Work Weekend

So far my weekend has been work-filled but somehow I'm still in a good mood. There's something about being in the office on Sunday morning in jeans and a sweatshirt with no one else around and just being able to turn on the nostalgic Singapore chinese radio through the internet and work while staring out of the window at newbury street.

Now all I need is a mug of steaming hot coffee... think I'll go remedy that right now.

College parties

This weekend I was persuaded to attend a party that i should have never gone to. Despite the fact that we were all out of college, this was very much a college party, complete with the loud music, and copious amounts of beer. There were some changes though. The beer pong was changed to water pong - not that it stopped everybody from getting really drunk. And there was no random hooking up in various rooms (guess we're all too old, and if everybody was a friend of a friend, too wise for that).

As I was hiding upstairs together with a few of my friends, unable to go home because we had one friend actually enjoying herself (also the person we were staying with and therefore key to us being able to get home), I remembered why I had avoided most of the parties in college.

In some ways I miss the days before we all had money and ways in which to spend it. Going out with friends now invariably involves going to bars and playing darts or going to bars and drinking or dancing. There was a time ten years ago, with people I still remember fondly when we'd meet for dinner one night all of us from different schools and because we had no money, we'd sit out and watch the stars come out and talk about our hopes, our dreams and our lives. There are some things that money can't buy and unfortunately some things that money just doesn't seem to help.

Mute

I miss my words. Lately I don't have the time or emotional energy to write and haven't for two years. Since the whole thesis and work life thing actually started. Last week, I came across stuff that I wrote several years back and suddenly realized how much I missed that part of my life.

The problem is not that I can't find the time. You can always make time for something you love. I think the problem is more that moving, adjusting to a new job, and just living is pretty much taking up all of my attention. I write when I'm bored.... when I'm bubbling over with something that has to spill out somewhere. Lately, I think I've been living my life on the outside of my skin so much I've lost the road that I used to take to the core of what I am.

While I can't start writing again in a day. What I can do is start small. I can write a little each day. small things. random things. and who knows? some day I might start writing something I like again.

The meaning of life

"What are you supposed to do in life? You're born, you eat, you sleep... what else are you supposed to do?" I was watching honey and clover and this struck me as a question for which there is no real answer. Is the meaning of human life merely to propogate our species?

It's so easy to get caught up in this you go to work, you eat, you sleep, you go to school, you go to more school so you can do more work. What's the meaning behind it all? Maybe there isn't one. And if so, then wouldn't it be just fine if we can all just do what we'd like to do? But Life isn't so simple. Maybe what you'd like to do wouldn't lead you to be able to eat and sleep well and so you have to find something you'd like to do a little less.

I'm trying to weigh the costs and benefits. Would doing business school really get me where I want to go? Do I even know where I want to go? Maybe that's the real question. I've a feeling that that one will take me my entire life to answer.

How not to manage

It's Monday morning after what can be described as a bad week at work. So bad that the weekend wasn't quite enough to recover from it, although I did get lots of chores done. In explanation I should probably say that I usually love my work, and I've had the fantastic opportunity of having had lots of good experiences with lots of people who are fantastic people to work for and to work with. Currently though, I'm on this one case which I can only say would not be so such a bad case if not for the people on it.

I'm sure the people on it are perfectly nice people, and in real life I'd probably like them, but I'm learning a lot on how NOT to manage from them. For instance, while in an investment bank it might be okay to make people work 90 hour weeks forever, in my company you don't expect your teams to work 50-60 hour weeks for 2 months straight when the expectation is 40 hour weeks. You also do not yell at your analysts, or the other managers for doing work on other cases because analysts generally know how to allocate their time between what is urgent.

I guess I'm also learning a lot on what it means to be middle management and what to do and not do. The one thing I have learnt, is that it is demoralizing to workers if middle management is negative. As middle management, never criticize the managers openly, and never express negativity about the feasibility of meeting deadlines or your own workload because it is demoralizing to the workers who consequently feel they have to take on everything.

I need to be off this case. I can't believe I have at least two more months of this to look forward to. JB says that if you hate work for more than a month you should quit, but there are and will be other cases so that doesn't always make sense.

Does the soul-crunching life-absorbing kind of love exist? The kind that all songs are based on... the kind of that makes you drop everything for it and kill yourself when it is over? Because if it does, I don't believe I am capable of it.

I won't pine away and die because you're not here. Won't cry myself to sleep or otherwise. When my friends here ask if I'm okay, I think it's strange that they would ask. Of course I'm okay, more than okay. I have a fulfilling job, friends, a life beyond you and so do you. We are ourselves complete and neither define nor run into each other like a palette of watercolours.

... but the world seems just a little more leeched of colour, a little more empty and a little more lonely when you're not around.

Two minute happiness.

Quiet sips of my Iced Cafe Mocha from Starbucks. Outside the world is turning, bustling on another hot summer's day. My apartment is a mess because I'm moving tomorrow and yet still not packed.

But here, with my coffee in my quiet cube early on Wednesday morning, it's okay to take two minutes out of the race for time that is my life. Transience has always been and perhaps will always be a part of my life. Yesterday, I lived in Boston, tomorrow in Brookline, a distance not far in miles but moves are never easy nor measured in miles. It's been a year. This time, next year, where will I be? Or the year after.

For now, it's enough that I am here.

Enduring Praise.

It's review season in the office. I hate writing reviews both for myself and others. Writing the reviews means I have to sit down and think. It means I have to judge myself and others on how well we've done, to sum up the scale of our acheivements which in the large scheme of things mean nothing. It means I have to think of things to say to people during reviews good and bad. And worse it means I have to sit in front of those self-same people and endure praise.

Criticism I get. I'm full of flaws. Sitting and writing my self evaluation always makes me sharply aware of all the things I could be doing better. Looking at my finished self evaluation makes me think. This. This is what the last 6 months of my life amounted to. Was it worth the 1/160th of my life? Was it worth doing? Did it make the world better? Did it make me better? The answer to all these questions of course is rarely yes.

The worse is having to endure praise. To sit, with a fake smile on my face and listen to praise which might or might not be platitudes, desgined to pacify and console. If they mean the praise, I have succeeded in getting away with the largest con. Then I wish I could really be the image of me they hold in their minds. Either way, praise is a double edged blade that never seems to bring me much joy.

P says I'm too hard on myself and have too low expectations of others. I never seem to think of much criticism of others. To me, they are what they are. I can think of good things to say but never bad ones. N says she feels bad complaining about her cases because I never complain about mine, however bad they might be. Simply, its because I don't think they are bad. They just are what they are.

I grew up starved of praise. I remember having tremendous fights with my mother on why everything I did was wrong. Why nothing I did pleased her. Perhaps growing up without much praise, I've grown uncomfortable around praise. I don't know how to deal with it and can never believe it to be true. Hopefully, this hasn't affected my ability to give praise. At some point in the past, I set my hopes at the lowest common denominator so that I would never be disappointed but I must remember to credit others when they exceed my hopes because even if I don't deal well with praise , others do.

APPROVED!

My H1-B visa was approved! I can stay through the summer and work. Whoo hoo! :-)

Copied from my white board

for Prithi:

1. Laugh
2. Cut down on coffee
3. Slow down, butnot really
4. Don't work on anyone else's cases
5. Do Prithi's to-do list

(I have a white board which I write to dos on and haven't updated in a while but my associate wrote this on my white board)