No free lunch!!

Its past 9 pm and im still in office. Here in Saudi we start work at 7 am, so its 14 hrs straight now and i still dont see the light. Working onsite on an IT project is no bloody fun.

I've also practically eaten nothing the whole day and my head is a tizzy coz of looking at the laptop for so many hours. This is wat i've been stuffing down my food pipe the whole day

Cornflakes for breakfast at 6:00 am,
Coffee at 7:00 am,
Coffee at 10:00 am
Fruits at 12:00 am
Coffee at 1:30 pm
Coffee at 3:00 pm
Mocha at 5:00 pm
Cup Noodles at 8:00 pm
Tea at 9:00 pm

Not that i am complaining, i get paid fairly well and infact enjoy my work, but its a weird feeling to spend a good part of the 24 hrs in the same cubicle. You kinda become claustrophobic looking at the same cubicle, same colors, same screen and worse your brains/eyes start to beg you to look objects which are not related to work.

For some reason I keep thinking what my dad quotes everyday about life "There is nothing called a free lunch".

Today is April 14 2009

I so badly wanna record this day in my life. Wish i had somebody following me with a camera for today only, only today. I have never ever been so overwhelmed in my life...im sure there will be more days like this but for a start today April 14, 2009 at Saudi Arabia is 'THE' day.
Wer do i start? ok here goes...
I squirmed, apologized a 100 times (mistakes are all mine!), felt like killing myself by jumping outta a car travelling at 140kph, apologized again, spoke my heart out to who ever would listen, reallocated tasks to my team, restrategized mine/team Visa arrangments, got managment lessons from an illustrious collegue, ran into problems which will never occur in a normal work day and the list goes on. Its 10 pm now and im still waiting for any bloody suprises which are in hold to complete my day!
Gosh, will you ever stop learning in life? I think not...but if every learning day is like this then hell no! I wud rather gladly strip to the barest minimum and brave a snow storm than face the music of my superiors.
Hitting the sack now and waiting for tomorow to start new with a new set of suprises.
Life is just so awesome!!

The woods are lovely dark and deep..........

I secretly do wish for my life to be much more simpler, stress free and full of vigour but life really needs to have ups and downs. One should enjoy their sorrows and thrive in their joys. For now its mostly enjoying for me now. Life couldnt be much better. My project is delayed, my private life is a mess and still i manage to keep a happy face. I ought to be mighty proud of myself to have handled so much till now, but as Robert Frost put it " ....... and miles to go before before i sleep"

All in a days work.

I am predominantly right brained and i know what makes a good design 'good' and a bad design 'bad'. My current project involves convincing ppl that the User Interface Elements i design is in conjection with project demands and user liking, which in most cases is just the opposite. I happen to lead the project and that makes it far more complicated because i am now trying to convince my designers and my client. Its like justifying murder to two sets of layers who are arguing against each other. Confusing??......that how it is when trying to do designs for a client who is so damn left brained!!

Trying to visually satisfy clients is by far the most challenging of tasks to a designer, i've tried and tested a few novel approaches.

• Guage his sense of dressing, a good indicator of the type of person he is. A well dressed person is slightly easier to deal with and normally has some design sense
• His desktop, a dull boring windows default desktop indicates a bad artistic sense
• His legacy system, a very good indicator! A visually good system, then your dealing with somebody with good design sense
• His mobile/mp3, an upto date gadget; then somebody with enough understanding of technology and awareness about latest design style

There are a few more ways i try to judge ppl but again, im being very subjective and am not right at times.

By the way, my present client dresses very badly but has a very good sense of color; that makes my life more miserable since he does not understand design but understands the colors used in these designs.

His legacy system is designed very well but has bad color schemes :( now how the hell should i judge this guy??

His mobile was created during the stone ages but has the latest iPod touch! Now, thats what i call extremeee.

I've been at loggerheads with him for so long now that i have decided to tell him this:

"No great thing is created suddenly."- Epictetus

Life!

The last prayer call of the day voiced over the loudspeakers jolts me from my day-dreaming; its been almost 6 months in this country and atlast i get to go home. Life is very weird; especially for the travelling kind. U never know where your next assignment will be, all u think about during the projects is home, friends, family, your bike/car/cat/dog/girlfriend (they can be reagrranged in any order ;) ).

I've lived outside India for a while now; 4 yrs is kinda long enuf to make judgemental statements. India for all its flaws is still a magnet, everytime i cant wait to catch the flight home to experience the untold hasseling, pollution, traffic jams, honkings, stupid-pedestrians, superemely arrognat driver in a Benz, super egoist ticket counter person aka govt servant...the list can go on. But tats the way the country is and i love it ;)

Think it will be while before i write an other post, i've promised to myself to not touch the computer during my holiday......but..........its just a promise, can always break it.

