Laid My Ass Off !!!

Something serious happened last week.

Something grave enough to get me started on a serious post. I was halfway through it, when I had to suddenly leave for home.
The next day the gravity of the situation was lost, and I just couldnt get myself to complete the post.

I did try. But when I re-read it, it sounded artificial.
And everyone knows how much I love honesty and genuineness. :)

To add to that, Kaushik suggested this post's title 'Laid my ass off' - which obviously kills any expectations of seriousness. I had to choose between the great title and the gravity of my post.

So here I am, rewriting my post, without any intention to sound serious or casual. Its as natural as the other posts.

A few weeks earlier, Oracle had finally managed to acquire Peoplesoft.

This came after an intense 18 month struggle during which Peoplesoft had tried virtually everything in the business book to avoid being taken over. But Oracle, the aggressive juggernaut that it is, finally managed to buy out Peoplesoft.
(Oracle and Peoplesoft are the number 2 and number 3 companies in the Business Application software field. SAP is number 1)

This meant quite a few things.

It meant an increased customer base, as most of Peoplesoft's customers would eventually move on to Oracle business applications.
It meant that Oracle would move from a distant 2nd position in the Business Applications market to a strong 2nd position behind SAP, the market leader.
It meant that Oracle would achieve 'economies of scale'; a business term which basically means that their average production cost would decrease as the production increases.

It meant one more thing.

Job cuts.

Since the takeover, we had a vague idea that there would be some job losses. Mind you, I am no expert on mergers and acquisitions, but I did read up a tutorial on mergers and acquisitions, and found myself staring at one of the 'advantages' of acquisitions - 'reduction of staff' - for a little longer than necessary.

Rumours started trickling in, that there are going to be quite a few job cuts in Oracle IDC as well. (IDC stands for India Development Center). A bit later, we learnt that every team across Oracle is going to get affected.
The alarm balls, I mean, bells started ringing.

Our team has four recent joinees - Sunil, Karthik, Pratik and I. Of these, Sunil, Pratik and Karthik belong to a sub-team headed by Sreeji, while I report directly to Ramesh, who's our team's manager.

Pratik had almost given in to the fact that he was going to have to pack his bags. I dont know if he was pretending, but every 10 minutes he had to say something which connected to the lay-offs.
Maybe it wouldnt have disturbed me too much.
But he kept using the word 'we' when he referred to being fired.

That perturbed me.
That got me thinking on whether it was that obvious that I should get fired.

Well, I did have my own logic on why it should be just me who should be fired from the team.

Except me, everyone else in my sub-team was experienced, and added value to the team. If they had to remove the least contributing person from my team, no prizes for picking the 'deserving' person. Besides Pratik's team had just two experienced seniors. They needed someone to carry the team's flag when the oldies leave. So I reckoned that none of them would be fired.

One chat conversation between Pratik and I is worth mentioning. Its a bit silly that its a chat conversation, since we sit right next to each other. But then the terror of the impending lay-offs had shut us up.

(I was deep into my work, when suddenly there appears the chat window with a message from Pratik.)

Pratik: Hey, asshole. I am serious. What do we do if we lose our jobs ?
('We' again. Grrrrr.)

Oka: You throw around a few computers and break a few monitors. Since I am not as strong as you, I'll throw around a few mouses and a few keyboards.

Pratik: [Beep, beep, beep]
(Some very sweet sounding words from an obviously unimpressed Pratik, urging me to be serious. But seriously, even my blog is too decent for such words.)

Oka: We'd go out and look for another job. What else ? Besides, the job market is booming. We'd find good jobs without much fuss.

Pratik: I am planning to direct or act in a porn movie. I'll then sell the CDs. At least until I get a decent job.

Oka: Yeah, stick to directing. If you act, people might think that its a clip from the discovery channel. And whatever you say, animal sex is not arousing.
(Pratik is big and built like an animal)

'Ouch !! You fucking animal !!'
(I figured that this wouldnt need a label. Its clear who cried out.)

Oka: Hey, I had a weird dream yesterday night.

Pratik: What?

Oka: We both are fired and...

Pratik: Bastard, its not a dream. It'll happen now.

Oka: Listen !

Oka: Well, we both are fired. We pack our bags, and then walk dully down the stairs. We cross the road and wait for the bus.

Oka: We then decide to take the share auto. There's one auto with two people already sitting in it. We get into it.

Oka: The auto driver waits for the 5th seat to be filled so that he can drive with the vehicle full.

Pratik: Then ?
(Animals are instinctive. In their book of values, patience is not a virtue.)

Oka: You get impatient and force the driver to start.

Oka: He just about starts when a guy, huffing and puffing, calls out for the auto to stop. The voice sounds strangely familiar.

Oka: We both turn around to check him out.

