True Spirit

True spirit of free mind lies in its wilderness. The natural fragrance of the pure mind always piques my interest, echo-ing curiosity to the zenith. I felt free and relived, don't know why? Maybe the pressure's off me.

Wednesday 8th March 2006

Say you feel eerie because you are having an adventure filled moment day after day. But is it really possible to have events of tribulation every single day. Wouldn't you feel special in some way because you experience a plethora of emotions from dawn to dusk. So this is the blog of an ordinary engineer who feel special because he likes to bask in the glory of his defying work atmosphere.

So this is how it goes. I am in my cubicle at around 8:30 am on Tuesday. There are lots of emotions going on in my brain. I still feel calm since I don't anticipate anything worse to happen. The other day I had opened up two issues with the vendor on a problem I was working on. So at 8:45ish Mr. J (vendor) calls me. We discuss about the problem. Its got to do with an Audio system. This one is a new network element so I am on the learning curve for this element. But does my ego want to reveal that? No it does not! I slowly slide along the way making sure that I don't sound stupid as I walk Mr J through the issue. I always wonder why do I have to be this way. I think the answer probably resides on a psychoanalytic review we had a few months back. They asked us to answer a series of questions and analyzed our behaviour to help us better understand as to why we behave in a certain way. The result said I had a Conscious-Dominant personality. Which means I behaved consciously keeping myself hidden and protected with a strong dominant presence. The conscious part was also responsible for my habit of trying to believe that I am perfect in whatever I am doing and would not want anyone else to know where my weakness resides.Conscious people work hard and try to perfect themselves in whatever they believe in.

Anyway going back to my story, As I was explaining to Mr J I figured out that he was on the same footing as I was on the subject. A situation like this always brings back energy. So I start cruising along with belligerent force re-emphasising my motivation to get the problem resolved at the earliest. As I am working on this issue, I get pulled into a conference call for a different problem. I am confident on this one since I had done my homework better this time. Miss D on the conference bridge fires a volley of questions on the problems and I respond with parallel zeal. This one was a piece of cake.

I am out of the bridge still working with Mr J. I feel this issue is not moving forward. So I call Mrs. L (vendor accts team) and vent out as to why I need the audio issue to be resolved as quick as possible. She assures me that they are working hard on it. Everytime I lead on a subject I feel triumphant. Not that by nature I believe in direct confrontation. But however when situation arises I do have to use brute force as my last resort.

In the meantime its time to pick my wifey and drop her at the library. But I am stuck here since I get called on to work on two other issues. Sometimes I feel that I am the only one who gets clobbered with work and still does not get his recognition. But I might be wrong since others do get the same amount of work load. But I think today it was different. Finally I managed to squeeze in some time for lunch at 12:30ish. I head home and pick up wifey.

Its a 20 minute drive from home to her library. We kind of enjoy this period. We wander off into imaginative discussions during the drive. They can range from our financial crunch situation to why UAE has more oil resources then other parts of the world.

I am back at office at around 1:15ish. I get escalated on to a problem that the Field engineers have been struggling since the past two weeks. No one from my team wants to pick it. These are dirty problems. Dirty in the sense because they don't have much visibility and also working on this problem means staying up late during maintenance window activity. I don't see any choice and take the issue. After initial investigation it seems we would have to work during night time. So I call it a day at 4:30ish pm.

Now I have some free time. I don't like to laze around with my free time. One of the best way of utilizing my time is talk to friends and be connected. At 5:00ish PM the only person I normally call is my friend M. I can talk to her about absolutely anything. She is european by origin and that adds a strong european cultural flavour to the discussion. Her only problem is that she is contend to remain busier then the prime minister of the largest democratic country in the world.

So what next? Cooking!!! This always lights the brightest of shine within me. If you have ever noticed then you would have realised that a persons taste bud is an epitome of his emotion. Every character of your emotions could be felt by a feeling of taste experienced by those miniscule follicles called taste bud. So I start cooking. I end up making a lip smacking potatoe and dried fish in a sauce made from freshly garnished coconut and walnut along with a mixture of rich spice (black pepper, cardamon, cloves, red pepper, garlic pod and ginger).

