Work on the go

We’re in 2023. At least I am. Not sure you are. Not sure if the world is.

In the age of ultra-, mega-, super-connectivity, I’m sitting in a local train trying to latch on to a cloud-hosted work document to finish something that I couldn’t finish at work. Yeah, unlike so many other days, I had a tight workday.

A tight workday basically means working through your shift with high levels of concentration. Also means giving yourself and your personal life not much importance during the workday. I suppose the corporate world would want more people to have more tight workdays, but I’m pretty darned sure that few people would want themselves to work tighter than they already are, which, in my opinion, is too tight.

Tangent: just realized that the word used for defining when you work seems to suggest that there would be variability, but in reality, it implies that there shouldn’t be variability. Ah, the irony of borrowed words for other purposes.

So I couldn’t find time to finish what I thought I should finish. Which is something that I feel perennially. And to make myself feel a little bit better, I try to extend my workdays at either end by making myself do more personal things during the work days. That is, a looser work day. Yeah, that does make me a loser because I’m someone who not only knows that what I’m doing is unhealthy, hell I even teach people at work to not do such stuff.

So, here I am, the loser, at the end of the tight workday, trying to make things looser by working beyond my shift. Because I feel better when I do this. A trait of losers, evidently.

The point that I’m trying to make, however, is that I’m on the go. Since the time I frustratingly stopped refreshing my browser, trying in vain load my cloud work document, and started typing this, I must have traveled about 15 kilometers. North to South on the Mumbai Suburban rail network. Flew (figuratively) from around the airport to the north of the original island. From the ‘burb to the ‘bay.

My reverse-faucet for accessing the internet is my phone, and Airtel, which promises a bunch of stuff including unparalleled connectivity across the nation, failed at a very basic 2023 task. Connectivity to the internet. That’s basic even in 2003 I would argue.

So the question is—are we really in 2023? Or is 2023 different for different people. Is my 2023 not the 2023 that was allocated to the place that I find myself in? And how is that fair? How is anything fair?

Tangent: Why the hell is fair, a racist word at best, used for implying that things are non biased toward anyone?

Drummer, the pariah

I have a new friend from New York. (What’s with me and the Big Apple?) Anyway, he’s a cultured, interesting, funny, intelligent ex-Texan with whom I vastly enjoy interacting with. Here's an example of the interesting things he comes up with. The other day, he came across the etymology of the word pariah.

pariah: 1610s, from Port. paria or directly from Tamil paraiyar, pl. of paraiyan “drummer” (at festivals, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India), from parai “large festival drum.” Especially numerous at Madras, where its members supplied most of the domestics in European service. Applied by Hindus and Europeans to members of any low Hindu caste and even to outcastes. Extended meaning “social outcast” is first attested 1819.

Why are drums associated with lowliness or disgrace? Is it because they are so basic, perhaps the first instrument ever made? Not only is the drummer himself an outcast, drums (not bugles) are used to heighten a soldier’s humiliation in a drumming out ceremony. The OED dates the first usage of “drumming out of the corps” to 1766 in Thomas Amory's “The Life of John Buncle,” 150 years after the first recorded use of pariah.

To explain why drummers were members of the lowest caste -- drumming was an occupation performed by the Dalit or untouchable caste because drums were made from the tanned hides of animals and thus once associated with death. Therefore, the task of beating on them fell to the Dalit caste, who also performed other “unclean” occupations having to do with death and human waste.

To round this post of:

Q: What is the definition of a band?
A: Three musicians and a drummer. (ba-da-boom!)

(Courtesy largely to Robert Geoffrey McMillin)

Working is fun

This is my first entry into this blog using Microsoft’s speech recognition system. I’m really not that tired after a long day at work, yet I feel lazy. I could have attempted to login and write something from my mobile phone when I was traveling back from work. But somehow I didn’t. I cannot explain why. Perhaps I wanted nothing to do with text after working at text all day in the office.

At the office though, it was fun working on an actual assignment. It was the first time that I had ever been given one! It really felt nice working on a scientific document rather than an exercise. I was intimidated by the set of guidelines that I was supposed to follow. It was almost as if the instructions were towering over me with phrases like 'do not forget' hovering like monsters.

But it was fun! I did not feel the hours fly past. I sat almost five hours at a stretch without even taking a break to go to the toilet. At the end of it all, I felt like I was over-editing the document. I guess I will learn from my mistakes. But I hope I don't make a lot of them.