Pratik: Then ?

Oka: It is Ramesh.

(We share a moment of crazed laughing. Thankfully the others have their headphones on. I wasnt too eager about announcing this joke to the general public.)

(Pratik had a weird look on his face.)

Oka: What are you doing ?

Pratik: Copying this conversation to Ramesh.

Later, Pratik and I plodded down to the cafeteria. We do that every half an hour.
So much that people had started to place their coffee and biscuit orders with us.

We met up with Sandeep there. (Sandeep sits on our floor). Sandeep is another big guy like Pratik. After a brief palm crushing match, the two of them finally start behaving again like humans. Thats when I joined in the conversation.

Fifteen minutes later, which included a few serious discussions about the lay-offs, and a few not so serious (guffawing rather) discussions about them, a few envious looks at the cafeteria workers (who we thought held stable jobs), and a few err.. lets say, not-envious looks at the girls sitting on the adjacent table, we walked back to our cubicles.

We obviously couldnt work, because the feeling that our asses were on fire wouldnt let us sit, forget about working. So we started chatting with people we knew.

I managed to scare Manish that the job-cut wave is coming his way soon. As if it were some tsunami, and he's standing in just an underwear with a small yapping puppy next to him, watching the waves looming over him.

He did get scared. You cant deny me that much credit.

A chat window pops up, and I see a message from Pratik. I see a pasted conversation between him and Sandeep. It went something like this.

Pratik: 12 in Projects and 4 in financials have lost their jobs.
(Obviously, Pratik was doing the same thing as me.)

Sandeep: Yeah.

Pratik: and around 30 in HRMS.

Sandeep: Yeah... and me too.

Pratik: What?

Sandeep: Yeah, I've lost my job as well.

Pratik: What the fuck are you saying. Stop bluffing.

Sandeep: Bastard, I am not kidding. I have a big relieving letter in my hand.

Five minutes later, Sandeep walks into our cubicle, hands over a few SQL books to Pratik.
His eyes are bloodshot.
He shrugs, and then leaves.

All we could do was look at each other.

We were shocked out of our fucking wits.

For about five minutes, there was absolute silence between the two of us. We both were sitting back on our chairs, with our heads bent. I kept going back to the conversation we had with Sandeep barely a few hours back.

The lay-offs had finally come to our floor. It would be minutes before it comes to our team. Ramesh would lay one of us off any moment.

Then walks in Karthik.
I realised that he hadnt been sitting at his place till then.
Ramesh follows him.

'Just give me 5 minutes.' Karthik said.

My eyes get down, and find a big white envelope in Ramesh's hands.

The reality hit me. I now knew who was the casualty in our team. Somehow I regretted all the casual jokes I had made about the whole issue. For a moment I hated my nonchalant attitude towards the whole thing. This thing was serious.

Karthik switched off his PC, got up, picked up the plastic cover containing his stuff and with the other hand picked up the white envelope.

As he was about to walk out of our cubicle, our eyes met.

Just for a second.

He turned away immediately.
I really am at a loss for words on how I felt, when I saw the pain and disbelief in his eyes.

After Karthik had left, Ramesh called forth a meeting. He announced that we had to lose one person unfortunately. He also said that with this, the lay-offs for this cycle finally come to an end.

I didnt feel relieved.

The meeting came to an uneasy end and everyone walked back to their seats.

I still couldnt work. I swivelled around slowly on my chair, towards where Karthik sits.... I mean... used to sit.

His monitor, which always had colorful wallpapers, was dark.
His desk was unusually uncluttered.

A boy came and wiped away the marker marks on the desk.

My eyes rested on the plastic bottle on his desk, with water upto half the level.
A tiny water droplet tricked down the outer surface of the bottle.

The boy picked up the water bottle, gave the desk a final wipe with his cloth, and left.

Six-pack someone

Crunchhhhhhh...

No you pig, its not the sound of someone crunching a wafer. Its actually pretty close to the sound which my palm made when I shook hands with Sabih - my gym trainer.
Believe me, it took me a lot of effort to block the nerve impulses which travel from my palm to my face.
Mind over matter, you see.
(Its just like me to attempt a bit of boasting even in situations most embarassing to my ego).

If you could get whatever you want just by visualising yourself getting your most passionate desires, I would've had a body like Hrithik Roshan. Sadly, the books which exhort 'the visualization technique' also talk about following it up with consistent action.

So, I made the 7th attempt at building up my body.

Umm... it might be more than 7....

Uh... its actually around 10...

Umm....

Oh forget it.

The bottomline is, I wanted a great body to avoid the pain of thinking of retorts to buddies making fun of skinny ole me, and... ahem.. a few other common reasons.

So I joined the Cyber-Pearl gym.

