Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Stretch out and YAAWWWN

Repeat. Ad infinitum till you feel there is not a muscle that you could stretch more, not a sinew that you could wring harder.
That more or less sums up my life outside work. That life, incidentally lasts for about a few short waking hours in the evening before I surrender to dreamless sleep and its back to the grind in the morning. I would say that my life at the moment, is one very very very long stretch of working days punctuated by grossly inadequate 'holidays' when I still call or take calls from people related to work, but the last weekend has been something of a small vacation in its own way.

The company which I keep at the moment, organises an annual retreat into some corner of the country that is mercifully away from cell-phone coverage.. atleast for the moment when the dreams of the brothers Ambanis are yet to achieve fruition, and some wee li'l hamlets are still deprived of the joy of polyphonic ring tones of the latest masala mix. This retreat, called Out-Bound learning is intended to help associates get to know each other, learn about team-work and improve people skills via participatory games and activities. The corner of the country chosen this year was about 20km from Bangalore and we were all scheduled to leave from Chennai on Tuesday last. Things went on schedule. The OBL was a lot of fun - there was the compulsory hoofing around and doing games and all that - plus really good food. Sadly, I missed out on the train journeys to and fro Bangalore since I was in Bangalore on a project. Something tells me I missed out the most exciting part of the OBL - after all it is a lot easier to bond over a train journey than huddled up with tired joints in a mosquito infested tent!