Of meltdowns that come without warning

I wrote this post back in May, towards the end of one of the most terrifying periods of my life. I wrote it, decided not to post it, and life went on.

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In my last year of college, there was this day I was supposed to present to the class on something. I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember the room, and the visual of my classmates sitting in one row, my favourite professor in her wheelchair, and me standing off on the side, holding my notes in my hand. For some reason, before I was to begin, the professor had started talking about the day her father died. And as she spoke, in her trademark matter of fact way,  every single girl in the room started sobbing, except me. I stood there, wondering I wasn't crying like everyone else.

She finally turned to me, rolled her eyes, and complimented me for not crying like everyone else. And indicated I should begin. I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and then turned around, faced the wall, and sobbed my heart out, while my professor clucked exasperatedly behind me.

***************

Four years ago, the day after the garage incident, I walked into work, and went straight to a conference room to join my work BFF for our weekly call with our counterparts from a partner organization. The call had already started when I entered, so I gave a cheery "Hi!" as I sat down. Someone asked me a question, I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and somehow kept going. The call ended, and as I started gathering my things, my BFF looked at me and said, "ok, what's wrong?"

***************

That morning in May, a few months ago, we had a call with a team I hadn't spoken with in a few weeks. I listed out my agenda, and then before we could dive into the first issue, one of my coworkers piped up saying - before we start, just one other thing. Is your family okay? 

I'd been living a nightmare for close to a month at that point, waking up every morning in terror, wondering what new names I'd hear that day. The weekends were the hardest, because there wasn't even work to distract me from my constant doomscrolling.

And at some point in the previous two weeks, a memo had gone out across America - check in on your Indian friends and coworkers. But somehow, this was the first time someone had done it on a public forum like this. So far, I'd gotten texts or messages, or been asked during one-on-one calls, all of which was appreciated and relatively easier to handle. But being asked on a call like this, while still appreciated, was just a bit startling. But I gave what had become my standard response to all of these inquiries, and kept going.

And then that afternoon, I had about ten minutes between calls, and decided to use it to glance at twitter a bit. I had consciously not looked at worldometers all day, due to some Big. Meetings. in the morning. But since I had ten minutes, I opened twitter, and this was the first tweet I saw.

BREAKING: India has reported over 414,433 new coronavirus cases, the highest of any country since the pandemic began, and 3,920 new deaths.

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 6, 2021

414,000 new cases. Almost 4,000 new deaths. And you know those numbers were woefully, and criminally, undercounted and underreported.

I saw this tweet, and dialed into my call, which was going to be my boss, her peers, and their boss. Started saying I was going to share my screen for the discussion, at which point it was helpfully pointed out I was on mute. I managed to unmute, share my screen, and started laying out what we needed to accomplish. And then it happened.

I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and the tears came gushing out. I kept presenting, speaking over everyone who was trying to say something, pretending like there's nothing strange whatsoever about a woman talking about aligning on a baseline forecast while she has tears streaming down her face. My coworkers on the call, bless them, realised I wanted to just get through it, and let me. I got IMs, some during, some after the call. Every single one of them telling to stop apologising for my meltdown.

I stopped apologising, but I really wished my brain would give me some indication of a forthcoming meltdown going forward.

***************

Things got better after that. They got much worse first, but they got better. The one person I was most terrified for during that period thankfully got through the summer, and is now mom to the cutest baby in the world. We all know there's another wave coming, but no one knows when. 

I don't know why I'm finally posting this now, but for whoever is reading this, I do hope you and your loved ones are safe, and getting through this crazy time in history as best as you can.

On getting emotionally invested in the job

I started a new job just over six months ago. And it's a great job - it's still in the space I'm passionate about, adjacent to what I used to do and loved doing, but different enough that I'm learning and getting to do entirely new things, in a new but adjacent industry.

But when you change jobs after five years, turns out it's a lot weirder than I had expected. By the time I left my previous job, I was pretty much the historian of the team. I knew how everything worked, I knew why things worked the way they did, I knew why certain decisions had been taken, and I knew my products inside out - especially since I launched some of them during my time there. In this job, I had to learn everything from scratch - the products, the company, the industry, the history and context, and even the mundane, like how the blessed printers work*.

My new coworkers have been incredibly patient though, and I suppose it helped that my boss and my boss's boss both joined within the last year too. I was told early on to be patient with myself, and to expect it to take six months to ramp up. And I had known coming into this role that it was going to be a somewhat ambiguous role, given that it didn't exist before I came in. But even though I was getting positive feedback, I still found myself getting antsy by the three-month mark - that I wasn't doing enough, or that I didn't know enough.

The other thing that was bothering me was that I didn't feel emotionally invested enough in the job, which is something I've always needed in a job, or even project, to be any good at it. I was still paying more attention to news from my old industry. I was still smiling at call outs to my old products, not my new team's products. And I was having major FOMO when I heard my team mates talk about their projects - because they do what I used to do, and I miss those specific types of projects sometimes.

But most of all, I was not getting worked up about anything to do with the job. I wasn't rolling my eyes at anything. I wasn't having to grin sheepishly because people could look at my face and know what I was thinking, because I wasn't thinking anything mean about anyone.

In short, I was stressing about not stressing about my job.

I whined about this to a couple of people - my father just laughed, and my friend D politely asked if this could be a sign of maturity. I laughed at her question, because really, have you met me?

And then, about a month ago, I realised I was feeling more confident about what I was doing. I was speaking up more. I was responding to questions more easily. And then came the flipping of the switch - I was on a conference call with someone I have most definitely formed opinions about, and I realised I was rolling my eyes as this person was speaking.

And let's just say the eye rolling has not stopped since. And I was in a meeting earlier this week, where someone said something, I nodded and said "you bet", and they looked at my face and burst out laughing. So I think the facial expressions have started as well.