Well... I (re)discovered something almost immediately.
You dont have to have a great body to boast about it. Just working-out will add a lot of weight to your head. Yeah.. thats where you build muscles first - in your head.
I found myself looking for opportunities to tell people that I work-out. This had a lot of amusing results.
Read on.

Built to a T

My first IMS Communication Skills Building class.

I dont know how the topic got to exercising.
Oh..yeah.. I know. The instructor was about to give us an exercise in communication and damn his stupid parallel thinking brain, he asked how many of us physically exercise.

Needless to say, I raised my hand.
After he had asked everyone else, he asked me what I do in the name of exercise.
A bit indignant that I was asked after everyone else, I said that I go to the gym.

A pause.

'Where are the muscles man ??'

A longer pause.

'They're all inside my T-shirt' (and a stupid, sheepish, silly grin).

Oh.. Thank you.. thank you so much God for somehow making me wear a full-sleeved T-shirt that day !

Knowledge is potential power

I found this modified adage in a book called 'The monk who sold his ferrari'. It makes sense. What it basically says is that knowledge when applied is powerful.
I am gonna go home and look if the book has the author's email address somewhere in it. I want to append a paragraph to that one.

Knowledge applied at the wrong place, at the wrong time, by the wrong person renders the ego powerless.

Sreeji, Anuj and I were in the middle of our sets. And we were talking about the relative sizes of the muscle groups. As it is, the workout schedule is always designed in such a fashion that every session a big and a small muscle group is exercised.

I have a lot of knowledge about muscles, exercises and stuff. I really do. Its just that I didnt get to apply all that knowledge on myself.

Oka: Triceps and Biceps are both smaller muscle sets as compared to the chest, the shoulder, the back and legs.

Oka: Triceps are bigger than biceps.

Sreeji: Really ? I dont think the biceps are smaller than the triceps.
(Let me enlighten you with my knowledge here. Popularly, a man's fitness is associated with the size of his bicep. The tricep is relatively less popular, which would lead people to think that the bicep is more important and hence bigger.)

Oka: No. The triceps are bigger.

Sreeji: Maybe you are looking at yourself and saying that the biceps are smaller than triceps.

Anuj, the asshole that he is, bursts out laughing.

My wit betrayed me then and I didnt have an answer :(
Ideally my reply would have been...

Oka: In that case the stomach would have been the largest muscle group if people take a look at you two !!

Pity, that I couldnt think of this right then.

Mark of the Oko...

Anuj is the greatest show-off among the people I've known after coming to Hyderabad. Well.. let me qualify it.. he's the greatest show-off among the people I like. He doesnt spare a chance to ridicule my phsique and self-glorify his.

It was yet another day at the gym, where he was having a lot of fun out of comparing my skinny arm with his fat one.
I couldnt bear it. It was a do or die situation. I had to boast about something.

'My knuckles are fucking hard, you know.
I used to practise hitting the wall when I was undergoing martial arts training'.

'Oh.. is it ?'

'Yeah. I can hit the wall pretty hard, and not feel a damn. Watch this'

and I let out a punch at the innocent, white wall next to us.

'See... I feel nothing'.

'Oh wow.'

I was just about relishing my success at having the last word in this boasting contest, when a huge guy tapped my shoulder. It was Siddharth - the other gym trainer. He pointed at something on the wall.

'That wouldnt go off the wall'.

It was the mark of my dirty fist.
That was when I realised that there were quite a few people who had been watching this, for there was the voracious sound of laughter around us.

As hard as a bone... or a bone ?

Nothing would complete this post of kelas, better than this piece of conversation between me and Jess (remember the post 'Dating Rules ??')

Oka: I underwent 3 years of martial arts training.

Jess: Oh !

Oka: You should see my abdomen. I have a deadly six-pack there.

Jess: Whats a six-pack ?

Oka: I have six groups of rock-hard ridges showing on my abdomen.

(A pause)

Jess: They must be your ribs !

Subtle boasting minus subtlety

What causes a person to boast ?

Well, I can put down a few reasons on paper, but I think boasting cant be explained completely.

Here are a few reasons why I think a person might boast. Before I give you the points, there are two things to be noted here.
Thing number 1. Before you get smart and start asking me what happened to my supposed-to-be-funny blog, let me tell you that I've decided to get some serious stuff in. Thats the only way I can convey to you that apart from being a clown, I am a bit intellectual too.
Thing number 2: I just came back from a coffee, and I forgot this one. So lets forget it.

When a guy meets someone new, he'd want to convey how important he is. He would be intent on creating a good image of himself in the person's mind. For example, if I meet X, before X concludes something from my dark, skinny, bent-nosed, messy-haired personality, I would hurry up and do something which would get X to think of me in good light.

