a shaky start

it seems there's always something about me and starting a new job that somehow means things go off-piste quite quickly. there was the time i got locked up in the fire escape, or the previous job where I forgot the one thing HR asked me to bring along (my passport) and had to be sent back home. this one was more eventful.

to begin with, I asked quite well in advance, what my first day would be like - where and when i should report, and to who. I also specifically asked for contact details, somewhat prescient of the drama that was about to unfold - and while everything else was replied to (after about a week!), no contact details were supplied. in fact, during my farewell evening out, my previous team asked me where's the new office, and when I told them I don't know, they asked me if I was sure I'm actually signing up for a legitimate job! coincidentally, there was a news article about the company moving to a new building a couple of streets away from where HR said I'll have to report to.

anyway - I happened to be in the area the evening before, to lead a ride, but as nobody turned up, I used the time to cycle to the building where HR told me I'll have to report. It was past 5pm, so there was nobody at the reception, and I asked a guy who was leaving the building if he knew about the company, but he worked for another one and hadn't heard of it. a peek through to the large board over the receptionist's desk showed the name of the company though - which was reassuring.

I looked for bike racks but there weren't any to be found - I had to chain my cycle to the fence while I tried to ask around for the entrance etc. luckily, the ground floor of the office building also housed a gym, and there were people there. one of the staff said there's no bike racks that he's aware of, and I'd probably be best off inquiring with the reception of the office space.

the next day, I decided to take the bus due to the dodgy bike rack situation, and turned up at 9:20, so 10 minutes early. the receptionist let me in, and told me to take the elevator when I pointed at the company I named on the board behind him. The elevator stopped at a floor which had literally a 10 + 10 foot L shaped passage, one conference room to one side, and a fire escape at the other end. The conference room was big enough for about 6 people. there was literally nobody about so I wondered if the room was the office space, and obviously nobody was in because I was 10 minutes early! It did seem very weird though, as there was no computer equiment or any hint that it was being used as an office space - just an oval table with 6 chairs around it.

thankfully, I heard some (loud, excited) voices from the other side of the fire escape door, so I opened it and had a peek. there were two guys and a girl. it was a bit of a strange sight, as one of the guys was trying to pick up the girl (literally - he had his arms around her from behind and was leaning backward to get the most leverage) while she and the other guy were squealing excitedly. they were caught as off guard as I was, when nervously I asked them if they worked for the company. they didn't, and helpfully told me they were literally just clearing out that company's space as they had vacated it a month ago! they directed me to the main reception, on the next floor, who told me the company had just moved,  and told me where - just two streets away, and in fact could be seen from there! she also gave me the mobile number of someone who worked there, and wished all the best for my first day!

the guy who answered the phone confirmed that they had indeed just moved two streets away, and told me someone would come to received me at the entrance.

the rest of the day was uneventful, but I did inquire about bike racks and was told we have access to bike racks at a nearby building owned by the same landlord. I was given a form I had to fill to get access to the racks, and I left after submitting it. I left the laptop, headset etc in a locker as I didn't have a bag to take it home.

the next day, I cycled to work. I had to make a stop on the way to pick up medicines, which delayed me a fair bit, but eventually made it to office. chained the bike nearby, and tried to use my access card to get in. the reader flashed a weird colour (blue, red) instead of the expected green. a few tries later though, it did flash green after flashing the other colours, and the door unlocked.

I pressed the button for the elevator, which bore a sign saying "authorized users only - do not use without a valid access card". the elevator seemed to be having issues the previous day, as it was incorrectly programmed to let us in on the wrong floor - so we had to first swipe the access card and go to the 2nd floor, and then swipe again and go to 1st. not today though. swiping the access card and pressing any combination of floor did not work. nor did the exit/door open button. after some time and attempts, all the lights in the elevator went into some sort of power save mode - there was just a very dim glow of some sort of emergency lighting, and the only button brightly lit was the alarm button!