And so, while I'm not entirely sure I'm still fully ramped up or emotionally invested, I know I'm getting there. And I think I'm going to continue to live up to my reputation of being a champion eye roller**.



*Why I can't get my default setting to be two-sided printing is beyond me, and it is also driving me crazy that I'm the only person here who uses that setting. Stop killing more trees than you have to, people.

** It continues to both baffle and amuse me that friends from different walks of life, who have never met and possibly don't even know of each other's existence, send me whatever eye-rolling related memes they come across, because apparently anyone who loves associates these memes with me. This is not unwarranted, sure, but it is strange.

On my ongoing binge watch of Suits

I restarted watching Suits. I had seen the first 5.5 seasons (or should that be 4.5 seasons? I had stopped after the Season 5 mid-season finale), but stopped for some reason after that. It was a show I used to love, and I had added it to my Amazon watchlist quite a while back. So a few weeks ago, with nothing else to do (well, with lots to do, but I may have been trying to procrastinate), I dove back into the show. I've been doing a couple of episodes a day, and I did take a break to binge watch the new season of Veronica Mars (#stillbitter), so I'm almost done with season 7 at this point - just three episodes left. And the same thoughts keep running through my head as I watch.

In the years since I last watched the show, Meghan Markle got married to Prince Harry. And it is just weird to watch her on that show now. I don't know why it is, but it is. I know she leaves at the end of this season, but for now, there's just constantly a sense of "huh" as I watch her.

Also, how do the female characters on the show get through their day dressed the way they dress? I mean, they all look gorgeous, and professional at the same time. But having now worked for several years in workplaces that have gone the "dress for your day" way, I would want to punch someone if I had to wear pencil skirts and heels every single day, for what seem to be twelve hour days. The only woman on that show who seems even remotely comfortably dressed is Paula, Harvey's therapist-turned-girlfriend, although I suspect she's about to disappear from the show (and I am not upset about that. We all know what the endgame of this show is, right? RIGHT?). Anyway, my world view of professional wardrobes is already very skewed thanks to the last several years, but I should note that I dressed relatively formally today due to annoying 9 am meeting so I'm not in my usual uniform of jeans, a Ann Taylor or Loft sleeveless top, and a cardigan. But I'm in the most comfortable formal dress I could find at Ann Taylor, and I will not end today by wanting to kill anyone. Well, I might, but it won't be because I was physically uncomfortable all day.

(I should also note that I am currently watching the live stream of Robert Mueller's testimony to Congress, and how sad is it that even the photographers there have to be in a suit and tie. I would not survive in the world of politics. Or consulting. Or law, apparently.)

And lastly, I don't know if I just forgot this about Suits, or the show has evolved in seasons 5 to 7, but man, are these characters flakes or what?!

"I quit!" "Okay I don't!"
"I need you to leave this firm!" "No, please stay!"
"I want to work at a clinic!" "No I want to work at the firm!"
"Let's get married tomorrow!" "Let's wait to plan the wedding we've dreamed of!" "We don't have time to get married!"

MAKE UP YOUR MINDS, PEOPLE. AND STICK TO IT.

Have they ever taken a decision that they didn't change their minds about five minutes later? I get whiplash from every single episode I watch on much back and forth they do. They really are the flakiest characters I have ever seen. Makes me feel much better about my constant waffling over things.

Good show, though. I need to figure out how to watch the new season once I'm done with my catching up.

On the little things

The last few months have seen big changes - a new job, a new city, a trip home. It sometimes all still feels a little unreal. And while I could, and should, write an entire post on those changes, it's a little easier to, right now, write about the little things** - because, let's face it, the little things is what I spend most of my time choosing to obsess about anyway.

I broke my nail last week, while moving cubes. On the thumb of my right hand, which, as it turns out, I use a lot more than I had realised. More than anything else, I use it a gazillion times a day to do a fingerprint unlock of my phone. So on top of being utterly painful, when I bandaged it for a day to stop the nail from straight up peeling off, I had to keep remembering to use my left hand to unlock my phone - always fun when you're carrying half a dozen things and walking and trying to do everything at the same time.

Can I tell you the best thing about the new laptop they gave me at work? It has this functionality where, if I have it set to mute, it automatically turns the volume back on if I plug in earphones, or connect a bluetooth headset. And then when I disconnect or unplug those, it automatically goes back on mute. As someone who usually has Coke Studio playing on YouTube, this is amazing. Also as someone who previously had a work laptop that was possessed by ghosts, and would on any given day throw a temper tantrum and decide whether or not it wanted to connect to the Internet while either docked or undocked (but never both), this is a level of technology at work that is blowing my mind.

The new workplace also has a furniture surplus room - you can go look at what they have, select whatever is unclaimed, and they'll bring it to your cube. When I was finally given a new cube two weeks ago, I went to see if they had the same kind of tall cabinet a coworker had, because it has plenty of drawers, and even a coat hanging cupboard. They did not have it at the time, so I just picked something else. I went back there yesterday, accompanying a coworker who needed to go, and as we walked in, they were unloading a cabinet exactly like the one I wanted. I claimed it immediately, and they came and swapped out cabinets for me this morning.

I'm telling y'all, it's the little things.

**NOT the web series that has become a Netflix show, even though I'm told I should watch it because it's cute, so at some point I probably should, especially since I am a huge fan of What the Folks, that was made by the same people.

On the way I speak

When the brother moved to Boston for college, now more than a decade ago, it took us a while to realise that he had developed an American accent, because for some reason, his accent appeared only when he spoke with Americans. I think the first time we all collectively realised it was when some of his college friends came to stay with us one summer, and we suddenly realised he sounded very different while speaking to them than when he spoke with us.

Some months after that, I was on the phone with him after he was back in Boston. A friend asked him something, so he turned to them to respond, and I could hear the accent creep back in. I teased him when he came back on the phone, and I remember him exclaiming, "dammit, I thought I was talking in my Indian voice tonight!"

