It is 11:00 P.M. now and I’m at work. There have been similar nights with similar expectations, excitement - once in October and once in November, only to be met with disappointment the next morning. We got better every time but none of them were good enough to last forever. The journey continues - hope its the last one today. Back in October, the urge to make it work was high since it was my first project here and I didn’t want to be a failure. So was the commitment. And frankly I was disappointed and couldn’t accept failure with grace. I believe I’m more prepared now for whatever the outcome of tonight is (though silently hope that it is a success - don’t want the stress on others to continue for it means much more to them).

I’m really thrilled now. We solved something that might have been the bottleneck. db rules :)
Performance tuning is so much fun. I wish I could do trouble shooting all the time but need a partner with very high common sense (which obviously I lack :) )

I had a great weekend. People who know me really well sense something is wrong if I’m quiet for more than 10 mins. And it was so unusual to be quiet the whole Saturday. I just didn’t speak. But I knew V was observing and analyzing and calculating his next move. It reached a point when he could take no further and confronted what was going on inside my lil head. Obviously work of the past week was bothering me so much. Frustration gave way to anger which in turn made me use profane language that I generally don’t. A strange feeling that I was probably estranging more people hit me hard. I wasn’t coping and managing with the situation well at all. After a good talk with him, I started feeling good. Two things he said made a lot of sense. One - never fight a man’s ego, you’re never going to win the race. Two - have you ever wondered why America has never had a female president? Why are there fewer female CEOs? The fact is I wasn’t fighting anyone’s ego. Yes if pointing out facts as they are hurts someone, then it does make sense. And that was probably what was happening.

Sunday, we went ice skating. No actually ice walking. It was an improvement from last time. I didn’t hold on to the rails this time. Hope to do it better this weekend.

Despite the tremendous stress at work, it has been fun to get to work every morning. I love working with people who talk sense and T is one of them. So its not surprising that my adrenalin rush to solve the problem together is very high. Once I get back home, there is a vacuum after the frenzy activity and db digging of the whole day. Wonder how it will be once the problem gets solved!

Lousy days

I’m really craving for an uneventful day now. Its been weeks now since I’m living under this stress. A typical day starts with e-mails that start with the line “Please no more mails on this… just kidding :)” and end with the line “please don’t feel free to ask questions :)))” . And when you get atleast such 2 e-mails everyday from atleast 2 people you know it was not lightly intended and “just kidding” was just a diplomatic way of saying a harsh thing. I have been time and again advised not to take my job personally. Thanks to all such people and I gladly invite them to live my life for a week and then see how it feels to be there.

Would you feel glad -

- to ask sorry for a serious blunder committed by someone else and on a bad day atleast 4 out of the 9 people that work with you can commit such a mistake and then pretend as though it wasn’t all that serious at all.

- to cover up for someone’s negligence in doing his/her work or not keeping up to the committed date

- to try and put up a smile in a meeting when you feel otherwise

And after all this get blamed too.

Dammit - I’m not going to ruin my life and get a headache everyday because a bunch of 20 people on either sides decide to throw me around like a ball and use me like a punching bag. No more mails, let hell break loose for once. I’m tired of controlling things and keeping everything in order.

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