The 'art' of multitasking.

Ability of multitasking at work (working on two activities at a time or working on two projects)…..what is it? A boon or a bane? They say many hands make less work. Its more like………..if there are many hands on a project each of them work less than they actually should. Then comes, out of the blue, a man (or a woman) who’s willing to do all the work. He takes over and instead of ‘many’ hands, two hands are sufficient. Such men call themselves multitaskers, bosses call them work horses and still others simply say they are fools!! So what are the flipsides of multitasking? Many, I would say. First of all and possibly the biggest of them is that you do a lot more work than others and still get paid the same as others. Secondly, bosses start taking you for granted. Thirdly, its additional responsibility and even the best of multitaskers are at times on the very edge of their mental stability. In ‘short’, multitasking can be defined as, ‘The ability to work more efficiently than others on more jobs, so that you are ultimately loaded with more work, which is expected to be completed in more or less the same time in which it would have been completed by two or more persons. This results in you having more than one boss, who are more and more dependent on you for the completion of their work which in turn brings in more responsibilities and more pains in more parts of the body apart from your neck and ass.
Advantages? Well, First of all, you get change. When you are bored of one activity you can take up the other and keep switching. Each activity serves as a change from the other. Next, you can make your boss suffer, if he’s given you a firing or if you suddenly develop some kind of grudge against him. How? Remain absent for a period of 5-6 days. His world of work will go awry and he’ll suffer. He’ll start wishing that you come back quickly, and when you do, he’ll either be soft towards you or yell at you. In either case you’ll have the mental satisfaction of ruffling his feathers a bit. Thirdly, when you multitask once in your work life, you’ll realize that its foolish and never do it again!!!

Whatcha say?

P.S: This post like the others is quite sarcastic in nature. Any resemblance of ability to the one given above in a person living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Meetings and presentations

Been writing this post after quite a long time. Last time I wrote a post, I was in another country and it was a sunny day. This time I am in my home country and it’s a rainy night. US and India are two different countries with different cultures. No one, who has been to both these countries would waste their time comparing the two, because there is no comparison. Life is very different in US and India. Anyway, I resumed office last week and was quite happy to see ‘some’ of my colleagues in office. Some of the travel descriptions which I should have written in my blog when I was in USA shall be written later, that is, when I feel like re-visiting those memories!!! So anyway, the first day I resumed office, my boss told me to attend a vendor seminar on ‘lightning protection’ equipment. It was an interesting seminar…………………………………………………and so I was told later, because I did not hear anything……….i was busy sleeping!!! It wasn’t jet lag, it was either the soporific power of the presenter’s voice or the topic was simply boring. Meetings and presentations have always been a bore for me, however short the length. I am never one of those who carry a note pad, to a presentation to note any important points. I sit in a place where no one can see me, so that when a slide show is going on and the lights go out, my head starts drooping. Whenever I am in plain view of the speaker (rarely), I try not to sleep……..in doing so my mind starts wandering to far away places……….like the office canteen where tea is being made. I start wondering when the tea is gonna come. When it finally comes, and I drink it and somewhat come out of my stupor. I had once even played games on my mobile, when a vendor seminar was on and it was much more exciting!!! My friend once suggested that we play tic tac toe, during our group meetings. We will be trying that out soon!! Another method of timepass during a meeting or seminar is ‘chatting’. Same as chatting online. The only difference here is that u have to write on paper. So when I want to ask someone “How are you?” I write this down on my notepad and show it to him……..he reads it and writes his response below. This way we can chat without disturbing anyone!!! Hahahahaha!!!!!

Carmel-by-the-sea

The day started off clear…..with clear skies and bright sunshine that is…..and my sister asked us to carry along our winter jackets. Even though its cooler here than it is in Mumbai, I did not think it was necessary to carry along my winter jacket. My sister’s predictions turned out to be right. But then, even I wasn’t wrong. A winter jacket was required at carmel on that day, but so was a rain-jacket. It rained that day at carmel !!!
Carmel-by-the-sea is the name of the city where we parked our vehicles. Carmel- by- the- sea also seems to be built on a slope. In some areas roads were just like those in San Francisco, with virtually a 45 degree slope. We parked our vehicles and took out the picnic baskets. The moment we put on our hats, we had to hold onto them….the reason being that it was very windy. When I had my first look at Carmel beach ….it was spectacular. The sands are as white as they can be. It looks as if someone’s put ‘flour’ on the sea shore. Behind and stretching far beyond this white sand was the sea…..bluish green…pure looking. We took off our shoes and walked on the sands and into the water. The water was very cold. My sister told me that its even more colder than it was that day. Near the horizon dark stormy clouds had started appearing. It seemed like there were trails of clouds below the thick upper layer of dark clouds. It was only after some time that I realized that these ‘trails’ of clouds was, in fact, rain which was falling in the faraway sea.We saw flashes of lightning too. I even tried to capture the flashes of lightning in my camera…..but no ones that fast or that lucky!!! We had a fun time taking pictures of each other. There were many people on the beach that day……some enjoying the waters, others playing volleyball and football….while still others were content with just lying down in the sun…tanning themselves. By this time the clouds were very close to the beach and we started wrapping up to leave. Just as we left the beach it started pouring. We took cover under some trees until the rain stopped. After this we ‘hiked’ to a nearby thai restaurant and had tom yum soup, pad thai curry and brown rice. Next we went to chocolate shop where we bought pieces of fudge for everyone. There were also some great looking candy lollipops which my sister wanted to buy for me. I turned down the offer. After all it would look a bit weird for a 20 year old ‘kid’ to eat a lollipop!!! Something to note……there are a lot of art galleries in the city of carmel-by-the-sea. Paintings Galleries, sculpture galleries, regional (folk) handicraft galleries and many more. When you take a walk in the city….there are art galleries….which seem to be everywhere….so this is also a city for the art lovers. We went to Thomas Kinkade galleries. His paintings are lovely. We purchased some of the Thomas Kinkade painting jigsaw puzzles!!! We visited a Chinese Handicraft gallery and many more. After this it was time to leave….so we did.

P.S: Photos of carmel beach will be published later. The computer here is too damn slow.