When I moved to the US, I would periodically ask folks back at home if I had an accent yet, and was always assured I did not. I knew that even before I moved here I had a more anglicized way of speaking than perhaps the average Indian, so I always hoped that I wouldn't develop much of an accent and just continue to speak the same way.

My hopes were dashed the week before my graduation. My parents and brother had come to attend my graduation, and a couple of days after they arrived, I was on the phone with a friend. Midway through the call, she suddenly laughed and said, "you sound so much more Indian now that your family's here." When I ended the call, my father suddenly commented, "well, you had a definite twang while talking to her."

Needless to say, I was very confused.

I moved to Texas after graduation, and despite my ex-boss's warning to not develop a Texan accent, the word y'all entered my vocabulary very quickly. About a year after I moved here, I was talking about a former coworker, and found myself saying "bless her heart, but..." completely unironically, and knew it was too late.

My American coworkers now all laugh at how my voice organically becomes "more Indian" when talking to South Asian coworkers (there really are several). One particular coworker, who I do not like at all, has always been very blatant about eavesdropping on all conversations that go on around him, and once had the actual audacity to complain that he couldn't understand what me and another coworker were saying whenever we were talking, regardless of whether we spoke in English and Hindi, because our accents became "too Indian" for him to follow from his cube. I of course made sure all subsequent conversations were always in Hindi.

But just like my brother didn't all those years ago, I don't usually realise whether I'm sounding "more Indian" or "more American". Recently though, that changed.

I am currently the product owner for the business teams for a large IT project. I've only been trying to get this project funded and kicked off since I joined this team four years ago, and now that it finally seems to be happening, it is consuming all my hours at work. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, a lot of the folks from IT working on this project happen to be Indian. I'm very often in a meeting room full of Indians, with only one or two non-Indians, and sometimes have to pause the conversation to remind people that just because I look like this does not mean I understand any of what they're saying and can they please break it down for me in layman's terms for the love of God.

Last week, one particular meeting had me, two architects from two different teams, and my lead developer - all of us Indian - in the room with our IT Program Manager, and my teammate from the business, neither of whom are Indian. The latter two were not really speaking much during the discussion, and given the topics of discussion, I was being... animate.

And suddenly, I could hear myself clearly. During a lull in the conversation, I IM'd my teammate: "I can feel my accent being extra Indian in this meeting."

I promptly got two IMs in rapid succession:

HAHAHAHHA
yea girl i can hear it

In fairness, the girl is 25.

But yes, my accent now flips between being Indian and American, and occasionally, depending on how emotional I am about a topic, Southern as well apparently.

Can we just not

You guys, I would just like to say, enough is enough. I have had periods of nonstop injury and/or illness in the past, documented here and here. But these last few months have really taken it to a whole new level. Because it's really never been so prolonged.

It started with the allergies. Which eventually got so bad that two days after irritatedly telling my mother she shouldn't fuss and there was no need to come to me, I called her and tearfully asked if she could come. Except she hadn't bothered telling me that she was unwell, and as a result, by the time she eventually did come, I was much better, and close to finding out the cause of my allergies.

Which, as it turned out, were two things. Shellfish. And nickel. SHELLFISH AND NICKEL. Shellfish, which includes every kind of seafood I like. And nickel, which apparently is present in most costume jewelry. SHELLFISH AND NICKEL. What is even the point of life anymore I don't know.

Look at her earrings, you guys.

But. Moving on.

Then, on one of my weekend trips soon after my mother left, I managed to sprain my back, which knocked the wind out of me for almost a week. During said week I was also travelling for work, so of course that was fun.

The weekend after that, I was at a friend's place and scraped my shin against the steps to her pool, and then ended up with a cold and cough, that persisted all week till I left for vacation.

Said vacation, thank the lords, was relatively uneventful. If you discount the teensy weensy car accident we had where we jerked our necks a bit but were fine by the next day. The poor car, of course, wasn't, but we were, so we're ignoring this incident.

Amidst all of this of course is the fact that it is summer and all the insects in the world are heading straight to me, and so I have bites and scabs popping up all over my feet and arms.

And then, yesterday, in a truly spectacular fashion, I managed to top my entire summer's worth of illness and injury.

I had an offsite meeting in the morning, and had just about managed to find a parking spot. I was walking into the building with a coworker, carrying, as is usual with me, one bulging purse weighing twenty pounds (or so my coworker later claimed), one tiny suitcase, and a ceramic carry mug with tea in it. And somehow, as we were crossing the street leading to the building, my right foot twisted, I teetered for about 10 seconds trying to regain balance, and eventually just went down FLAT on my face, sprawled in the middle of the road. And of course it was the one day when I had actually checked the weather, seen it was going to be 107F/42C, and decided to wear a dress. So there I was, doing sashtang pranam in the middle of the road, with tea that had splashed all over my face and hair, and two scraped and bloody knees.

Are scraped knees really supposed to be this painful? Because here I am, 36 hours later, still not being able to sit comfortably, or take the stairs easily, and texting my local friend circle to see who has salwars they can lend me for the next week, because I definitely need the loosest clothing possible till this blessed scab goes away.

So, all in all, 2018 is not going very well so far (if you discount the fantastic vacations, that is). And if I could just go at least the rest of the month, if not year, without any further ridiculous or traumatic incident, that would be great. Because I'm really tired of walking into places and have people go, "oh yeah, I heard that happened to you... how you doing?"

Where we realise what a makeup addict we have become

"Is something... going on with your eyes?"

"Yes. Yes there is."

This was a conversation I had yesterday with a coworker while heating up my rajma chawal for lunch. And then later in the afternoon, I met a friend who hadn't seen me in a while, who shrieked  and said: "What happened to you?!"

Because, clearly, the people who do see me every day are too nice to tell me how bad I really look. But yes, the area around my eyes currently looks like what the internet tells me is called a sharpei dog.

