (no, don’t picture Gandalf, more like Narendra Modi) and the poor placard outside his flat having to bear the sheer weight of all his 11 inscribed degrees, let alone his name of 21 letters.
I had a Chinese dude for assisting me – he was in charge of helping me out. When my eye-shutters got heavy, I looked at his face. I wanted to discern whether he was sleeping or not – so that in the meantime I could rest my sorry eyes and share the blame in case anything went wrong – but in vain. It was the one moment I seriously hated their race whose blinking made no sense since their eye-lids were just millimeters apart. I had a throbbing urge to blurt out wang-ba-dan (a**hole) or tu-ne-lo-mo (mofo) just to test his drowsiness – but the underlying fear in every non-Chinese when they see a Chinese arose in me – that inevitable moment when he would jump, make that “Huaaa!” shriek and do some supersonic karate-chops on me. I also could have instilled fear through my Kalaripayutu heritage, but I am too physically inept to generate any sort of uneasiness, though there is a ‘slight’ chance I might have also forgotten to inherit it.
And it was a small issue. We could just simply change some scripts, rename the file and paste it back. But the Chinese dude was relentless – for the dear of his life he wouldn’t let me do it without the permission of higher Chinese authorities. I chuckled for a while, “You are joking right?”
“Naw…v needo perrrrrmishun!”
“For this baby stuff, c’mon why notify them the problem?”
“Naw perrrrmishun, naw do anything!”
“Are you crazy? It’s 5 in the morning, our deadline is 6 and all you care about is to get permission from Mainland China?”
“Yes yes!”
(Raising my hands in the air)”AAAARGHHH!”
“Waat haapen?”
“OH…THIS??? THIS IS HOW WE YAWN IN INDIA!!!”
 |
| The yawn went something like this...he might have missed the point, right? |
The torture was relentless, not only due to the prolongation, but also for doing something entirely-so-worthless, like preventing TATA from losing out lakhs from a corrupted billing server (the thing responsible for billing your calls). On the contrary, if it hadn’t worked, the bills wouldn’t have been generated, and I would have been actually promoting ‘free’-dom of speech for my countrymen (at least for 5 million of those using TATA SIMs).
We should certainly be given capers as uniforms, reasons being;
1) We are supposed to work like supermen and for mind-numbing long hours to save the asses of corporate honchos (Superman, saviour, caper – kapeesh?)
2) The work timings are when the sun hates to wake up; even the snoring security won’t take notice.
No, I didn’t get this idea because I haven’t been cured from the wardrobe-malfunction disease. It’s because I’m trying hard to think of a second time I could wear the crappy Kochi Tuskers tee other than a Netherlands World Cup match (be it football or cricket) or the next IPL season. Who am I kidding…I lost my money.
