Month: November 2018

Guess who has a holiday!

That’s right, this guy.

And every other normal professional individual who works 8 hour, 5 day weeks. Because today is Sunday.

Internships teach you a lot about the process of adulting, to be honest. Aside from the work and travel, and managing a place to stay – when you’re away from home, that is, you also end up getting experience with a lot of things adults complain about. As a young person (youth), I’m able to understand why several adults complain a lot about fatigue. It seems legitimate.

But also, the last week has got me thinking about the kind of industries we take for granted, and expect to be on-demand. The services industry, restaurants, hospitals, call helplines – there’s this expectation we have as consumers that they’ll always be open for us. It’s rare that you see hospitals or restaurants shut on a Sunday. In fact, most businesses and establishments end up doing more business on the weekend than the weekdays, because people are relatively more free – they’re able to make time to visit places they dream of.

However, for the adults and sometimes, sadly, children, working these industries, it gets pretty terrible. Imagine having no Sundays off when the rest of your friends are partying. This, however, doesn’t mean that they don’t get holidays. It’s just that it’s super dependent on factors you’re not entirely in control of: like the kind of organization you work for, the kind of staff rotations you do, when everybody else is taking a holiday. I guess it’s a little difficult to envisage great work/life balance when this continuously happens and you’re left working every Sunday when your family and friends are partying.

It could be better than I’m making it sound – I have no experience in these industries, so I can’t accurately capture what it’s like. I’m also quite sure a lot of people make peace with it and consider it a trade-off for the kind of lifestyle they’re getting to live with the earnings, etc.

Irrespective, subjectively, I feel a little sad.

Holidays are best enjoyed when everyone has one, I do believe.

Nonetheless, there isn’t much you can do about it. Unless you declare Sunday to be a mandatory holiday and shut a city down – which capitalism will never allow for.

But.

You can be kind.

All of this blogpost is basically a series of thoughts I had while witnessing a terrible customer-service employee fight, from start to finish. I watched the whole thing, and it seemed far too petty to raise concerns about, but also, the customer was being super unreasonable and demanding a fresh drink because this drink was missing one ice cube. When the ice cube was added, she complained that the addition of this ice cube did not make the perfect drink and demanded a fresh one – while a queue formed behind her. While I’m being judgemental of her requests, maybe it’s fair to ask for these. There’s just no need to be rude with the employee. Ask nicely. People will respond.

And say good morning to people who are working on Sundays. Greet them, make some conversation. The world can do with nicer people – especially those who had to wake up far too early on a Sunday morning.

I didn’t get any of the Diwali holidays off. Which taught me a lot.

But all of the reminiscings about things I could’ve done instead of being an intern stuck at work is for another day. Right now, I’m super optimistic and I feel incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to work where I am – because the people I’m interacting with are very nice, and, I’m able to get experience at a place I had a lot of reservations about.

On that note, you should watch this:

 

B99 is back soon!

Happy Deepavali to readers of the blog!

I think you only recognize what events mean to you when you miss out on them sometimes. Most festivals have been touted as a celebration for extroverts, where they’re able to focus all their energy into getting together and making a lot of noise. This is especially true of Holi and Diwali. (Yes, this is a joke from a stand-up special by Biswa.) I am merely using it as analogy.

And yes, some festivals have negatives. Especially Diwali, what with issues like child labour to environmental pollution, to health hazards and animal rights – there’s a lot of stakeholders who are impacted by the manner in which the festival is celebrated. But at its roots, these festivals are all about spreading joy – it’s something I think the below Cadbury ad showcases the best.

All of this is being triggered by the fact that I celebrated Diwali evening working in my office and ordering food off FreshMenu. What sucks is that I watched YouTube on my phone while eating my dinner because I was alone at the office, and further, my office laptop had blocked YouTube.

I think the latter is reason to give me sympathy. The former is how work culture and corporate culture works – which definitely needs changing, but not something I want to highlight & make the central part of this post.

