One Nite at the Customer Site

No, this is not a sequel of the Chetan Bhagat's novel :D
Let me not even mention the customer site name(of-course you can guess it).

At on-site place, the work is a lot more different than what it actually is @ my office. By different, I mean a lot more hectic with lots more work pressure. But I feel that work is made more fun when people around talk to you comfortably closer and expose some personal feelings of home/family even at work.

This happened to me one day(actually very late evening). One of my colleague(Let me call him, Mr.X) and myself had to wait for the daily release build to do basic sanity and also check the all different fixes called CR's integrated into it and make sure there are no regressions.. If you don't get the "bad long phrase" that I used just now, feel free to replace it with "testing" ;) Since the developers were busy with fixing issues all day long and integrators always take all the time in the evening to put all corrected CR's into the single build, we poor chaps had to wait for our turn till night! sob sob.. ;( However, I still call it "insanity" testing rather than sanity tests :P

Since I came to customer site later that afternoon, It was not boring yet, even if I was staying a little longer. Thanks to managers who look into that we are scheduled properly.

Moreover, It was a Saturday evening and I received a message from our Team lead which said "Thanks for coming on weekend" and soon I realized that he too had taken off for the day, leaving Mr.X and myself to attend to the further needy. You may not know how horrible the next day(Sunday) might be when you stay late evening during a weekend! Am I again supposed to say "pissed off"!? :P

But Mr.X, was so different in his attitude! as he had seen so many of such weekends before.. He was so positive that I couldn't believe my eyes!

First of all, Let me introduce Mr.X. This guy is an adorable family man who loves his wife sooo..much that he sacrifices everything for her(lucky her)! A very open, honest and helping guy.

We had been out for dinner that night (around 9:30pm for the build was yet to come) and I asked a few personal family questions(in general) which he didn't even hesitate to answer! Even after 5-6 years of marriage he is still so young - like a "teenage lover"- at heart. With my eyebrows raised, I asked how he could spend time with his wife in "ruined weekends"(like the one I was suffering now) even after staying so late at Saturday night? To which he replied that he would go out on Sundays with her getting up early in the morning as it's the only way he could be with her for more time. Man! Didn't I say he is choo-chweet :)

This lovely incident doesn't end here. Soon after we headed back to our workstations we received the patched binaries and testing was soon carried out and it was all over earlier than he expected. But, time was ticking very fast for only me. It was already 1:00am, the next morning! He had expected not less than 3:00am to reach home. He was so happy that it was all done and all set to leave, he noticed a bouquet of flowers in nearby cubicle and smoothly drew a Red rose from it and said He would surprise her wife today by going early! (I was dumbstruck with his lovely thought)

Even on the way back in the company cab to his place, we had little chat. He welcomed me home in that odd hours too.. for which I said of-course I will, but some-other time. Getting down from the cab at around 1:30am, he ran down the lane to reach his home with the red rose in his hand and a big smile on his face.

For that fleeting moment in my life I really felt that, Love was in the air for sure :)

Rambling of a fresher in Industry

There are a lot of things that are happening to me and around me for which I am just a spectator. One of which is being hit by huge wave of recession tsunami. Customers show unwillingness to buy stuff leading to less demand..So industry lays off workers and consume less raw materials, Unemployed workers further spend less, Employees spend less fearing of their jobs, Investors fear to invest, Stock market falls. Finally there is a low financial condition and slump in personal income leading to recession. Till now I'm feeling the heat of recession(where neighbor is losing job) but not yet depression!(Me losing job!). All I can do is to hope that the financial market stabilizes soon!

As a fresher, I learnt so many things from the Industry that no college could ever include in its syllabus. Let me list a few of them.. and here it goes:

1. I earned! and so I got to know the TRUE value of money!
2. I now know how share market works!
3. How important a teamwork is..
4. Nature of work of program managers, line managers and engineers..
5. How mismatched is your study with respect to the Job.
6. Experience of night outs @ office
7. Weekend supports and customer focus.
8. I can flexibly use spreadsheets for TAX calculations! really I do!
9. Kinship with Co-freshers and colleagues.
10. How important is sleep during weekends!

Oh!, I forgot to add one more point!!!

11. WORK!!!