If you follow me on Twitter or on Facebook you’ve probably already received a link to the latest edition of the weekly Cubiclenama column I write for Mint.
But there is more value-add in this blog post. So don’t go.
When I first started writing the column, in December 2008, the idea was to poke a little fun at the workplace. Or, to paraphrase the column’s boilerplate, to look at the pleasures and perils of the workplace.
Since April the column has gone from being fortnightly to weekly, but my mandate hasn’t changed. I still need to file, every Thursday even though they really like it by Wednesday night, around 850 words of somewhat amusing prose.
Humour writing is exhausting. Especially so when my product, in this case Cubiclenama, appears on a page which has pretty high standards. For instance every Thursday the same space is occupied by the wonderful, curious and endlessly informed Salil Tripathi. How do you follow a top act like that?
The missus, whilst being a fanatical editor, quality checker and supporter of Dork and Cubiclenama, often says that I am too harsh on MBAs in general and management consultants in particular.
This, of course, is nonsense. And I have the PowerPoint slides to prove it.
Hah.
But, to be honest, at least one veteran consultant has written to me about how much Dork has touched one of his/her raw nerves.
So imagine how much pain a spectacular new blog post on the the New Yorker’s website will inflict on them. Titled Christopher Nolan’s “Implementation”, blogger Gideon Lewis-Kraus mashes up management consulting and Inception to produce brilliance:
“If you fail,” says Watanabe, “you will stay in ‘limbo,’ which means spending the rest of your life developing dynamic solutions for leveraged market-driven global enterprise frameworks across downstream cross-platform industry. If you succeed, I will help you return to your former career as an independent boutique retailer of imported artisanal tapenade.”
(I was in Sri Lanka, by which I mean Colombo, for a week recently. While not the first country that pops to my, or your, mind when one thinks of traveling abroad, I was adequately excited about the journey. A new a country is a new country is a new country is a journey that might lead to a blog post about it. That might lead to travel book contract. Who knows? Anything to get out of Dwarka no?
Also they sell booze in Sri Lankan supermarkets. Just like that. No fatwas or anything. So.)
Sociology
There are good things and bad things about flying from Chennai to Colombo. The good thing is the fact that you land in a foreign country after just about an hour in the air. I find this endlessly fascinating. And a little bit fraudulent.
Perhaps the years of shuttling up and down on the Kochi-Abu Dhabi sector leads one to believe that all international flights should take at least 3 hours. In fact any serious flight, it is somehow ingrained into my head, should take at least three hours. Less than that is infra dig. More than that is glamorous.
Now I know what you are thinking. “But surely you will tell us why it is ingrained into your head like that? This is not Christopher Nolan picture for you to reveal things randomly for kicks. Maybe I should read this post in reverse…”
!ecneitaP !nam etunim eno tsuJ
Thanks.
See, the thing is there is, or at least used to be, this unspoken caste system amongst NRIs.
It might seem presumptuous to judge a country by your experiences as you land for the first time at the airport. But sometimes, airports are splendid barometers of culture. Heathrow, for instance, immediately has you thinking: “What atrocious advertising! Surely, this is the kind of nation that would give rise to Monty Python…”
Zurich’s airport, on the other hand, is all straight lines, simple signage, orderly queues, meticulously timed shuttles, pressed uniforms and insurance advertisements. The message is simple: “Welcome to Switzerland. We have banks. We are very clean. And our very clean trains run on time.”
So sterile and generic is the airport that at one point it felt exactly like Dubai airport in the minimal pre-Burj 1990s. But only with Nordic white people instead of Malabari muscle.
But don’t let that fool you. Switzerland is rightly held in high esteem by tourists of all races, colours and packages. It is the sort of country where you could, if you had the stamina, photograph everything in sight. Even the policemen.
Having had our passports stamped by two splendid samples of the Zurich constabulary, my colleague and I ran to the railway station across the road. The two of us were on a hectic business trip that would have us visiting Basel and Geneva, with our base in Zurich. Read the rest of this entry »
Have I told you about my obsession with author podcasts? About how I diligently download as many author interviews as I can onto my iPod and then listen to them many times?
Personally I like to skip the parts where they talk about one, or several, of their books. Instead, I like to focus on the writing process they follow. Do they wake up at 4:30 AM and start typing? Do they carry moleskine notebooks around to jot down ideas? And how did/do they go about researching their books?
The latest addition to this collection is an iTunes “Meet The Author” interview with Hilary Mantel. I haven’t read the Booker prize winning Wolf Hall yet. The book is one of the many I abstained from while editing up Dork. (Fear of “inspiration”, insecurity etc. etc.)
You can listen to that episode, and archives of the “Meet the Author” podcast, here.
My favourite-st author interview show however is the BBC’s excellent World Book Club. Superb interviews with great authors. And extremely accessible. Plenty to listen to online and on the iPod, here.
The latest episode of WBC featured John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas:
Some of the other authors featured on WBC include Annie Proulx, Kiran Desai, Wole Soyinka etc. etc. Splendid archives.
Another superb place to evesdrop on the “writing process” is the wonderful “Writers’ Rooms” series at the Guardian. The last update, however, is dated last July. Pity.
Mostly random observations on life, culture, offices, the missus and travel. Mostly just random. Updated with laughable infrequency. If you don't see anything new here may I suggest you pop over to our twitter feed?
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For the complete low-down on the book, reviews, views, comments and updates, go to the Dork site here.
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Mostly random observations on life, culture, offices, the missus and travel. Mostly just random. Updated with laughable infrequency. If you don't see anything new here may I suggest you pop over to our 
