Survival at work

Survival at work

• Never walk without a document in your hands
• People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings.
• People with nothing in their in their hands look like they’re heading for cafeteria.
• People with a newspaper in their hand look like they’re heading for the toilet.
• Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours then you do.

Use computers to look busy

• Any time you use a computer, it looks like “work” to the casual observer.
• You can send and receive personal e-mail, chat and generally have a blast with doing anything remotely related to work.
• These aren’t exactly the societal benefits that the proponents of the computer revolution would like to talk about but they’re not bad either.
• When you get caught by boss – and you *will* get caught – your best defense is to claim you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training Rupees.

Messy desk

• Top management can get away with a clean desk. For rest of us, it looks like we’re not working enough.
• Build huge piles of documents around your workspace.
• To the observer, last year’s work looks the same as today’s work; it volume that counts pile them high and wide.
• If you know somebody is coming to your cubical, bury the document you’ll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.

Voice Mail

• Never answers your phone if you have voice mail.
• People don’t call you just because they want to give you something for nothing – they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM.
• That’s no way to live.
• Screen all your calls through voice mail.
• If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they’re not there- it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious even you’re being a devious weasel.

Looking Impatient and Annoyed

• One should also always try to look impatient and annoyed to give your bosses the impression that you are always busy.

Leave the office late

• Always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around.
• You could read magazines and storybooks that you always wanted to read but have no time until late before leaving. Make sure you walk past the boss’ room on your way out. Send important emails at unearthly hours (e.g. 2:00PM, 4:50PM etc.) and during public holidays.

Creative Sighing for Effect

• Sigh loudly when there are many people around, giving the impression that you are under extreme pressure.

Stacking Strategy

• It not enough to pile lots of documents on the table, put lots of books on the floor etc. (Thick computer manuals are the best.)

Build Vocabulary

• Read up on some computer magazines and pick out all the jargon and new products. Use the phrases freely when in conversation with bosses. Remember. They don’t have to understand what you say, but you sure sound impressive.

Most Important!!!

• Don’t forward this email to your boss by mistake!!

A letter to son from mother

Dear Beta

I am in a well here and hoping you are in the same well there. I’m writing this letter slowly, because I know you cannot read fast.

We don’t live where we did when you left home. Your dad read in the newspaper that most accidents happen 20 miles from home, so we moved 20 miles.

I wont be able to send the address as the last Sardar who stayed here took the house numbers with them for their new house so they would not have to change their address. Hopefully by next week we will be able to bring our earlier address plate here, so that our address will remain same too.

This place is really nice. It even has a washing machine, situated right above the commode. I’m not sure it works. Last week I put in 3 shirts, pulled the chain and haven’t seen them since.

The weather here isn’t too bad. It rained only twice last week. The first time it rained for 3 days and second time for 4 days.

The coat you wanted me to send you, your Aunt said it would be a little too heavy to send in the mail with all the metal buttons, so we cut them off and put them in the pocket.

Your father has another job. He has 500 men under him. He is cutting the grass at the cemetery.

By the way I took Bahu to our club’s poolside. The manager is really badmash. He told her that two-piece swimming suit is not allowed in this club. We were confused as to which piece should we remove?

Your sister had a baby this morning. I haven’t found out whether it is a girl or a boy, so I don’t know whether you are an Aunt or Uncle.

Your uncle, Jetinder fell in a nearby well. Some men tried to pull him out, but he fought them off bravely and drowned. We cremated him and he burned for three days.

Your best friend, Balwinder, is no more. He died trying to fulfill his father’s last wishes. His father had wished to be buried at sea after he died. And your friend died while in the process of digging a grave for his father.

There isn’t much more news this time. Nothing much has happened.

P.S: Beta, I was going to send you some money but by the time I realized, I had already sealed off this letter.

TO HIS COY MISTRESS - By Andrew Marvell

"TO HIS COY MISTRESS"
[Analysis - NO or YES.]

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.

[A woman (more or less young), is the object of this older gentleman's eye. She could be a coquette, one who uses arts to gain the admiration and the affections of men, merely for the gratification of vanity or from a desire of conquest; and, without any intention of responding to the feelings aroused in her plaything. At any rate, it was more the convention in Marvel's day for a pretty woman when she found herself interacting with an available man, to display shyness or reserve or unwillingness, at least for the first little while.]

We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find: I by the tide

[Remember the times of the poet, in this case Marvel: circa 1650. England was beginning its era of great exploration and the discovery of the exotic east.]

Of Humber would complain, I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.

[These lines stumped me, until I received this e-mail from margaux: "... the flood referring to Noah a part belonging to the Genesis in the Bible. So he would love her since ever. And then he adds 'Till the conversion of the Jews' ... most Jews never have converted ... Those two religious references are just a way to tell her that he would love and praise her during a very very long time before getting into any kind of sexual intercourse with her, but ..." And another, "in your analysis of to his coy mistress: the flood part happened sometime after creation. The conversion of the jews is suppose to happen before Armageddon. That's the allusion that Andrew Marvell is using." Well, OK. So, there we have it.]

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow ;

["Vegetable love": What do you suppose Marvel meant by this? One of my correspondents wrote, "A vegetable comes from the vegetative part of a plant, as opposed to a fruit, which comes from the reproductive part." At any rate, their love for one and the other may well grow slowly, for what ever reason; but it is a growing thing: deep, complex and vast. A lover is devoted to the loving business of praising his or her lover and is endlessly fascinated with the body and general presence of the other: this is part of being in love.]

An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze ;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest ;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart ;

[Nice bit, "the last age should show your heart." I remember it being said, that once the heat of sexual passion subsides, as it always does, then -- one will be left with a blemished person and the best that can be hoped is that one is left with a beloved who tells the truth, who shuns sham, who has a heart.]

For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

[Sexually speaking our older lover could take things slowly with her; if that is what she wants, then, that, is what she should have; he is committed to the conquest, a conquest that can only come about as a result of him fully satisfying her; and, no doubt it is his goal to satisfy her, though it may take thousands of years; and, he would take pleasure throughout the long wait, if, if, only if, there is some prospect of sexual fulfillment. Now, take a breath, for, it is at this point that there appears the most dramatic shift in tempo that I have ever felt in a passage of poetry.]

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near ;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And you quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust :
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life :
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[I just do not have the heart to break into any of those last lines of Marvel's: they belong together and to be left uninterrupted, undisturbed. By God, this man wants this woman, this central focus point of his sexual passion. He cannot wait, he begs her not to put off sexual union. He eloquently points out that the cares of the moment do not much matter as time is slowly absorbing them both, as it does all things. Marvel displays in full glory his epicurean philosophy.]

By Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).
With analysis by Blupete.