One of the things I love about my work is that it provides every now and then the opportunity to visit nice places and meet nice people. Find myself in New Jersey these days, on business, and its been a livening experience so far. Finally got an opportunity to meet RW in person, and he introduced me to a Japanese restaurant in town yesterday. Delicious cuisine that, but the highlight was the conversation more than the food.

RW is a staggeringly senior techie, who’s been around in this industry for over two decades now, and has lived through three generations of computing evolution. Stuff that most people have read about and revered in college textbooks is just the kind of stuff that RW has worked on – punch cards, first generation telex, you name it. The fact that his know-how makes him an engaging conversationalist is perhaps obvious. But what was so livening about talking to him was that it reminded me of conversations I typically have with HJ back home. RW and HJ are very different people with very different professional style and inclinations, but have one thing in common – in spite of their obviously high degree of expertise in their areas of choice, personally you find that both are rooted firmly to the ground, something that perhaps makes them pragmatic and effective mentors.

So, it has been a nice trip thus far – especially the last day. Nice lunch (the salmon was absolute ambrosia), followed by a nice drive to Newark, and finally flew to Boston for a much belated get-to with limbu, tattu and blemiph. Well, plenty more that I could write about, but we plan to go sailing now, and the river with some red winds beckon in earnest…

Am imparting a training on Unix Development and Run-time Environments these days, to a class of 20 odd. The composition of the class is as follows:

31% – Waiting for the right moment to say – “Hey buddy… don’t you think we should swap places… might work out better that way!”

31% – Thinking – “Damn! Another bouncer… should’ve brought my helmet along!”

32% – Hoping – “Hmmm… this is tough. He’s talking Latin, but maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I start getting the drift of things…”

5% – Snoring away to glory. Wakes up intermittently cos he’s having nightmares about aliens.

PS. I know this post is mean… just in that kind of mood today.

My boss does not trust me… he’s never told me so, but I see the succinct hues of fear stencilled over the white of his eyes!

 No… this is not the kind of distrust, where he believes I can’t be trusted with tasks, nor the kind where he believes I’ll drop a few copies of TOI upon his desk one of these days, and exclaim – “There! I’ve put down my papers!”*.

His distrust stems from the belief that i’m not from this planet. A fair thought this, since I’m hardly ever found working at my desk, never found working actually; spend a good deal of time with my teams – that is, with the volleyball, basketball and soccer teams, in that order. And yet, work inexplicably gets done – on time at most instances, sometimes ahead of time, and sometimes behind time**.

To be honest enough, I’m not quite sure how this happens either. I think there’s a band of those much-fabled elves working in my office, which would also explain why so many people in this world do not have shoes to wear.

Well, why debate the indubitable… I must be an alien life form after all. So, off i’ll go now and renew my quest of learning some earthly sports. Pass by a diligent SS at his desk on my way out…

Me: Volley time. Coming?…

SS: Not right away. Think i’ll finish this off first. I’m the elf today…

Three cheers to diligent colleagues!!…

Footnotes:

* Not an original quote

** An actual statement encountered in someone’s self-appraisal comments