Tuesday, September 20, 2011

#75. Things I've been doing over the weeks in lieu of posting.

1. Trying to keep pace with the super sonic speed of life in Bangalore. I've been stuck in weekday-weekend cycles, and am left wondering where does all the time fly.

2. Realized that setting up a full-fledged house to live is is not as easy and 'fun' as it seemed to be. Took us almost a month to get the kitchen running in full swing. We decided to manage dinner by cooking on our own instead of choosing other unhealthy options. Although it takes us much more time than what it should ideally take to put together a meal of rotis and veggies, there's nothing more satisfying than the taste of hand made home food.

3. Getting myself moulded into the life of an adult, with juggling between office and home, work and groceries and garbage bins and laundry and such stuff. All this leaves me exhausted by the end of the day to be able to pick up any extra read or movie. Don't even ask about the blog.


4. Taking up all the responsibilities and handling chores on my own has made me appreciate the role of mothers in life a lot. Need I say more on this ?

5. Joined the team a few weeks back, although I haven't been formally given any task in the official. There is still a hell lot of learning to do before I'd be able to independently share any team work. Here in SAP Labs, they follow the 10-20-70 rule : 10 % classroom training , 20% guidance and 70% hands-on experience. I was directly given a case study with a week's time, one that I had absolutely no clue about. Struggled a lot initially and eventually took a while longer than I was supposed to take, but managed to pull it off pretty well. Realized the best way to learn is not through any constant hammering on the head, but by actually getting down to doing the work, making mistakes, rectifying them and getting good at it. Now I feel much more confident about how the things I fiddled with during my case study work than I ever did when I was being "taught" about them.

6. Joined the gym . And surprisingly keeping quite regular with it, thank you very much. As lame as it might sound to you, it is a big achievement for me since for years the closest I've ever been to exercising has been must have been bending down to pick up a dropped pen. Yeah , that bad.
So unless its unavoidable, I make it a point not to miss workout after a day's work at office, even if its just 15 minutes of cycling. What makes it easier is the little candy-watching that I get to do with all the cute guys from office coming there too ;)

7. Played Agony Aunt to many. Yeah. Everywhere I went , I found myself listening to personal problems of friends and trying to help them out with whatever solutions I could offer. Or would just listen patiently until the other person felt better just by sharing. I've learnt that speaking your heart out to someone makes you feel umpteen times better, listening to someone do that makes you feel so even more. Suddenly all my little troubles seemed so trivial and took a back seat while I took charge of cheering them up. If I managed to bring a smile on someone even for a split second, or maybe just helped them from breaking down, I feel honored.

8. Speaking of help and generosity, October is the month of service in SAP Labs, where employees pledge their time out from their schedule for social work. I'm quite impressed by the policy of the company of laying stress on the importance of realizing our duty towards the society and not losing the human within us to the cacophony of the professional world. They encourage employees , as a part of Corporate Social Responsibility to participate in such activities once in a while as per their will. The entire month of October is dedicated to a variety of events ( link) and I plan to participate in as many as I can ,since I have ample time as a fresher joinee. Because it makes me happy.

As I type this, my watch tells me its midnight already, high time I should go off to sleep if I wish to reach office well in time and pull off the day without dozing off on my desk.
Funny how in hostel midnight was when I used to be the most active. Sigh.

Good Night.