As I sat eating my food, I realized that Diwali held a special place in my heart because of the reluctance with which I joined in the festivities. Lighting and decorating the house has always been something my mother loved, and as a lazy person who really didn’t like obeying my mother’s directions without a fight, I used to bicker with her about decorations a lot, only giving way after I saw how pretty everything looked. This was true even for activities meant for lazy people like me – using electric diyas instead of physically lighting candles. Or even flicking switches and changing the flickering pattern of coloured serial lights we had at home.

This one Diwali I even did a photoshoot for my mum, ultimately getting one of my favourite clicks of all time – her looking into a mirror holding a candle.

I still remember my first Diwali in India being exposed to cracker/firework culture. I used to be scared of them as a baby, and then got used to them as a child, but never saw them from a close range because of how restricted their sale and distribution was in the UAE. Their use was supremely heavily monitored by the Government, and I believe at one point there were jail terms for lighting fireworks without authorization. In any case, when I first moved to India, I was quite taken aback by how crazy people went for these crackers – especially big ones, like the 1000-in-1, etc.

People allocated budget at the start of their month for Diwali festivities. They even drove till Tamil Nadu to buy OG firecrackers. I never got the hype because of the chaos it created – but participated as a teenager and enjoyed the thrill of running away after lighting something because it made me feel like I was a hero in an action movie.

Or a villain, come to think of it.

But that’s unimportant.

Ultimately, I stopped celebrating with fireworks because I realized I didn’t like them.

But all these memories came flooding back when I was at work today, and I felt like I would’ve loved reliving each one of them – because each time I was surrounded by people I love.

Today, that total was 1. I was alone in the office on Diwali eve. Loving yourself is an art, and I hope this Diwali, and New Year, you remember that sometimes it’s important not to underrate your own company. You can be your own source of entertainment. Just pretend your life is a sitcom and see where your brain takes you.

Or imagine people around you doing dumb things – including, but not limited to, spilling water and then tripping on it. Falling flat on their bum.

On that note, Happy Deepavali!

 

My mother pointed out that I’ve become a very uneasy sleeper. That I toss and turn repeatedly through the night, and it takes my time to fall into a deep slumber. This is very unnatural behaviour for me, because I love sleep, and really, honestly, do try to get as much as possible (contrary to popular belief). But, it raised some concern, because I’ve learnt that sleep is extremely important to the way humans function, and extremely important for emotional and mental well-being. Well-rested people (irrespective of how early they wake up), are often able to apply their mind better and make smarter decisions: like taking on less work for themselves because they care about their sleep cycle.

But a bigger part of why it raised some concern and sent off a few worrying signs for me was because it pointed out two things. The first, was that it showed me how much I had changed from school. I was literally asleep half my time during my schooldays. I slept a solid 8 hours at home and then another 2 hours every single day on the bus. And then every evening I’d come home and spend another 1 hour asleep on my couch while watching TV and waiting for milkshake. It was a great life.

The second, was that it showed me how much I had let my desire to do things and push myself take over my system. I love work. I’m not going to deny that. For others, what seems like work, to me, is very calming and entertaining because I have to apply my mind to things. But, maybe because of how less I sleep, on days I want to sleep early also, my brain constantly believes it needs to think about things. It’s probably time to re-evaluate that: just for a healthier lifestyle.

Of course my mother blamed it on how much I use electronics just before sleepytimes arrive. Something about radiation.

I’ll ignore that.

But something I’m doing now is wearing an eyemask and going to sleep. Which I think is pretty cool because it blocks off a lot of light and forces you to close your eyes (a great start to the process of going to sleep!)

It’s funny, doing that during Diwali. In Bombay.

Because I’m blocking off lights. Get it?

Anyway. I’ve gotten back from work now and I’m going to work on my moot. After eating Chinese food & watching Netflix.

It’s important to understand how technology is evolving:

Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future

My winter plans include being in a new city – one that I’ve never experienced properly before, save for 4 days last April. I’m going to be there for two months. Working. And renting an apartment with friends. Basically attempting to do adulting.

