Bench Time ...Again!

Bench is a very normal terminology in IT industry but for the sake of some non it readers -> Bench means some thing like people put on rest/ hold. I think the terminology came from the players in a team who sit out on bench. If a player gets injured in the match, they will be substituted with folks on bench. So coming back to the topic, I am put on rest! In the industry, the time we spend in bench is a bad thing as it actually reflects badly in the salary perks we are promised to get at the end of each year on salary revision. After seeing the circle through for 4 years, who cares about it!

Bench! I had a totally new, not totally but a rare routine to stick to. For my next client who required an out of the world back ground check before I start working in there location, I had to wait for three weeks. Three weeks, I didn’t had an office to go, so I ended up working from home. Working in the sense checking my office mails from home! Due to the circum-specific scenario, I had no managers to report to. So I ended up spending three weeks of paid vacation at home (In USA). I woke up at morning 10:30 only because of my hunger, slept almost 18 hours one day as my router was not working and my alarm failed to alarm me!

My day went like this for last three weeks irrespective of weekday or weekend.
Wake up at 10:00, have the morning tea left my fellow roomie. Finish reading all online news paper from Kerala kaumudi to New York times. Watch all the Malayalam news channels online available to keep me in synch. Courtesy http://ilikefreetv.com/ Also the movies played in Surya, Asianet plus and Kiran. Once bored with news and movies, get to kitchen try out a new recipe. I ended up making mango-pulishery, Vatthal kuzhambu, Theyal, Pavakka poriyal etc etc which are like the most homely food I could think of other than usual avail and Sāmbhar. As far as the taste is considered, there is no mallu origin in site to taste these and judge them! : ) Once my kitchen experiments subsides with my hunger I will be searching my play list of movies form block buster or Netflex. Thanks to my friends’ special SVG output laptop which will allow me to get the movies to a TV and get the cinema effect all round the clock. By the time I finish my movies, it will time for tennis / cricket / gym / swimming. Next two to three hours is spend in real hard work ending up with a hot shower. Eat out the rest of experiment specimen left from noon and get sleep reading the latest of three books I got hold of. One is ‘Oru deshathinte kada’ by SK Pottakadu which is one of my favorite writers, other is Hitchhiker’s guide and the third is my Certification study guide.

Three weeks with each day scheduled with so many things, I think I am tired now. I have to start looking for some work from my managers. Otherwise I might end up forgetting my office outlook password.

All this is really fun when I think that at the end of the month I will get my full salary for sitting at home : ) But the softy guy in my head is really worried that I spend my three most unproductive weeks of this year. I have to admit one thing. Who cares! :D