One Week of Office
In the past ten days, I packed bags to leave my house twice. That is saying something, because of all the bonds that have strengthened over the month of lock down, the strongest one I formed has been with this rented apartment that I stay in. This space has given home to all my thoughts. It’s watched me jumping around ecstatically at times, and crawled up on the floor crying, at others.
The first time, I packed my bag in two minutes. It had been a lazy afternoon and I’d been frowning at my laptop screen when the fire alarm went off. Alarms irk me, even those designed to be soothing and gentle on one’s sleep. I don’t use alarms to wake up, the thought of interrupting good sleep itself mortifies me. So an alarm specifically designed to cut through one’s lethargy and signal evacuation was disturbing, to say the least. I packed my laptop, phone, notebook (yup!) and wallet inside my backpack. I criticized myself for not having yet organized my certificates and documents online yet. I locked the door, rushed down the stairs, taking a quick peek at every floor, looking for smoke or commotion.
Once I reached the lobby, I suddenly felt lost. There was not a soul outside. The milk man came, and a resident collected his milk packet. I remarked to him about the fire alarm, which had been going off repeatedly over the past half an hour interspersed with pauses. Will wait for confirmation on the WhatsApp group if there’s a need to evacuate, he said. I’d called up the building supervisor who’d said that he’d gotten help and was looking at the fire control panel. In an hour or so, they figured that a detector in the parking lot had gone off due to some circuitry issues. Meanwhile, I texted people, Googled up about emergency evacuation of buildings and felt useless in general.
The second time I had to pack to leave, it was slow and agonizing. I knew I didn’t wanna leave this flat where I’d grown so comfortable over the lock down, but circumstances alluded to the possibility of me having to shift somewhere for about a couple of weeks if I were to attend office. Twisted circumstances. I got mentally prepared to live anywhere. I asked acquaintances if I could come over. I hated it but I could see no options. But finally the whole requirement got blown off so I gratefully unpacked everything back to their places the next day.
Two other interesting episodes happened the past week. One of my friends who stays in the same building broke her flat’s main door key. She’d gotten a whole bunch of items delivered from a nearby supermarket. I’d helped her carry some of her things to her flat, and that’s when the whole broken key fiasco occurred. Long story short, what should’ve been a five second door opening sequence blew up into a whole 5.5 hour sequence involving a patient locksmith. Boy, the lock is sturdy and it withstood all that drilling in poise before giving in to the hours of drilling and hammering.
The other out-of-the-ordinary thing that occurred is that for one night, I slept in a different bed. Remember my second round of packing that culminated in unpacking the next day? Well, seems like I’d willed my mind into accepting the possibility of having to spend the next night in unfamiliar quarters, that the whole universe conspired to make that happen. A friend of mine who stays in the same building all by herself called me up that night asking if I’d go over to sleep as she’d been unwell and didn’t feel so sure about sleeping alone. I’d already been in bed, tired from the previous night’s packing and emotional drama. I carried my pillow, bed sheet and phone over to her house. Needless to say, I slept like a log and was probably the least helpful sleepover mate there ever was in a time of emergency. We laughed about it the next day.
So office has reopened, and things are back to ‘normal’ a little too abruptly. My flatmates are back and there seems to be more laughter and conversations than earlier. Also there’s been pleasant weather with lots of rain in the evenings these days, so that’s helping ease a little bit of the snappy behaviour of my sleep deprived self.
Stuff I read/watched online:
i) Yahoo loaded up somehow one day, so I did the cruel thing and typed into their search bar, “What went wrong with Yahoo?”. Paul Graham’s article came up, so I dived in. Last week one of my friends who usually stays away from the written word sent me a draft of his thoughts on consequences of decisions, to which I promptly asked him to re-write it, citing a line from Paul Graham’s ‘How to Write Usefully’. I think I successfully scared away a potential writer back to his TV series and video games.
ii) Airbnb layoffs statement to their employees got me sad. There’s no other word for it, just plain sad. 25% of their workforce is being laid off :(
iii) One afternoon, while working on something that reminded me of college assignments, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t quite know what (college/job?) Manu S Pillai had been engaged with while writing the colossal and thoroughly researched ‘The Ivory Throne’ (which I haven’t yet read in entirety). So I immediately Googled it up and found an enjoyable interview from 2018.
iv) Also watched this wonderful TED Talk upon a friend’s recommendation. It reminds us that our faulty indicators of measuring a leader has helped promote hollow leaders. Well structured, short, enjoyable talk, a good investment of 10 minutes.
v) Obviously, been discussing about https://iss-sim.spacex.com/. Laptop better than phone.
