The Internship Diaries: III

One of the most amusing experiences I've had here has been the regular seat changing I've been going through. My seat changes here at the rate of one seat per week. The first time they changed it, my family had jokingly said they're making preparations to kick me out of the office. The second time my seat changed, I DID get relocated (not kicked) out of the office :p My new desk was located in another room close to the main department. This was soon followed by another change of seat. Eerily, I have been moving closer and closer to the exit.

Because so much of my time would be spent in front of the computer screen, I used to worry a lot about eyestrain. I had Googled around for ways of preventing it and came to know that there are different softwares available like WorkRave, Time Out and Flux that can work for your benefit e.g. by reminding you to take a break or by altering your screen's brightness depending on what time of the day it is. But then I also came to know that software download was not allowed on our computers. -_-

So I decided to make do with the 20-20-20 rule according to which after 20 minutes of staring at the computer screen you should look at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Only problem was there weren't 20 feet around me to begin with. -_-

Hence as a last resort, I would go back to reading what Bill Bryson had to say in his book about singularity, the Big Bang and the size of the Earth. If even that failed to hold my interest, I would take a short walk outside. Short because I'd been told that sometimes patients at the hospital can get out of control (relevant hospital emergency code is then announced over the P.A. system to alert everyone of the situation). I most certainly wouldn't like to get caught up in such a frightening scenario so I usually don't go out for aimless strolls. Its like: to the bathroom and back, for prayers and back, for lunch and back.

Lunchtime comes as a relief from all the backbreaking work (backbreaking because my uncomfortable chair really hurts my back). The food is pretty hygienic and the menu isn't much different from what one would normally eat at home. The best days are those when after lunch we go outside to the ponds to feed the fish there with any leftover bread that we may have.My love for nature should be pretty evident by now. Maybe I'll float off my paper crane (thanks to this website) in the pond as a goodbye gift to the fishies here. According to Japanese legend, whoever makes a thousand paper cranes gets a wish granted by a crane e.g. long life and/or prosperity. But I'm no Hiro Shima nor do I have the time to spare (though you might think otherwise :p) so I'll just set afloat the single crane for now.

The Pond with the fishes

The Internship Diaries: II

Living the 9-5 is no easy feat. It requires sacrifices. On one hand I can't help but think of the carefree life that once was; when summer vacations meant sleeping in everyday, going out on family excursions and the only source of agony was that dreaded pile of homework (which would eventually be completed with assistance from our dear mother). On the other hand, these eight hours truly make one realize and be appreciative of how our parents have been managing to do the same for so long. That too without complaining.

For me each day is a struggle. Each day begins with battling the urge to stay in bed, sleep a little more. Sacrificing sleep time has never been easy. Each Monday I wake up consoling my sleep deprived self: Just five more weeks and count it down. I can't bear to think about how I'll manage to get out of bed once I get a job. Just five more years doesn't sound too motivating.

Once I'm dropped off, I take the longer route to my office (shortcuts seldom appeal to me), walking all the way past the trees and the ponds. The 15 minute walk gets fresh air into my system and by the time I arrive at my desk, I feel ready to take on the day. Yet this energy is all but lost because of the absolute zero temperatures of our office. To survive here, you need to keep moving every once in a while so that your joints don't stiffen. If arthritis develops, well, the hospital isn't too far away :p

During my initial days, when there were no other interns and little work to do, I got a tour of the premises upon my insistence. Mr.Z who sat at the neighboring desk agreed to be my guide. Now Mr.Z has been working here for a couple of decades so he knows the place and its people quite well. It is said about him that when the foundation for this organization was being laid, he had popped out of the ground that had been dug :p

So off we went through the administrative offices, the bank, the gymnasium, the various buildings and the warehouse. At each stop his familiar face was greeted by a number of people. It was a good thing that people knew him well because that way no one questioned our presence at the sports center without a membership card. I felt ecstatic once inside the gymnasium, to see the basketball court, the arrangement for table tennis and the bleachers. Mr.Z pointed towards the basketball lying idle in one corner. Encouraged I walked towards it, picked it up and tried to shoot. Years of lack of practice weighed down on me as it was after three or four attempts that I finally managed to get it through the hoop. Swoosh! The sound was magical.

We then walked around and I was shown the tennis and squash courts, the sand court for volleyball and the swimming pool. Upstairs there was a room for snooker and other rooms for board games. We went up on the roof too where he pointed to these metal rods up there and asked if I knew what they were. I shrugged.