Which, let's be honest, is a lot better than I did two weeks ago, which was basically exactly how Harry looked after they were captured by the Snatchers and Hermione jinxed him.

Except I couldn't open either eye at the time.

We can get into what exactly happened to cause all of this at another time, but right now, can I just say, for someone who used to put no makeup other than eyeliner till about two years ago, when exactly did makeup become so important to me?

This entire allergy nonsense started over a weekend. The first Monday after it started, I took photos of what I was looking like before and after I put makeup, and man, have I become really good at applying makeup. Of course, by the next day, my face was so swollen that no amount of makeup was going to do any good, but that one day, I was so freakin' proud of my skills.

For two weeks now, I've been banned from makeup. I get the need to avoid it for now, but when you look the way I currently do, and you're not allowed to put anything that would hide it, it really does do something to your self-esteem.

I've been rebelling a little - I'm still using mascara and perfume (I'd put eyeliner too, but that's kinda hard to do when you can't find your eyeline). Neither of those things is making me look any better, but they make me feel better.

The good news is, we seem to be getting closer to figuring out what may have caused this (and I am not happy about the findings, but that's yet another rant for another day). And so when I cautiously asked this afternoon if I can start applying makeup again, I was told I can "start testing it out and see what happens".

So hopefully, tomorrow when I walk into work, I'll be looking less zombie-like, and see fewer people stop in their tracks when they see me, and then quickly glance away politely.

Gah.

Where I get a bit cranky

Someone once told me "I don't have a problem with where I am with my career when I just look at my job, and how I feel about it. It's when I start looking around at my peers or people I started with that I get angsty."

I am realising the truth of this more and more everyday.

Who you end up working for matters a great deal. I wish I had realised how much it mattered when I was looking at roles. There are managers you get along great with, there are managers you learn a great deal from, and there are managers who genuinely care about your career and your growth. That last factor is something I never gave any consideration to, and that's where I'm feeling increasing resentment these days.

But it's unfair to blame everything on external factors too. Because I suck at networking, at schmoozing, and keeping up with people because they might be useful to me some day. Heck, I suck at keeping in touch with people I do like and love, so clearly people I don't know or like far lower on the totem pole.

If I didn't love my job so much, I would really hate the fact that I seem to be in a bit of dead end in terms of my career, mostly of my own making.

Sigh.

We may have to prepone that

I can't remember how old I was when this happened, but at some point in my childhood, the father came home and asked me, "Did you know prepone isn't a real word?!" Shock and awe was felt.


Turns out, he was interacting with a Japanese company at the time, and in the pre-Google days, they would take to the Oxford dictionary to make sure they understand every word of English written by the Indians. The word prepone, as it happens, was not listed in the dictionary. It was a perfectly appropriate word Indians had invented, which, in the decades since that conversation with my father has in fact been added to the Oxford Dictionary. Mirriam-Webster, on the other hand, still considers it a word they're "watching." And Blogger's spellcheck clearly doesn't recognise it.

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I have an American coworker who has worked in and with too many countries for his own good. He speaks Spanish fluently, and has huge German and Portuguese dictionaries sitting on his desk. He once spent several months in India on a project, and has opinions on several things about India as a result.


He sits close to my desk, and is able to hear a lot of my conversations at work, and observations about them frequently ensue (a favour I equally frequently return). He'll comment on how my voice automatically sounds more Indian if I'm talking to someone from the subcontinent, he'll chuckle at the first hint of a turn of phrase I might use that may not be native to the US (did y'all know "cribbing" is not a word Americans use?! They say grumbling, it seems), he finds it hilarious that Indian Standard Time has "that whole 30 minute thing going on" (so what if his country has half a dozen time zones, and an incomprehensible Daylight Savings thing that some states don't even follow), and he loves to talk about the words Indians have invented. Like prepone.


So this morning, I was on a conference call. I stayed on mute for the most part, but had a 30 second update to provide in the middle. As I finished my update, and went back on mute, he suddenly piped up.

You had the perfect opportunity to use the word prepone and you squandered it!

What? What did I say?

Didn't you just say you may have to move up something?

Yes, but...

Why would you not say prepone? This was the perfect time to use it and spread the use of the word!

I didn't think of...

You're becoming too American in the way you speak, that's what the problem is.

*gasp* I am not!

Maybe I am, y'all. This is very sad.
 

Work conversations

"Finance is just raping me these days."

"Don't use that word like that."

"But that's literally how bad it is."

"No, I object to that word being used in that context."

"Huh. Okay."

2 AM ramblings

I am having one of my periodic nights of insomnia, so bear with my ramblings, 'kay?

When I was in school (like, school school, not college school, or grad school school), exam time meant my shoulder would hurt. Without fail. And this continued through college and grad school. Pain in my shoulder then started popping up anytime I had an admissions or job interview. And once I started working, whenever the job got particularly stressful. Often times, the pain would start before I even consciously realised I was stressed.

Over the years, this pain has faithfully waited in the shadows, turning up whenever I've been stressed about something, usually job-related, and very often before I even realise I'm stressing. There will be things going on, and I will think I'm dealing with them just fine, and suddenly I'll feel a sharp stabbing pain in either my shoulder or my elbow that'll make me think, huh, maybe I'm not dealing with it so well after all.

There is a part of me that sometimes wonders if my first job has set me up for disappointment in anything I do for the rest of my life.

There were a lot of problems with my first job - learning to work with somewhat eccentric people, extremely annoying coworkers who, well, annoyed me, no career growth prospects (because where do you go in a 15 person company?). But I loved what I did. I was passionate about it. And I was bloody good at it. And my bosses put more value in the "depth" a person had, more than anything else. And they were incredibly, incredibly supportive of my plans for myself.

They pushed me to start planning to go for my MBA, rather than just dreaming about it. They gave me the time off I needed, the support and experience I needed, and resources I needed. They prodded at me till I got to the next phase of my life, irrespective of what that meant for the firm.