I gave some serious thought to pressing the alarm button, but suddenly the elevator seemed to recover  by itself, the lights were back on, and the exit button opened the doors. I was so relieved I didn't even check if my access card now worked, as I didn't want to get locked in the elevator again!

I got out of the elevator, and breathed a sigh of relief. today was getting to be quite the adventure, already competing with the incidents of 29th May 2012!

I took the stairs to the 1st floor, but nobody was able to see me through the locked fire escape door. I tried knocking it and nobody answered either. I called the same guy I called yesterday, and explained the situation. I told him I was at the fire escape door. He said he'd come let me in. I waited for what seemed like a minute, but nobody opened the door. I was quite sure that was the only fire escape door, and that they only other door to the office area was the elevator. I took the stairs back down to the lobby, and waited there instead. he eventually turned up and let me in through the elevator - his access card worked, so it was just mine!

eventually someone explained that my access card had been deactivated last night - triggered by my application for it to be activated for the bike racks! these things happen, I guess. I was going to get a new access card in a couple of hours. back to work.

that's when I realized I had locked the laptop in the locker, but had not carried the key! the key was on the keychain I used yesterday, while the one I had with me today had the cycle keys but not the locker key!

thankfully my only teammate was not in yet, so I dropped him a message and left back home. I asked the guy who let me in, how I'd get in without my access card, and he showed me how the intercom system at the entrance worked. in fact, he was the one who had let me in as the intercom buzzed after an unsuccessful swipe of my access card - and that's the precise moment I swiped my card, and it flashed green as he let me in. hah!

anyway, cycled back home, collected the key, cycled back to office, got in through the intercom, unlocked the locker with my laptop, and I was finally able to get started with work after two hours of drama. what an adventure!

The rest of the day was uneventful - I was showed the bike racks too, my access card worked everywhere and all, so yay!

working from home was not as eventful - the laptop worked without any fuss, although I didn't bother setting up my home screens until almost 5pm - I was just not in the mood to fiddle with wires today. my skype also stopped working on my phone, but that turned out to be a microsoft outage, as the helpdesk guy's phone was affected too - much to his surprise. fun times!

leaving las vegas

yesterday was my last day at my job. I've only worked 3 full-time, corporate jobs in my whole life, and this is the first one that I quit just to change employers - for all the preceding ones, it was something else.

conventional wisdom says you shouldn't be emotionally attached to an employer. but in this case, I was - for personal reasons. if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been in Belfast. unlike Shruti, who had to build her friend circle the hard way, I was surrounded by friendly, welcoming people at work from day one.

and so, changing jobs because I wanted to change employers is a strange feeling. specifically, it was not to change my work. I loved what I was doing. I even loved the people I was working with. It was all the other things. the pay, the policies. the fact that something someone did to me a while ago could have a long term impact on my prospects despite my best efforts. the fact that the management couldn't do anything to set right what seemed to me to be an obvious wrong.

anyway. enough about the past. it's time to look forward to the future! this is the first time an employer actually provided me coaching to help me succeed at my new job. it was supposed to be an hour but we covered so much in half an hour, that that was all I needed. i feel armed!

I planned to have a week off between jobs because I wanted to do a motorbike trip to clear my head before I start. Unfortunately, the motorbike trip seems unlikely - "Lisa" has been out of action for three weeks - she literally died getting out of the garden and into the driveway with an electrical fault that the mechanic has been unable to diagnose yet. My to-do list is never ending though, and though the initial plan was to take my time between jobs as "me time" and keep the to-do list for "business as usual" time, fate seems to have conspired to do the opposite. Time to mow the lawn!

As I cycled to work yesterday, Sheryl Crow's "leaving las vegas" happened to play. This line struck me:

"Such a muddy line between
The things you want
And the things you have to do"

popf;ret

A couple of months ago, I decided to maintain a daily online journal. I wanted it to be a low-effort thing, available to the public on the internet for now, but not publicized to feed into my social feeds like this one.

