"btw you, whose cell phone is ringing. you're fired." - CEO of my Bank during a presentation when his phone, which was with the secretary, was ringing.

so we had another round of orientation (for the umpteenth time), where we are supposed to meet fellow colleagues from diff depts and different countries. get to know them, learn what they do, enrich ourselves and all that jazz.

this seems all very nice and dandy in paper, but sadly it is far far from it. coz you tend to stick to your own crowd and i think there is nothing more intimidating then going into a roomful of penguins (black coats, white shirts) and not know anyone. ive renamed bankers as penguins, please forgive me sisters (the original penguins)(i.e nuns (my jokes only make sense to me) and if you got this joke, congratulations you are now part of the small percentile that gets my lame sense of humor).

yea, so like i was saying its quite intimidating to go into a roomful of budding bankers and find them clustered in their groups of twos and threes and fours..etc.

one of the first lessons i learnt at business school is to attack the simpler problem. i.e approach the twos rather than the group of sevens, eights etc.


so like an avid student of principle, i do just that.

and this is the conversation that follows (please bear in mind, this is just my shallow opinion, and this steorotype is in no way or form the biblical truth.)

random wannabee desi dude (rwdd) and random abcd dude (rad) talking. i go upto them.
so i can introduce myself.

me: hello, hi my name is H.
rwdd: hi im X
rad: hi im rad.

and then they go back to their conversation, completely ignoring me.

WTF.


ok lets try again...

me : Hi, Im H.
random guy : Hi, Im random guy
me: Ok, so umm..random guy you work out of the London office huh
random guy: yea, you?
me: New york..umm so you work in Y group (group that makes more money than any other group) yea?
random guy: yea, you?
me: Z group (group that doesnt make as much).
random guy: *losing interest now eyes wandering*



WTDF (D is for double)


and the only thing going through my brain, *i can crush you with my thumb* (quote from friends)

one of my biggest problem is usually with other desis. i find desis as a species very competitive and in general dont really have that solidarity type thing that you would see with say the japanese or the chinese. where they actually seek each other out and behave like their long lost relatives. whereas desis, especially girls will eye you so differently. if you have a desi in your team, he probably will try to talk to everyone else but you. i dont understand that. and it really annoys me. cant you just be normal. and why why why do you have a british accent when you have not even touched british soil and have just been recruited to work there recently. please explain this phenomena. i once met a desi who lived in Mumbai all her life, who actually called britain their motherland. okayyy.

moving on.

i shouldnt say that all of them do it, but at least most of the ones ive met at these networking events pretend so much. and as much as i like to stereotype, i hate being stereotyped myself. the bank got a consultant to teach us how to network. other than the inane activities of asking your neighbours dumb questions about them, it also permeated the fact that society and people always have this need to pigeon hole you.

either you are an extrovert or introvert, either democratic or republican, either leader or follower, either black or white, either bully or nerd. i dont get this.

there are sometimes where you might want to lead, other times youd like to follow the herd. some days you dont want to talk to anyone and some days you dont shutup. i dont understand this need to categorize pple. but this isnt a perfect world and the imperfect world needs to categorize for it all to make sense. not to you. but to make sense to others.

neway tomm i have this teamwork event, it almos tmakes me feel like im on the apprentice or something, without the boardroom and donald trump. wish me luck. hope i dont get fired.