And I think that's what spoiled me. In future phases of my life, I've seen less and less emphasis on depth, and more on showmanship. I see less of helping each other progress, and more of how does this benefit me.

And I think that's why I've been feeling sharp jabs of pain in my elbow when starting the drive to work for the past several weeks.

I once asked them what they meant by depth. And I left that conversation feeling like I didn't understand what they meant any more than I had at the beginning of that conversation. But in the years since, I think I've come to understand what they meant.

I don't think they ever watched The West Wing, but I think they'd agree with Sam Seaborn here.

AINSLEY: [turning to look at him] Does it concern you that the smartest Presidents have been the worst?
SAM: I don't grant your premise, but...
AINSLEY: John Quincy Adams was so full of himself, he could hardly build a coalition around having eggs for breakfast. How many grand theories of international relations did Wilson come up with that were dead on the arrival in Congress?
SAM: I don't care.
AINSLEY: Why?
SAM: Because before I look for anything, I look for a mind at work. Nobody's saying the President needs to have a tenured chair in semiotics, but you have to have...
AINSLEY: What?
SAM: Gravitas.
AINSLEY: [leaning forward] And how do you measure that?
SAM: You don't, but we know it when we see it, and Republicans tend to mock it when they do. You think I'm wrong?
AINSLEY: I do not.
SAM: No you don't, and the way I know you don't is I saw you say so on television. 

Of the week that was, #2

My week in recap:

• Found out a very dear friend is getting a divorce.
• Went on a work trip to New York which included having to watch a baseball game, excellent kathi rolls, and a couple of completely pointless meetings. 
• Lost a ring, which my mother had "lent" me a few years ago and I had never returned, somewhere in New York. I still don't know how it went missing, because unlike other jewelry I own and lose from time to time, I never take this ring off unless I'm at home. And it wasn't loose for me, so I don't see how it could have just slipped off my finger. The hotel tells me they haven't found it, and I haven't seen in it the bags I took, so there we are.
• Got back to the office on Thursday to deal with a crapfest that had been threatening to hit us for weeks and finally did. I spent the last two days dealing with nothing but said crapfest, and anticipate continuing to do so for the next several days, if not weeks.
• And then Friday ended with an email coming in that has given me a sliver of hope for something I had completely given up hope for, but I suspect I shouldn't really raise my hopes anyway because I think this is being done just for the sake of appearances.

On that vague note, I should now go and try to see if I can figure out why my washing machine is leaking every time I run it. Because putting it off for weeks means I really have no clean clothes left.

On democracy

A conversation at lunch, a few weeks ago. Three Indians, one American.



Indian #1: What are you people doing? Trump actually became the nominee!

American: Yeah, I don't know what people are doing!

Indian #1: You need to get it together.

American: I have it together. Politically, that is. My personal life is a bit of a mess. My point is, I'm voting the other way!

Indian #2: But, there has to be some safeguard, right? Don't you people have some safeguards? To prevent such a crazy person actually winning?

American: You would think.

Indian #2: I mean, what if a mass murderer decided to suddenly run for President? Would you let him?

Indians #1 and #3 turn to Indian #2.

Indian #3: You do realize...

Indian #2: Yeah, I just realized what I said. Okay, never mind.
Indian #3: Because this is democracy.

*******************************

Here's my thing, okay? When general elections in India happened in 2014, I was vocally, and consistently, against the BJP. We all knew they would be coming to power, and Modi would end up Prime Minister, but a part of me held out hope that it wouldn't happen, and wanted to bash my head against the wall when it did.


But my thing? Is this. I could see why people supported the BJP, and voted them to power. Because the alternative sucked. I didn't agree with it, because even though the alternatives sucked, I didn't think voting the BJP to power was a good idea. Two years later, my opinion hasn't changed much. I still don't see a viable alternative, but I still don't see the BJP as a good idea. But I see why others do, or did.


They seemed less corrupt. They talked of "achhe din" and all the progress they would bring. The social side of them, which is the scary as hell side of them, was ignored for the idea of all the economic development that people thought would come. And since social stands are more important to me than economic stands, very obviously I was in the minority (not that I was able to vote, but still).


So here's my thing. I don't get the Presidential election campaign going on in the US right now. I haven't got it for the past year. I don't see how, or why, the Republican primaries have gone the way they did. I don't see how this country can choose the Presidential candidate they have.


Again, in my view, if you are a Republican, your choices were, granted, all horryifying to me. But not to you, surely? So the fact that Trump is the candidate they went with, out of the 11 options (or more?) they started out with, is something I am not able to fathom. At all.


I'm so very terrified for November.

On sports I know nothing about, and employee morale

I'm the first to admit I know nothing about any sport that is not cricket - and there too, interest has dwindled over time. If it wasn't for Google Now's helpful alerts that we're losing another match to Australia or Sri Lanka, I wouldn't even know we're playing any more.


So usually, when I see any headlines or tweets that appear to be related to sports, I ignore them, apart from the occasional wondering which sport they're talking about. But there's one type of sports-related headline/tweet that tends to make me think a little more.


I saw a tweet just now that some team is open to trading one or more of its players - and I think the players were named, but I'm not sure. I also think the sport in question was basketball, but again, I'm not sure. Let's just say there a lot of words that I did not recognize in that tweet.


AnyWAY. The thing I always wonder is, what do announcements like this do for player morale? To have the world know the team you play for is willing to let you go so that it can find someone who might do better than you? I mean, I'm sure very often the players are willing to be traded as well, and I'm sure there's plenty of money involved to make them happy-ish about the trade, but... still. Doesn't it create some kind of awkwardness and/or tension among players?


Can you imagine this happening in any other type of job? To come into work and see a company-wide or department-wide email from your manager saying they're perfectly happy to be rid of you if another manager offers them someone better from their team in exchange? (This may or may not be something I have occasional nightmares about.) As someone who worked in HR in a previous lifetime, I'm not sure I would recommend this.