At 7:00ish pm I go and pick my wife from the library. Every evening when I pick her up I feel postive radiance and glow emanating from her. This is always a good feeling. We start our usual discussion on our drive back. We ended up having an argument. The topic is not relevant here but I somehow wanted to adhere to my ego and persisted with the argument. We remain silent half way through the drive. Again when we are at home we get all cosy and patch up. We have dinner together and she compliments on my dinner. Compliments are rare to come by from her, especially on food.

I take a quick nap and gets awakened by kisses from my wife. Its 11:00 ish pm and I have to head to work on the nightly scheduled activity. I get into office at 11:30ish. We start working and finally end at 4:00 am. I drive back home. I know I won't be able to sleep for a while. So I call Ma & Pa, Also call my Sis and one more call to my Cousin. Finally I call it day and I am off to bed.

1st March 2006

Bindu stands for a dot in hindi. Some believe that the actual source of energy for life's existence resides in a bindu or dot. I do remember that one of my Math teacher during my schooling days made a factual statement quoting that the whole basis of mathematical geometry will cease to exist if someone can prove that a dot or point does not exist. The very hypothesis that a dot exist would prove in its totality about our own existense.

Monday 27th Feb 2006

Has it ever occured to you that there is no circumvention to your problems. You try your best to digress from it and still it eventually bounces back to the same place setting you back to step one. There is no begining that prompts you to move towards the end nor is there any end to start a new begining. You seem to to be diving further in this never ending chasm. I wish I could burst myself open and restore my pride.

Sunday Feb 26th 2006

The art of passing time productively is the essence of living life to the brim. Sundays have always been lazy. Woke up at 11:00 am and remained sluggish the whole day. Had lunch at chipotle with wifey. I drop her at the library so she can continue with her studies. I have the whole afternoon for myself. Sometimes you live in a world of dreamy fortification, slouching your body to soothe the drudgery of monsterous week you passed in your cronological journey of life.

Thursday 23rd Feb 2006

Time 11:50 pm

The whole day I just dozed around. Nothing much I could do. You have this hangover and I think its termed as long conference bridge hangover. I feel as if I am drugged...like you are half asleep and half awake. Wifey comes around every interval and plants a kiss or two. I sleep till like 3:00 pm. Wake up and have lunch. I would say kind of lunch. Rice noodle with sweet coconut soup. Head off to bed again. I wake up at 8:00 pm. Wifey has prepared some soft pancakes and lentil soup. Stomped like 12 pancakes. Finally called my colleague P at 9:00 pm. He updated me about the next POA. So yeah...same thing continues...get onto bridge and start all the blah blah about network optimization. This time the vendor has an answer. We apply the the fix and lo-behold the problem seems to have suppressed for the time being. This is good news for me. I don't have to hang around for long. So I just dropped off the bridge. I will hit the sack soon. I have to be on the bridge again at 8:00 am. Will kep you guys posted on my ordinary life again tomorrow.

Thursday Feb 23 2006

My actual day started yesterday. Got called by my colleague P to work on an existing problem. Jumped onto a conference bridge at around 10:00 pm. I am all confused, since I have no clue as to where I am going to start with. I have couple of people on the bridge and they expect me to drive the bridge. I fumble a bit. I don't like scenarios where I have no clue as to whats going on. I send some IMs to my other colleague and she provides me with some update. This seems like a vendor issue. I need to escalate this to the vendor. I was told that the vendor was supposed to be present on the bridge. All hell breaks loose, since I cannot locate them. Everyone is IMing me and shooting questions at me.

I wake up higher management and they all look confused too. Finally get an answer from the vendor. It seems the management had agreed that the vendor won't be providing support during this activity. So I am all screwed here. Finally things start trickling. I am able to grasp the situation and take on the game. Its 9:00 am now. The problem is still unresolved. My colleague has joined the bridge. I will drop off.