Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Nocturnal? Not me!

Last week I had to work in my first ever night shift and I was as nervous and excited as my friend when she was ponnu paathufied - the traditional “seeing the bride” ceremony before a marriage where the groom’s immediate family (of at least 30 people) visit the bride’s house and ask the bride to do everything from sing to dance to even code a bug-free Java program (God, I am never going to get married) to climb Mt.Everest (That, I may be able to achieve). Anyway, I had a longish weekend from Friday evening to Monday night. And finally, as with all weekends, Monday (night) too came too early.

And I was at office sharp at 8:30pm, waiting for my first ‘ticket’ (To know what this ticket means, read: ITMARK me!) with all the curiosity of a little pup in a new home. And then work started flowing my way and never stopped until it was 6am the next morning. It was as if I was bowling the best I could, but I had an in-form Jayasuriya batting; with my captain shouting (swear words, obviously, duh...) at me at regular intervals. Talking of which I am thinking of the Indian Cricket Team’s performance (or rather the lack of it) at the ICC T20 WC, which I shouldn’t be unless I can afford my posts to contain really objectionable words.

2 nights passed by without any major hitches and on the 3rd night, it was a little less hectic and I was a little more hungry than usual. At around 2-ish in the night, my stomach started making these strange noises, not unlike Barkha Dutt does on her shows. Also, I realized it was as empty as her head. I then understood what they meant when they said “Empty vessels make more noise.” However, I was prepared for such ‘situations’ and had bought a bag of Potato Chips (I could actually use a lot of calories, you know) for the night and started munching on it like I’ve never seen food before. I felt quite full at around 3-ish (actually, the chips packet had become empty) and I headed to the pantry to have some tea. On the way to the pantry, I was startled by a hyper-active frog and almost fell down (which was so not funny!). Apart from the frog thing, there was nothing much eventful that night.

The next morning, I slept till 10:30am and then got up to have breakfast (No sir! No matter what, I never skip food) only to find my stomach turning and twisting and before I could know, I was puking all over the place (quite disgusting, yes!). But still, I went ahead and had some curd rice and was about to take a bath when I heard the water pipe farting big time; there was no water in the tank and there was no power to switch the motor on – which also meant no sleep during the afternoon. We (I, the cute-guy-next-door, his roomie, another neighbor) did everything we could from bringing an electrician to calling up the EB folks and nothing worked (I could actually understand how helpless Dhoni felt during the WC matches).

That night, again I was at office at 8pm and called up my PM, who has been extra-ordinarily kind and gracious and supportive (I hope he reads this before writing appraisal comments) and told him (actually, reminded him) about India and power cuts and took leave for the rest of the week and bunked night shift. Now I am back in the day-shifts and am sleeping through the day at work (which is not very unusual), but unable to sleep during nights (and that is killing me). And I feel so bad for my BPO friends. May God give them the strength and courage to go through with it. :-)

11 comments:

  1. Well, Sandhya,It was so great to see this blog as it seems like a thing that has happened to me also in one of my nightshifts.But I have a small doubt here,Hey when there was no water how have you washed the floor after puking.

    Anyway,I am really happy to see first person in my life who is praising his PM on her private blog.

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  2. @Ramandeep
    Well, Sherlock Holmes, I washed the floor with Mineral water (which we always have) :-)
    And it needs a big heart to praise your PM on you private blog. I am just the best...

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  3. Hey so what do u conclude about the night shifts? I am not so sure about working in nights(in case i get a job after my Btech).But i ll definitely experiment...
    Variety is the Spice of Life :-)

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  4. Sandhya,

    You have cited Powercut and lack of sleep as the reasons to go on leave and your PM accepted it ? Really,nice PM it seems.Long live and God bless your PM. :-)

    Have a nice time,
    K.Kiran

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  5. Hey Sandy,

    You really hate Barkha Dutt huh??? :)

    And i would love to try working in night shifts somewhere, it must be fun drinking loads of coffee and trying not to puke like the way you did :P.. Am reading your blog after quite sometime now, gotta catch up with the ones i missed now.. :)


    Keep Blogging!!

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  6. @Shankar
    True, Variety is the spice of life - exactly the reason I chose to work in night shift for a week. It was nice. Not as bad as I thought it'd be.

    @Kiran
    Now you know why I praise my PM on my private blog. He is really a very understanding person! Really, God bless him!

    @Rahul
    I used to think she was doing a good job. But she started to get on my nerves with her nonstop talking and not letting the experts give their opinions. I mean, if you are not gonna let them talk, why invite them over at your show?
    And actually, I drink too many coffees/teas. Just managed with 2 teas during the night and I puked coz of the stupid potato chips. So, watch out for that when you work in night shift (if need be).
    Was wondering why you haven't visited until it struck me that your exams were going on. How did they go?

    @Anand
    Glad it made you laugh! :-)

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  7. You are your rocking self as usual. But why take a dig at Ms.Dutt? Kahin Barkha tumhari blog ko padhlegi toh.....?

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  8. @C R Venkatesh
    Hmmmm, actually such an incident has already taken place and Ms.Dutt has successfully closed one such blog.
    But seriously, I don't give a damn. She forced me to stop respecting her (it was not like I hated her from birth!)

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  9. @Sandy
    My exams got over long time back by june 3rd.. And they were really bad to be very frank. I couldn't have asked for an easier question paper but its just that i didn't prepare in the right spirit of it. I found it really difficult to sit and write for 3 hours, this tends to happen cause the only exam that i wrote in the last semester was my semester exams. We had direct dealing lol :).

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  10. You have been tagged! Check out my latest post: "I have been tagged. Now its your turn... !!!"... for further details.

    ReplyDelete

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