It just... makes me wonder. Y'know?

Beginnings and endings

It's shaping up to be a strange, strange weekend.

I'm not a parent. I don't foresee becoming a parent anytime soon, and contrary to the beliefs of everyone around me who likes to tell me I don't really mean this, I'm totally and absolutely okay with that. Because God forbid I should know how I feel about parenthood.

Two weeks ago, I got to work, parked the car, and checked my email. I usually have my phone mounted on the dashboard, and glance at messages as they come in during my drive to work; that day, for some reason that I can't recall, I had chosen not to. So I checked my email as I was getting out of my car, and I see a note from my manager that my team mate's son had died the previous night.

Today was his memorial service. And as I sat there, surrounded by my coworkers, including my manager and VP, mothers all, hearing them weep silently as the priest spoke of the loss of a child, something I've always believed was reinforced even more - I may not be a parent, but I don't think there can be nothing tougher than having to deal with the death of your child.

Tomorrow, I'm hosting a baby shower for a friend. I'm the only unmarried woman in my current social circle, but somehow I've ended up being in charge of this shower. Organizing this shower has created a good deal of stress over the past couple of weeks, because despite having studied and worked in women-only environments for close to a decade, I've never quite got used to just how utterly bitchy women can be. And some of the women who are helping and attending the shower tomorrow have been stark reminders.

But my friend is having a son in a few months, and that needs to be celebrated, even as my team mate mourns the loss of his. And so it's shaping up to be a strange, strange weekend.

Pieces of me

I have these nights, occasionally, when I don't get sleep all night. They used to happen only when I went home to India and was jetlagged - I always had that one night of staying up. But over the last year or so, they've happened a few times for no discernible reason.

It happened again last Sunday. I'd been lazy all weekend, and done close to nothing productive. I needed to get up early on Monday because I had folks coming to look at something in the apartment before I left for work, and I had an event to go to Monday evening that I knew I'd be coming back from fairly late. And there I was Sunday night, trying to sleep, but more alert and awake than I had been all weekend.

Someone asked me, when I told them about this, if it was because I was stressed about something. I don't think so, was my response. There's nothing I can think of that's stressing me out at the moment, and if there was something in my subconscious, chances are my should would have informed me by beginning to ache. So, I don't think so.

*************

I don't know when I turned into this movies-based-on-comic books fangirl. I've never read a comic book in my life, but I now watch every single Marvel or DC based TV show that is currently on air (except Gotham, because that show bored the heck out of me). And I just read the first review of the Avengers movie that is releasing next week, and it's got me so ridiculously excited that I need to tell the world about it. When did this happen to me?

(On thinking about it a little more, I think we can all agree to blame the brother for this. Pretty sure it all started when he dragged to watch The Dark Knight.)

*************

I have a Bangladeshi coworker who sits one cube over. A mutual friend introduced us soon after we both moved into our current department, with the words "just wanted to you both to know of each other, in case you were planning to say things in Bengali hoping no one else would understand." Very kind of him, I have to say.

So, this coworker. Conversations with her are quite straightforward and fun, and she has a fairly matter of fact way of talking. So it entertains me no end that occasionally, I'll hear her on the phone, talking in Bengali, either to her husband or parents or some other relatives, and the sheer whininess that creeps into her tone is simply amazing. It's in our blood, you guys.

*************

Along with priority and my own name at the end of an email, I think we can add occasionally to the list of words I can never spell correctly on the first go. I've spelt it incorrectly every single time in this post (which also tells me I use it fairly often).

Halka Aunty style

One of the nicest things about the company I work for is that, for the most part, they really don't care how you dress. We moved to a casual dress code a while back, and so as long as you're not meeting customers or external partners (or y'know, working in Finance), it's jeans and a sweatshirt every single day if you want.

And since it's a company with a very internationally diverse employee base, which includes a large number of Indians - especially, and this is fact, on the floors IT sits on - I could honestly wear a salwar kameez every day if I wanted to. I've done it occasionally over the past year or so, especially on festivals and such, and it's nice to be able to do that.

So this morning, after getting dressed and ready to leave for work fairly early for a change, I started running over the things I need to do, and realized I need to call the grandmother for nobo borsho - the Bengali New Year - as well as the parents, and probably send the brother a text that he should call them as well (which, now that I think of it, I didn't end up doing). And in all that mental processing, I decided what the heck, let's wear Indian today. And so I pulled out the new white kurta and orange dupatta I had bought a few weeks ago (along with green leggings, in the hope of wearing this outfit for one of the World Cup matches), and wore them with my black jeans. And it struck me, all over again, how much I miss wearing salwar kameezes and dupattas. My fabulous dupattas, mostly.

And since this blog seems to be big on random memories and anecdotes lately, here's one that came to me today. The dupatta I chose to wear today is one of those silky ones that keep slipping off. However, the kurta has embroidery similar to Lucknow-i chikankari, so I decided to wear the dupatta long, over just one shoulder, because that was keeping it in place. And it reminded me of a friend my mother had, back when I was a kid. This lady - Alka Aunty - always wore her dupattas over one shoulder. She was the only lady I knew who wore them that way, and it fascinated me, probably because she was the only one who wore them that way in Chandigarh as far as I could tell. And so when I pretended to dress up, I would wear them the same way, and say I was wearing them "Halka Aunty style" - because apparently at the age of 5, I couldn't say her name properly.

She moved away years ago, and I have no idea where she is today. But it was fun today, wearing a dupatta "Halka Aunty style".

Where my subconscious starts acting up

There have been weird dreams lately.

Two nights ago, when I had only 90 minutes to sleep between the heartbreaking end of a match, and y'know, work, I dreamt nonstop about the call I had to get on half an hour after waking up, and how everything on the call was going wrong and it was all my fault.