'They're lightning rods,' he informed me.

The rest of the tour continued with Mr.Z telling me about the various other buildings enthusiastically, why they were named so, why they were colored so (all the buildings are coated with a pink colored substance for insulation purposes) and what were the common jokes about some of them. The tour was entirely on foot which made it all the more enjoyable. By the end of it, I was exhausted and had lost any sense of direction I may have had. I had no clue where our own office was located and if it weren't for Mr.Z I would've probably walked on my own to gate 2 and texted my brother to pick me up from gate 1 -_-

The Internship Diaries: I

So I'm halfway through my internship and it certainly has been a learning experience so far. More of learning from mistakes rather than learning in the first go :p But I have a firm belief that what you learn from your mistakes is better remembered (probably since one wouldn't like to go through the embarrassment again!)

My first day here was a bit of a drag. There were no other interns at the time and the place was male-dominated. There used to be a girl here who had left a couple of days before I joined. Since she and I had the same attire, it led one person to think that I was her. 'What is she still doing here?' he had exclaimed.

I was sad more so because I was placed in the IS department, and it seemingly had nothing to do with what major I would choose ahead. But later I got to know we'll be working on preparing surveys, updating their user database and working on their website so I figured it might not be so bad after all since I've done these things before. The people here turned out to be very sweet and had a good sense of humor. Plus they seemed to be very fond of food. All these traits assured me that I could survive, in fact fit in perfectly with the crowd here.

Initially I had no real work to do. Now normal people would say that's actually a good thing, not having anything to do. But I'm not normal, unfortunately. I prefer having my hands full. I actually asked them to give me something to do. From the looks of amusement on their faces I could bet they had never before come across an intern who actually asked for work. That too on her first day!

Image Courtesy: Google Images

 It was a good thing I had kept with me Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. I had purchased this book last year and had begun reading it then but somehow I couldn't complete it. I love reading books. I've finished books like 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' in two days but this book of almost 600 pages I could not complete! Now since I've picked it up after an entire year, I have started again from page number one. And one look at where my bookmark is placed tells me I will not be able to complete it this summer either. Nevertheless, it has so far proven to be a good companion in times of idleness.

Except for this one time.

The director whose office was adjacent to my cubicle called me in and said, 'Yumna I've seen you reading that book and I'm thinking you must be able to write well too. Plus you were asking for work, so could you do me a little favor?'

I nodded my head eagerly, excited to finally have some work to do.

'I need you to write a memo for me,' he said. He then explained what the scenario was and what I was to write in it. 'Make it brief,' he said.

I went back to my desk and ferociously began typing. I had worked on something similar for my HR course so I was pretty confident about what I was doing. I typed up three lines, read them then reread them for typos and grammatical errors, fetched his email address and hit send. Then I went back tor reading my book.

About five minutes later the director calls me in again. I walked in wondering whether he'll simply say, 'Good job, thanks!' or a more elaborate, 'Wow that was fast, and really brief just like I had asked. You're my memo-writer from now on!'

What he did say was something like the latter. With a twist, however.

'Beta, the scenario is a bit complex, here listen to this,' he said then read out loud a page long email he had received regarding the situation. 'You'll have to write more. I suggest that you Google up what a memo looks like and then try. A memo sure is brief but this was..'

'Too brief?' I completed his sentence sheepishly. He nodded.

Embarrassed at my over confidence I got back into my seat and Googled 'memo'. After a while I sent him a longer, more elaborate one.

So this memo-rable experience (pun intended of course!) right at the start of my internship taught me how a memo is to be written, what its format is and how long it should be. Who said there's no learning at internships?

Dhakka Start

Half inspired by my younger sister who has been scribbling away descriptions of every minute of her summer vacations these days and half motivated by my own age old desire to write, I have at last decided to enter into the blogosphere. I've been yearning to start writing a blog since a couple of years now but never really had the time. Now that I (temporarily) seem to have all the time in the world, I want to make use of it as best as I can and push myself to at least take a start here. And as they say, 'Once begun is half done!' :p

I intend to write about what general happenings in my environment, the thoughts that are dominant in my head, what I'm up to lately and anything insightful that might interest whoever cares to read it. I'll definitely try to stay away from incessant rambling but I must tell you beforehand that sometimes I can get carried away with what I write, so much so that the boundary between the purposeful and the downright unnecessary disappears. People who've seen my class notes would agree :p