And there's always the desire to be looked up to. People love being hero-worshipped. They love being looked up to in awe and wonder, however humble they play.

The reason why I dont think boasting can be completely explained is this. Why would a guy keep boasting to people who already are awe-struck and have an amazing opinion about him ? Is image something like the government ? To be re-elected periodically ? Or does boasting become a habit ?
I really cant say.

Coming to the interesting stuff.
I hate boasting.
I love boasting, but I hate boasting.

I love it when I boast, but when others do that, I hate it. It ignites in me an immediate desire to bring them down to earth. And more often that not, I end up doing it.

Following was one of the chat conversations I had with a guy. This guy is an amazing 'Age of Empires' player. (AOE is a computer game). And every player including me knows that he's amazing.

The scene is after a series of AOE matches. Matches, in which, quite predictably, Dude won. (I am gonna call him Dude). I find this guy online on Yahoo. So I pull him for a chat. Its 1-30 AM.

Oka: Hey, playing another ?

Oka: How come you are still in office ?

Dude: No. Not playing another.

Oka: What are you doing ?

Dude: I have booked the 2 AM cab.

Dude: Was watching the recorded replay of the game.

Oka: Are you thinking of strategies for the next game or something ;)

Dude: Told you. I am watching the replay.

Oka: Okay.

Dude: How's your GD/PI preparation going on ?
(I think, I owe you an explanation here. GD/PI stands for Group Discussion / Personal Interviews. We both had taken CAT (Common Aptitude Test for B-schools) and we both had cleared it and received calls from some IIMs to attend the GDs and PIs - which constitutes the next round of the admission procedure)

Oka: It hasnt even started man.

Oka: I am always busy with work, and when I am not, I am playing AOE :)

Oka: How about you ?

Dude: Same here.

Dude: Actually I had planned to prepare and take CAT the next year.
(This is where subtle boasting begins)

Oka: Oh.. so you just gave it a shot this time, and you got through. Is it ?

Dude: I hadnt enrolled myself in any coaching classes. I took just a few practise tests.
(Advanced subtle boasting)

Oka: Are you some sorta fucking genius or something ?

Dude: I am just a normal human being, who gets lucky sometimes.
(Outrageously subtle boasting.)
(By now, you should have guessed the definition of subtle boasting. Boasting with an attempt - often a feeble one - at modesty.)

Oka: Modesty huh ?

Dude: My wing mates used to say the same thing at college when I scored 1520/1600 in GRE without any preparation.
(Subtlety just went for a toss.)

Oka: Wow. Thats great.

Dude: Nope. I was just lucky, thats all.

Dude: The only time I wasnt lucky was in my IIT-JEE.
(I forgot to tell you. This guy is from IIT - a premier institute in India. Not that I expect non-Indians to read this blog. But there's no harm in nurturing high hopes.)

Oka: What was your rank in IIT-JEE ?
(Why am I giving him more chances to boast ? Well.. maybe you should wait and watch.)

Dude: My rank was 1433.

Oka: Thats awesome man !

Dude: Hmm.
(His ego thoroughly pampered, he's at a loss for words for a second.)

Oka: I was also one of the also-rans of IIT-JEE. :)

Dude: You are from BITS, right ?

Oka: Yeah.

Dude: Which discipline were u in ?

Oka: Information Systems.

Oka: I went to BITS, because I wasnt getting software in IIT.

Dude: Oh.. what was your rank in IIT-JEE ?

Oka: 1350.

5 seconds....
10 seconds....
20 seconds....
30 seconds later.

Dude: Ok.

Dude: You got selected right ? How come you call yourself an also-ran ?

Oka: Hmm.
(I can tell him why. But he has to go through this blog first. And by the way, no prizes for guessing who has leapt into the best subtle boaster spot.)

Dude: When did you pass out ? 2003 ?
(Well, he's probably assuming that we both must have passed out the same time, and he's getting it confirmed)

Oka: No. 2004.

Dude: Was it a 5 year course ?
(Maybe he is a 2003 passout and he's probably assuming that we might have taken JEE the same time, but getting it confirmed all the same.)

Oka: Nope. 4 years.

Oka: When did you passout ?

Dude: Same. 2004.

Oka: Was yours a 5-year course ?

Dude: No. 4 years.
(The last few lines of the conversation might be meaningless. But for me, they sure do provide one more perspective into the character of the boaster. A boaster finds it difficult to accept that someone has beat him in some department.)

Oka: Hmm..

Oka: Okay man.. see you later at a game tomorrow. :)

Oka: Bye.

Dude: Bye.

Well. I havent said this earlier. But here's a disclaimer. The accounts I narrate are all inspired from real life conversations I've had. But they are all exaggerated to a slight degree, and sometimes to a large degree.
So buddies, keep behaving nicely with me. And no hard feelings :)