Of temples and mosques

Its easy not to be overwhelmed by the beauracracy in Saudi Arabia, sometimes i feel its worse than India. Not that i dont love my country but considering the 'favours' u gotta do to people to get things done in India, id rather be a country hater.

Indians are hospitable, modest, brainy, innocent, god fearing...blah, blah.........yeah yeah i've heard that before. In many ways Saudi Arabia is similar to India, in India you can be the most hated, criminal, pimp arse monie laundering politician yet if you construct a temple all ur sins are washed away. Same concept here, do wat you want, but pray 5 times a day.

Everybody lives in a world of make believe...next time you donate to a temple, think of the malnutritioned street kid who so enviably watches your own son or daughter drive to school. Think stupid.....frikkin think....God can wait, not the hungry kid.

Of sin rooms and submissions

So im in Saudi....its weird how things work. The other day im sittin in my house jobless talkin to mom, now im here. Its not even a year since i left UK for India but now im in Saudi. So why am i writing all this....im fuckin bored. I've got 5 document submissions and my proponents have decided to mind fuck me for the rest of this project. All my documents have gone thro' 4 versions and they still keep calling my submissions as drafts......when on earth will they stop callin my document a draft and accept it for submission......God im pissed!! Sorry abt the rambling, needed an outlet.
To make things worse, its Ramadan month so no eating, drinking in public. All canteens are closed in the office and my team has to literally tip toe to one of the 'Sin-rooms' made available to us sinners for having our lunch and coffee. Is'nt my life great!!
Further ramblings are inspired by the regular bomb blasts i see in the news, wer the this all heading to? Innocent lives are lost on a daily basis and these pimps(read politicians) dont seem to fucking care, all they do is read out prepared text in front of the press. Hello.... is anybody actually doin something??
More inspiration comes from our Prime Minister who seems to be hell bent on the Nuke Deal? Agreed it wud supply the much needed energy but is congress actually interested in beefing up security, naah not their personal black cats, but for the common man on the street.
Sorry abt the rambling......had to let go of the steam.

Culture, Urs and mine

The word is isssssssssssh!! Saudi's have a tradition of not talking about the obvious. Every word you say, before it leaves your mouth has to be censored. I share my office cabin in Aramco with my saudi college, a junior yet to graduate....a great guy to spend the boring afternoon hours. We simply talk, its actually an enriching experience to sit with somebody who belongs to a totally different way of life and talk about common things...generic issues like USA, Religion, Cars, Customs...lots of things.
Religion is a defacto topic of discussion between us, he wouldnt believe that i dont pray and im not religious although im a default hindu. He talks about life, death, afterlife, afterdeath.......the fact that i dont believe in all this totally beats him. His system simply does not accept that somebody without religion can actually live. Although Ahmed(the chaps name) tried to hide his dispeasure about me not accepting his argument i could sense it. Well he is not wrong and i am right so its a stalemate.
I like Ahmed for his wayz, the guy is young, very matured and staunchly defends his religion which i think is very fair. He convinced me how Saudi Arabia 'the land of the pure' is different from other Arab nations. We in India have our own religious places with absurd and weird customs to suit traditions. Saudi Arabia is one such country where traditions far outweigh the religion.
We talk about girls, here you cannot find youngsters hanging out, well they do but guys seperately and girls with their husbands or fathers. You have sprawling malls all over the country but you dont find the vibrancy of youngsters talking, laughing, lovers walking hand in hand. Here the malls are quiet, eerily quiet where you want something to happen to break the ice.
Oh i nearly forgot, 'Rajnikaaaaaaant'. After my daily meeting with the proponents of the project we had an 'off-the-topic' discussion with the guys (all saudi's) the topic of discussion: Movies and obvious i had to justify the dance-around-the-tree routine of our illustrious actors, then out of no where i heard the name 'Rajnikaaaaaaant'....i didn believe it at first but double checked it with the guy who mentioned it and yes he is an avid fan of 'Rajinikanth'.......tell me abt it! In a country where movies are banned (no theaters in Saudi Arabia) and television and internet are highly censored...Rajinikanth is famous!!
If you think this post is highly unorganized, let me clarify that im somehow managing to blog inspite of certain restrictions and this one particular post was composed in 4 days of 2 different weeks.
Will try to keep posting...but now gotta run home....taxi waiting ;)

Outta blogger range!!

Im actually in a part of the world where my internet is highly restricted and worse i dont have access to a lot of websites in my office too, so sorry guyz need to wait for another few months before i can start rambling again ;)
Im in saudi arabia on a project deputation, so will try to find a way to blog by wat so ever means possible. Moreover my blogger home page is in arabic and im just guessing the buttons to post a message ;)
Meanwhile im having real fun in this amazing company (Saudi Aramco) google it and u will know abt it, trust me......just google it and u will not be disappointed !!!