Which is weird because though things have been stressful at work lately, I thought I've become the sort of person who leaves work at work. Once I'm home, I'm not really thinking about it. Clearly my subconscious believes otherwise.

Then last night. Slept relatively earlyish, although not as early as I would have liked to. I knew I had calls starting super early this morning, but I also knew colleagues were working through the night and sending status updates, so I kept waking up and reading emails. So again, clearly not as switched off as I like to think.

But in between those periods of being awake, the dreams. But first, a side bar. I've been getting used to the new apartment, and one of the things to get used to is that there is an attached garage for my car, and a door to enter the apartment through the garage - one of the main reasons I was sold on this apartment, to be honest. Now because of this garage door, the main entrance to the apartment is hardly ever used. It took me three days to realize a package had been left outside my front door, because I never checked. And then the other day, I came home and knew I had to leave again in 15 minutes, so I parked outside the garage and tried to enter through the front door. Only to realize that my paranoia of keeping both locks on the door locked ever since getting robbed some years ago meant I couldn't open the door from outside. So I went in through the garage, and then left ten minutes later through the front door. Only when I came back two hours later, and this time parked in the garage and therefore tried to enter through the garage door, I couldn't, because paranoia meant I had double locked the garage door this time.

I would like take a moment here to publicly apologize to the mother for rolling my eyes every time she talked about how many doors she has keep track of and make sure are locked in her house, since I clearly can't manage even two. Which does not mean I won't roll my eyes in the future.

End side bar.

So the dreams last night. I dreamt I was leaving the apartment through the front door, and as I was locking up, some woman who I didn't recognize but who in the dream seemed to be some sort of nemesis of mine bumped into me and we had... words. When I come back some hours later, I enter my apartment to find every piece of furniture I own has been stolen, and I'm left with nothing. So the conclusion is she stole my key when we had our altercation and so I go to the police station which is nothing like any police station I've ever seen because it's so pretty and for some reason this nemesis of mine is already there and we have words again, and then suddenly, there is time travel and I'm back at the exact moment I was locking my apartment door that morning. Cut to later when I'm telling someone how this time, I knew she was waiting to bump into me and steal my key so I made sure that didn't happen (how, I have no idea). Cut to that evening when I come home and everything is in its place so yay time travel.

And then I woke up because the father was calling to make sure I was up for the first of my early morning calls.

So... the important question here is - is the past tense of dream dreamt? Or dreamed?

A dash of self-analysis

The last few weeks have been somewhat... stressful. A variety of things has happened, most of which I can't get into the details of**, that pushed me to the point of completely shutting down and going into a funk last weekend, till finally a few conversations with two or three dear souls got me out of it.

What I realised over this period, however, is just how much my upbringing, for lack of a better word, has influenced the person I am, for better or for worse.

Both the parents, especially the father, are incredibly private people. They've never liked the world knowing what's going on in our lives. It's our problem, we deal with it. And some of that has rubbed off on me. I have never been able to call a friend and say, this is going on, I need your help or even just talk about it. It takes me ages to reach out to anyone for even the smallest bit of help. And the problem is, being this way completely conflicts with the person I am, who, well, talks a lot, quite frankly. And who needs to tell people what's going on.

So there's always this urge to tell friends back home what I'm stressed about, but at the same time there's also this hesitation because, well, I can't. Or shouldn't. Sometimes I rationalize it by telling myself they're busy anyway. Or stressed about things themselves. Or don't want to hear me keep whining about things. But all makes for a fair amount of misery. And loneliness.

And then sometimes it all gets too much and I send frantic, misery-filled emails to people. Or furiously and/or tearfully type out a huge rant on Gtalk. Or just call and pour it all out. And always feel so much better. And wonder why I didn't earlier.

The other thing the parents have always drilled into me is that you really can't ever take anything for granted. We were always fortunate, growing up, that we never really lacked for anything we wanted. If the parents had to figure out ways to give us all of that, they never let on. But they always reminded us that a lot of what we had was thanks to the father's job, and you never knew what could happen when.

So when I started working, while there was no doubt in anyone's mind (particularly my mother's) that I could be extremely extravagant and impulsive with how I used my money, I also saved a fair amount. And frequently went into panic mode if I found my bank balance going below the magic number in my head that was the minimum I should always have. There was no rationale behind this number, and no amount of arguments presented by dad along the lines of how my investments also counted could make a difference. If the cash in my bank account was not a certain amount, I would be constantly palpitating.

And that continued when I came to the US. Despite living on student loans, I have by no means been the most frugal person around. But I make sure that there's always that minimum balance in the account. If not, I hit the panic button. Which usually involves calling the father and asking what I should do.

Among the various stressors of the past few weeks was the fact that there was a problem with my paperwork for the internship. And as a result, I hadn't been paid for nearly a month, despite the contract stating that I was to be paid every two weeks. And while this was troubling, it was a minor ripple compared to the tidal wave of everything else going on, because truth be told, I have enough savings at the moment to last me a while, if necessary.

At dinner with the other interns some days ago, it came up in the conversation that I hadn't been paid. And almost everyone's first reaction was to ask me if I was fine financially, or if I needed money. And I found it interesting that almost everyone at the table was completely startled when I assured them I was fine. I seemed to be the only one there who wasn't living from paycheck to paycheck.

When I would hear this from friends and colleagues back in India, I always assumed I was at an advantage because I lived with the parents and didn't have much in the way of household and living expenses. But here, as students - most of us international students, at that - I would have assumed we're all in a similar position. And it struck me, for possibly the first time, just how glad I was that I had been brought up the way I had.

**UPDATE: Two years later, I went into the details. Here.

Annual ramblings

I don't know how to write this post. I'm struggling to remember events from last year that meant something to me, but I can't. It's like, and I mentioned this at the end of my last post, that the first 7.5 months of 2011 simply didn't happen. Or belong to another life.