I’m also going to be working on a moot – something I quite enjoy. I only hope I’m able to devote as much time to it as I want.

So there are a few expectations from the upcoming months:

1. I’d like to figure out what exactly I feel about the kind of work I’m getting at this internship place.
2. I’d like to explore the city I’m in – through food, culture, art, and history. Apart from getting really nice photos of myself in the city, because I think that’s something I enjoy now. And a lot of nice photographs in general – of people, of the city, as best as I can. I’d also like to read about the city: online, in print, and everything in between.
3. I’d like to work on my moot and devote as much time as I want to give to it.
4. I’d like to catch up with all my friends in this city – especially an old childhood friend I’m looking forward to reconnecting with.
5. I want to sleep 7 hours a day. Please.
6. Budget Management.

This should be fun. I think these are pretty broad, low expectations.

This is important reading: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/31/magazine/yemen-war-saudi-arabia.html

Papers in Law School really need to change. Atleast, our evaluation pattern can be slightly better than it already is. Maybe this is a systemic problem prevalent across places in this country. Eitherway, it’s something that annoys me. I fully recognize that you’re reading several exam-related posts. This is what my last two weeks has been – so you can skip past a couple more of posts if you’re uninterested.

Too many of our questions expect us to have memorized too many trivial things about the Law. As a subject and profession that essentially relies upon the application of a static, definite thing (subject to change, of course), to dynamic, changing facts (essentially, situation dependent), it’s slightly sad that we need to spend most of our time during examinations answering theoretical questions about what was held maybe in one particular case. What makes me a little more sad than normal is that these theoretical questions don’t just need to be answered with the theory. That won’t fetch you the marks. They need to be answered in the exact manner and method that have been taught to you. This is saddening because it means you can’t apply your brain to what you’ve studied in the way you want to – and you’re not really assessed on how you’re using your brain, which is what I believe the purpose of an examination is.

That aside, while testing the application of the Law we’ve studied to a factual situation, more often than not, Professors end up copy-pasting the facts of one particular caselaw. And we end up writing down all the cases that have come before that Caselaw and then describing that caselaw itself – and it’s still sometimes deemed to be inefficient.

This isn’t actually application – because we’re already taught the case in class.

And I’m glad we all score well, I know that’s important. But we don’t really learn anything in the exam. Which I think is tragic.

Over the course of this piece, all I’m going to do is to provide a list of reasons describing and depicting why I think exams should never be held early in the morning. As you read this, consider that I had 9AM exams during mid-semesters, and then wrote 10AM papers for end-semesters. Or something along those lines. Basically, I had to go wake up and write a paper.

Which is where my problem lies. I think morning papers don’t provide students with enough last-minute revision time, which is crucial to every student’s brain functionality during examinations. At University atleast, everyone ends up learning one concept or thing in the last minute. The likelihood of that thing coming in the exam is entirely dependent on the volume of the portions, but that last-minute learning drives a lot of confidence into my brain atleast – because I randomly realize I’m better-prepared for the paper than when I left my room.

Second, morning papers mean people are vela for too long after that. For those of you in foreign jurisdictions, the notion of being vela is basically loafing around. Loafing around means wasting your time. Essentially, the morning exam makes you grossly overestimate how much time you have to prepare for your next paper and sleep the entire afternoon and evening away. This sleep is essential, but the overconfidence is not.

Third, I think morning papers are inefficient because they often start at a time where students haven’t fully eaten breakfast. Or, it promotes a culture where students skip breakfast to get more revision time. There’s always the institutional argument of, “students need to study and manage their time better”, but that’s not something that is ever followed. Please encourage revision time and breakfast, that would be great, thank you.

Finally, morning papers make you sadder if the paper goes badly because if you’re unable to forget about it quick enough, you end up thinking about it for an entire day.

I fully understand there are easier ways to get over this. Just let me complain.