Monday 6 October 2008

This is indeed how it happened…

"....God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can and the Wisdom to know the difference...."

These words are resonating in my head since I read it in the novel I am currently reading… It is quite a hilarious book by Jo Barrett and is titled This is how it happened. The story is narrated in first person and the protagonist is an average Jane – horizontally challenged, overweight woman in her 30’s. She is exceptionally talented but her biggest flaw is that she trusts the man she loves even when the alarm bells rang loud and clear… And in the end finds herself without a partner as well as the one dream she lived for – her business… And then she starts devising ways and means of getting even with her ex from rat poison to arsenic only to realise that the only “poison” that would surely “kill” him would be to aim for his ego… and she ultimately wins back what is rightfully hers…

This book although just a work of friction has really touched a nerve… In the entire book the protagonist has been portrayed as a very normal real life character who has her share of jealousy, envy and anger… I must say it’s a must read ….

Thursday 2 October 2008

What's in a name?

Today is one such day that I have been waiting for the past 2 months - a day that I am sitting idle officially - a day when my manager doesn’t try to peek into my computer screen to check how I am getting along. Oh! He means well… he isn’t prying… he doesn’t want to check whether I am on facebook or orkut rather than coding furiously to meet with the absolutely harebrained client's target... but let me not go into the tales of all clientele I get to work for… that will take an entire entry on its own… So where was I … Yes! A slow day… a day I have been craving since eternity… well that’s an exaggeration... but you get the point, isn’t it…

I spent the morning checking my mails every 2 seconds and snooping around in people’s scraps and photos when I gave up… I am really not interested in knowing about A and B’s vacations and aspirations… and it seemed what a waste of time and space… Slowly it seeped in that the only person who will mail me (read reply to all my mails with an “OK”) is my loving (!), faithful better half… other than him I am really not that popular and don’t have enough fan mails to keep me busy replying back for the entire 8 working hours …

After this light bulb moment, I tried channelizing my energy to something constructive namely refreshing my technical skills… As predicted I found myself very soon blog-hopping and then got the unsurpassed idea of creating my very own blog...

I went through a couple of blog-creating blogs and realised creating a blog is the easy bit... giving its uniqueness and flavour is the difficult bit… However, for the person I am I faced the stumbling block right at the first step... I could not come up with a nice, crispy eye-catching blog name... after a lot of thought (in my case abt 2 sec cos that’s my average attention span)... I decided to name my blog Pink-collared Workers… The actual meaning of the idiom according to the ever so famous Wikipedia means

“… works in a job that is considered traditionally female (these traditions generally harking back to the first half of the twentieth century)…”

I consider myself a pink- collared worker… not that my day job is “traditionally” female… but doesn’t the female population of the world who have a family of their own want to be viewed as the Super-Moms capable of managing all – house, office , kids and husband. We are never late for work (just don’t check my attendance register!) … have hot (burnt) and yummy (ya right!) meals ready at meal times - oh and don’t forget it will always be nutritious as well keeping in mind the 5 a day basics ... we do all the laundry and never ever forget a single errant red sock with the whites … have all the bills paid in time and never forget a dentist appointment… and at the end of the day, when our angels are off to sleep we still have time to write the letter to dear mom and sign a card to Grandaunt Sheila with the hope that on her death she will bequeath all her money to me…

Well....dreams, dreams and some more….!!!