A month at the Ultimus

Now that the early euphoria has settled down quite a bit I have much clearer idea of my new life at this new workplace. And its quite positive TBH. There are times when I feel really lucky to be in this company.

I had joined this company on August 01, 08'. In last 30 days or so I have slowly settled down and integrated into the mix there. And if last 30 days are anything to go by,  I am going to have a stable working experience in this company.

Let me summarize how I spend a typical working day.

My phone alarm starts ringing at 7:36 AM. It takes it six 4-minute snoozes to reach 8 Am when I'm finally out of my bed. It takes me about 40 minutes to be in proper shape to leave my house for the office.

I commute to office via cab of one of our neighbors, Pervaiz Sahab. He is a nice bloke. Another coworker, Touseef sahab also accompanies me to the office in that cab. He is a good outspoken person who most of the times knows what he is saying. His total command on his speech and expressions is quite impressive. At times he can be a headcase but that too for proper moral reasons, not a moron by any stretch of imagination. Every good thing has a downside and only thing where he might do good to improve is that he makes us wait because he comes out of his house in the morning and then again comes late out of his office  in the evening when we leave for home. Overall its a good company I have.

I share my room in the office with 4 more people, all senior to me. Best thing about the room is that there are no females. It might sound strange but my experience from the previous job suggests that however good or bad a female coworker is, she is always a hindrance to free and proper work and something one would do good to avoid. I don't know, its difficult to explain. Men with office experience would understand what I'm trying to suggest here. Just to be clear, I don't mean any disrespect to females, its just the way it is. Female presence is, lets face it, a factor that realistically affects males in their performance, work ethic and above all being themselves. OK, enough about the females at the office (BTW there are about 15-20% females in this company. That is above average for a software company). So I was describing my office roommates. Yes they are 4, all senior, somewhat reserved all of them and apparently good people. When I reach office none of them is in the office yet. A few minutes later one of the coworkers arrives, another one also arrives in like 20 minutes. Other two are little bit more liberal and one of them arrives good 60-90 minutes lates. Last but not the least, my team lead arrives whenever he feels like. there is no time constraint for him. Make it two hours, three hours late or even after the lunch time. Apparently he is having some troubles in his family with one of his relatives fighting against cancer. May God give her strength and courage to fight cancer and may God protect us all.

When I reach office, first thing I do is to check my email, and first email I recieve in the early morning is the yesterday's daily Internet usage report. They have a policy at the com[any that they publish an Internet usage report at the end of each day and it is shared with all the employees. The report contains top 10 users, most requested websites, amount of data downloaded and uploaded by each user and similar other statistics. I have been in top 10 only once while my team lead is always in top 5 despite coming late to the office on a regular basis. Hats off! :D

After seeing my emails and checking out on Arsenal I put my head down to work. When I have some work to do which is most often the case, time seems to fly by but on the otherwise days, its a slow and boring ride to 1PM which is the time for lunch break. Around 10 in the morning, kitchen boy comes with a tray of tea cups. In the first few weeks used to say thanks but no thanks to him but now he doesnt ask me anymore. I don't drink tea. In the lunch break we go downstairs in the mess and have our lunch. Unlike the previous workplace, here there is no convention of coworkers going for the lunch together. During the lunch break when some one has to go for the lunch, they simply leave their seat and head towards the mess. No one asks, not even tells anyone else that I am going for lunch, you might want to accompany me. Lunch is usually quite good in quality and we are billed only half of it, the rest is paid by the company itself. Lunch break lasts for one hour and during that time apart from lunch, almost everyone is playing multiplyer games on the LAN. This luxury however, is only available to employees in our group (SDG, Software Development Group) because we are the so called 'operations' folks', our hardwork gives company something to sell and make profit. After the lunch break we resume the work and by 4 PM the kitchen boy comes with another tray, and to my delight, this time with a tray loaded with glasses of Tang (orange juice type thingy). I like it. At 6 PM exact I leave the office and go for the cab which is already there outside the office at that time. The other coworker makes it 5-15 minutes late usually which I dont like really but I live with it. On each friday we pay the weekly cab fare, 500 each. I am usually home by 6:30 PM with only 15 minutes of travel. Life's Good.

In the middle of last month I registered with FBR (Federal Board of Revenue) as an employed tax payer. I feel proud to be paying tax especially when not many people in this country like to pay tax. I think those who do not pay tax, they do not have the right to drive their car on a road, walk on a footpath or use any such public facility, because its put in place by the govt. by the money of the tax payers. Ok I must not go bananas with the fact that I pay tax and majority don't but still, you get the idea of what I'm trying to suggest here :D But on a serious note I think this country's fortunes can change if all the people payed their due amounts of tax. Usually its the middle class people like us whose tax is deducted at source. All these businessmen who earn millions and billion, they either pay minimal tax or don't pay it at all. Its a shame. In that week I also had my bank account open in a bank nearby the office. Now I have four bank accounts but still not a lot of money :D

Our Setup team consists of 5 people who were one day taken to Lunch at Texas Stake House by the project manager. Food was great but the best thing I liked there was the cowboy costumes of the waiters. That was cool.

Last month I deliberately missed a one day trip to Ayubia/Nathia Gali. It was a company sponsored trip and was totally free. I missed it because I wanted not to miss something more Important. I wish was able to write something different here but Arsenal lost that match 1-0, not a really good performance on that evening. Still I don't regret the trip not taken. We win together and we loose together.

Recently there has been talks going on in the company that they want to shift this office from its current location (Rawalpindi suburb) to downtown Islamabad. While there are mixed opinions among the employees about the proposed move, it seems that there might be quite a few complications in the proposed move. we shall see. I for one would love to stay at the current location as it is just 15 minutes from my place but there are others who leave their home at 7:30 in the morning. Lets hope we get something that is best for all.

Thats about it I guess, I feel a lot more comfortable at this place than on my first day here and things will only get better. I can not thank the almighty enough for being so kind on me. I hope the things stay smooth and pleasant for me in the future and I gather as much prosperity in this job as possible.

Thank you God.

It took me full two weeks to compile this post. These days my routine is a little bit disturbed due to holy Ramazan and I lack the temperament to write a long blog post. Still I have a lot more to post. Lets hope I gather strength to make it sooner rather than later.

Till then...