But so much did happen. And I want to get this post out there simply because I don't want those memories to disappear.

I knew, at the beginning of 2011, that one way or another, this year would bring changes to my life like never before. And so it was.

January was a flurry of travel, interview invites, application "dings", and what not. The cousin got married. Things in the workplace deteriorated to the point that I, for the first time in my life, started having panic attacks.

The grandmother fell and broke her leg and had to have surgery. I was sent to Kolkata on work so was able to go visit her. Said visit to Kolkata also showed me how the work culture of Bengal and how Bengalis are perceived by non-Bengalis, and while I could see what they meant, it saddened me. I may never choose to live in Bengal, but it's still where I belong. And it isn't nice to see how we ourselves are responsible for a lot of what had happened to the state.

February was rather dramatic. Some more dings came in, some interviews happened, some admissions also happened. The mother went to spend a month in Kolkata to take care of Mam. I went to spend a weekend with her, and had some craziness as soon as I got back, after which the father went to stay with her. Gave me a taste of living on my own; I wasn't too sure I liked it.

Work got even worse. A massive show down happened at work, after which I tried to resign, but got talked out of it by everyone around me. But given the calm feeling that came over me once I had decided, after all the panic attacks of the last couple of months, I knew I wasn't to last very long.

I turned 26 in March. Far less stressful than turning 25, for whatever reason. Sure, I'm old now, but it didn't bother me. As much. Maybe a little. Oh well. The mother decided to throw a birthday party for me, since this would probably be my last birthday at home. And when I say birthday party, I mean crazy shoes theme (which everyone but me took extremely seriously), back presents, balloons, all my closest friends with me, a "slumber party", CDs with random birthday songs playing all evening, etc. What can I say? My family takes birthdays very seriously.

March also brought the brother home during his Spring break, a visit I had known about since November, but which was a complete surprise to the parents. The best part about his visit? He was home, sitting next to me, the day the dream came true. I had refused to go on the annual office holiday, using his visit as an excuse. SO glad I did, because the admission news that really mattered came out the day my colleagues were leaving, and anyway, I would have missed the freaking World Cup if I had gone.

Geez. The World Cup. So much excitement. My biggest regret remains not being able to go see India play. I only went for the West Indies-South Africa match in Delhi, and that was just lame. But oh, the World Cup. What can I say about it that I haven't already? And how can I express my frustration at how we've played ever since? How sad is it that less than a year after that fabulous, fabulous win, I am *this* close to giving up on Indian cricket for the foreseeable future?

If the beginning of April was about the euphoria of the World Cup, end-April saw me really leaving the job. I put in my papers as soon as I knew I'd be leaving for the US in July, and I asked to be relieved by end-April so I could have time to get things done. In all fairness, they gave me a really sweet farewell, where I may have a said a bit too much, but managed to leave on fairly good terms with the people who mattered at any rate. What surprised me? Given what an obsessed workaholic I'd been for the last three years, I'd've thought I'd have missed the place a bit more once I left. But honestly? Zilch of that.

May was a rush to get things sorted, visa applications, travel bookings et al., and fit in a quick trip to Mumbai for a family function, where I sat surrounded by Calcuttans as they watched news channels breathlessly to see what the election results in West Bengal would be like. And then we left for the US to watch the brother graduate. Visited and fell in love with Boston, and followed that up with a visit to the godfather's home in London, and a loverly family holiday in Edinburgh, before we came back home.

June and July rushed by much faster than they should have. Preparing to leave home encompassed a thousand and one things, amidst all of which I had to make sure I could fit in a visit to Calcutta, get-togethers with friends, and time with the brother who was to leave for his job at the beginning of July. The gal pals, for the second time in my life, managed to put together a surprise party for me without me cottoning on. I'd make a terrible investigator type person. The father and I booked my tickets in a way that I would get to see Deathly Hallows 2, and so on 15th July, I saw movies in one day - DH-2, and ZNMD.

And then, despite all my attempts to stretch time as much as possible, the 19th of July arrived. And I let everything I had know for 26.5 years, and came here.

What do I say about the last 5.5 months of 2011? They've been stressful, crazy, exhilarating, exciting, and maddening all together. I've learnt so much - maybe not much academically, but about the person I am. I've started driving and cooking, discovered I'm more like the mother than I had ever realized, found out that I can be quite a pushover, and realized that I'm a complete hermit. I suck at networking, am absolutely incapable of enjoying myself at a party filled with loud music and flowing alcohol, love big cities and have no idea how to get a job.

I'm far more Indian than I had realized, I'm a lot more Bengali than I had ever imagined, and I am so utterly dependent on the father for any major decisions I take. The BFF is my lifeline no matter where I go in life, time zones suck because no one is ever awake when you have news to share, I hate marketing and love strategy, numbers and HR what really excite me in life, and grades do matter.

They killed GReader somewhere along the way in 2011, and I was more devastated than I had thought possible. Twitter is less of an addiction than I had assumed, and I have struggled to put together any worthwhile blog posts. The urge to write is there, but I simply can't anymore. Which is why this blog post has taken a month to be written, started in one way, and has ended so very differently.

Having the mother visit me for a month over winter break saved me in some ways, I think. Because it made me remember who I am, truth be told. I had lost myself while trying to adapt to this new country, this new life. Having someone from my old life here for a while was like having a totem with you when you enter a dream, in some ways. And I can already see the difference in me in the past two weeks since she left. I'm me again. In the way I talk, the way I interact with others, in the way I behave. And it's helping me cope.

So, 2012. What does it hold for me? I have no freaking idea. The last month has been utterly stressful with the job search taking precedence, and I have no idea if or when this will change. I really need to start saying no to people. I need to apply myself to studies a lot more. I need to hang out with the people I like, instead of shutting myself up at home and lurking on twitter. And I need to find a freaking job.

Here's hoping all, or most, of this happens.