I managed to keep it going for a few weeks, but right after the holiday season was over and the new year began, I started falling behind. it started with writing 3 days entries back to back with whatever I could remember, then turned into a couple of days of entries after a few skipped days... until i finally stopped completely. as of today, my last journal entry is dated 8th January.

When I started the exercise, I wasn't sure if it would work long-term, but I wasn't sure why either.

I think I do, now.

I can't stick to a routine. Even if I follow it for 21 days.

ps: popf;ret are the two opcodes in x86 assembly that execute a return from an "interrupt" subroutine. this just popped into my head from like 25 years ago, thanks to a youtube video about using chatGPT for programming assembly!

dad smiled

We were at home. it was a Saturday afternoon. We were downstairs, in the dining area, discussing what we should do today. Shruti handed her phone to me and showed me a message from Abhishek saying B&Q has an offer on fancy flush tanks. She asked if we could get ours replaced with flushes operated by a pull cord. I explained there are two types of such flushes, the Victorian style "high flush" which are quite old fashioned, not very practical, and not really better than what we currently have, and completely concealed flushes which would be hidden in a false ceiling. However concealed flushes would require us to redo the ceiling of all 3 toilets, which would be much more expensive than the flushes themselves. Shruti agreed it didn't make sense, so we could go out for ice cream instead. She went upstairs to get ready (I was already dressed to go out for some reason), while I waited.

I noticed it looked quite damp outside and sounded like rain beating on the windows, so I thought I should go out and check how bad the rain actually was. I went out without my jacket, and the rain was really barely a drizzle, and it was pleasant despite there being a fair breeze.

Our house was identical to the Belfast one, but its surroundings were completely different. there was no fence. we had no neighbours! on one side of the house, there was a dense evergreen forest of pine trees. on the remaining three, it was well trimmed grass. not flat but not hilly either - just undulating. there was a path leading sideways from our house to a row of similar looking detached houses, about 100 metres away. the path was paved, but quite narrow - just about enough for two people to walk along it, side by side. I took a few steps along it, and turned around to look at the house. in the window of the room facing me, beside a couple of small bits and bobs, was dad's head, stuffed and preserved. it was placed facing out of the window, into the distance. the eyes were pointing straight ahead and his expression, neutral. Shruti must have just moved it there, and I made a mental note to check if direct sunlight is fine or will affect the preservation of the head. 

Just then, I realised I was wearing my home slippers (the flip flops I used to wear in Mumbai, specifically), and I may have got a bit of mud on my left slipper. I bent down to check, and when I stood up and looked at the window again, dad was now looking slightly downward towards me, and smiling broadly! I couldn't believe it. How was such a thing even possible? I must be seeing things! My mind is surely playing tricks on me! It didn't make sense though, as everything else seemed quite real and exactly as it should be.

I closed my eyes and stood still. After about 5 seconds, I reopened my eyes and he was no longer looking at me, and his expression was back to what it used to be. 

And that's when I woke up. 

I thought to myself, that was my first ever dream where dad hasn't been alive. 

one week

the year started on a very different note from how it's going.

what makes it worse is, i can see it going wrong.

i feel like i'm out of my depth.

i'm sure there's the right thing/things to do, that are in plain sight.

it seems like I'm missing the obvious.

wish me luck.

Sailing from Charni Road to Portpatrick

I woke up at 7am and headed to Carrickfergus. It was a gloomy morning, and only two other people had arrived - the rest were on their way. We were going to leave for Portpatrick between 11am and noon, so I was very early. I took the train. Shruti, Kevin and Brenna joined me on the train as we headed to South Bombay. We got off the train at Charni Road (although from the layout of the platforms and bridges it seemed more like Mahalaxmi). I wanted to use the toilet. Shruti and I looked for it. We could only find the one marked Ladies but not the one marked Gents. We arked around and was eventually led to the station master's office. There were a bunch of people inside, a few sitting around a table, having some sort of meeting, while the rest were in a queue. It was a queue for the toilet!

Thr toilet and the station master/meeting room were in one big room, with nothing to separate them - the toilet was a commode surrounded by filing cabinets and files and stacks of paper other things you'd expect to see in a station master's office. I didn't really pay attention to the queue ahead of me and before I realized it, it was my turn. There was nobody queued up after me, and I was thankful. I would have really liked some privacy but the best I could get was the fact that there was nobody in the room other than Shruti, and the bunch of men having a meeting in the other half of the room - the men were bent over something on the desk and discussing it animatedly, so Iwas quite sure they wouldn't pay me any attention.

Right after I sat on the commode, I started feeling very weird. I felt dizzy and unstable. I asked Shruti to come closer and hold my hand, as I felt I was about to faint and fall off the commode and make a mess. She held my left hand and asked me what happened and if I'm OK. I told her I'll need a minute but I feel better already.

In the meantime, a lady walked in, wearing a white nurse's uniform, including a nurse's cap.

I somehow assumed she was in charge of keeping the toilet clean, and complained to her, while still seated on it, that it was not. She replied that it's not her fault it's not clean, as I'm the one currently using it. I told her it wasn't clean before I used it, and in fact I almost fainted as it was so dirty. She refused to believe me until Shruti backed me up.

Job done and I was back on the platform. We took the bridge on to the road. We were trying to get to the beach, but I took the wrong bridge out and we had to walk along the road, and take another bridge to get on to the beach. Kevin and Brenna were waiting at the end of the bridge, and I told them they should come sailing too. At that point, a group of about 3 or 4 older people (one of whom resembled my school science teacher) told me it was too late to go sailing - it was already noon! Also, we were at Charni Road, and the boat left from Carrickfergus!

I wondered why Hugh didn't call me when he was leaving - I thought about it a bit and realized he may have not left yet, but I definitely wouldn't make it, so I should message him instead and tell him that I couldn't make it. I also told everyone that we weren't sailing today as it had gotten too late.

And that's when I woke up. It was 8am. I had dismissed my 7:40am alarm in my sleep. If I didn't leave at 8:30am, I'd have been late to get to Carrickfergus to go sailing! I thought to myself, damn - that was really close! If I didn't wake up when I did, I'd have actually missed sailing that day!

ps: Turns out I had not read my email and we were actually supposed to get to Carrickfergus at 10am instead of the usual 9am. Still!

I'll fly away

two years.

they say that time heals, and in many ways it has, but in some ways, it hasn't. he's still here, following me everywhere in a way I never felt while he was alive, like some sort of omnipresent vacuum.

I am aware of my human weakness when it comes to making up memories, subconsciously adding a little detail to moments that may have been blurred by the passage of time and distorted by the strange way the human mind works. but I know there's something that rings true with every memory. that marvellous man, my beloved father. a man who, despite obvious shortcomings and failings, I still maintain was the best person to have walked this earth.

just the other day, we were discussing what dad would have had to say if he was present at that moment. the moment was something mundane, possibly me breaking the garlic press in an attempt to disassemble it. it's easy to imagine something logical, sensible, brilliant. or maybe something witty and irreverent. and I know, it's also equally (or maybe even far more) likely he'd have said something extremely mundane - maybe one of his favourite tropes/quips. but to predict what dad would have said is futile. every fantasy of being reunited with him in some sort of weird predicted interaction would fall short.

but that's all I have now. thoughts, memories and my imagination. 

I know that sitting on my couch, typing a blog post when I should be sleeping would elicit a gentle nudge from him to go to bed, to remind me that I have work tomorrow. he cared for me in a way I've never felt anyone care for me... in a way that was both protective and freeing. and that's what I remember best about dad. he was only human, in a way that made "only human" something to aspire to. he made the imperfect feel right.

everything feels imperfect right now. but I know this is the sort of moment that dad would meet with calm acceptance. with making the best of the moment, even if it looks like I'm failing miserably and everything's lost. 

I just realized I have never ever, ever, ever, absolutely ever, seen dad give up.

good night. please come to me in my dreams. I miss your hugs.