Alloy steels plant is not worth blogging about. Period.

Glimpses of Alloy Steels Plant : Part 1

I might not have wasted my time writing this document, had it not been the eccentric circumstances through which we had to go through. This story is dedicated to all my friends who are currently working (of course with dissatisfaction) in some private company and want to switch to a PSU. People of the cyberspace, I give you this small story of The Alloy Steels Plant.

The story might have begun way long before we proudly joined this organization. With hard-work and dedication we prepared for the entrance exam (just kidding) and finally set our foot in the communism-infected lands of the West Bengal (I have always wondered why the name includes west even if it is in the extreme east of the country. Don’t give me the partition crap as Bangladesh is no longer called East Bengal). Every soul in Bokaro had warned us against the social, mental and psychological parochialness of the mighty people of Bengal (so called Bengalis) but we were in such a great spirit that we never considered them even worth listening to (Actually we never cared). So finally we were here, in a place called Durgapur (although it sounds like Singapore but trust me, they are as different as an alien is from a mouse), wandering in the busiest part of the city (called city center and as busy as the galla in front of our college) and wondering what we were supposed to do. Unfortunately we are still looking for an answer to that.

Our arrival at Durgapur was also not much comfortable, as even after prolonged discussions with the HRD, we were not able to convince them to send a bus to receive us. This was our first attempt to convince a Bengal-infected mind and we failed (No regrets as it even Neo was not able to jump across the buildings in the first attempt). I wonder how good a manager we would become as this is the prime job of a manager – to convince people to do something that they actually do not want to do. But then this was Bengal and this incident should have given us the first hint of what was about to come. But following the idiom that “ignorance is the bliss” we just kept ignoring the signs. Just a little research would have shown us that ignorance is a bliss but not for the one who ignores. It becomes bliss for everyone else out there.

On our arrival, we were ushered to our hostels, which of course were much inferior to the ones in Bokaro. Sometimes I wonder if that building could be called a hostel at all. There is no caretaker, no watchman, in fact no authorized person to look after it. And as one will expect, the condition of furniture and the fan was just pathetic. If next time someone argues with me that time travel is not possible, I will ask him to join ASP. Each of the equipments is of the make of early 60s. But again, as a constitution abiding Indian citizen, we adapted to the situation and never complaint. A minute trouble arose when the water purifier in the hostel stopped working. There was no drinking water and the management (HRD) was not ready to listen to us. Their argument was that as the spare parts are not available in the market, we would have to wait till they become available. It was not their problem if we died of thrust. Second hint, ignored again. Well this issue was resolved with the intervention of the executive director.

There are many ups and downs one has to face when one switches the place. Many a shocks are waiting for him: the cultural, the economic, the social, and electrical (not in my case though). Since it is a PSU, the shocks were bigger in amplitude. There is no official language used. All the communication is in Bengali native language – it’s your problem if you do not understand it. But it is a sweet language. It’s just the compulsion to learn that I do not wish to learn it. These small difficulties were ignored until the plan for our industrial tour came into picture. This tour was a compulsory part of our training and was supposed to last at least 15 days.

-- to be continued

Third Attempt: A boring day

Nothing much in the air today. With absolutely no work to do and no intention to learn anything new, the facebook games also get boring now. I mean for how long can one harvest virtual crops in a virtual farm or kill a virtual Mafiya member in a virtual world. As you sow so shall you reap. Virtual reality only gives virtual happiness. And interests me no more.

The day began with a little excitement when the HP D-class server failed to boot one of the disks. Being the only executive present at that time, I went to inspect the server and to find out what went wrong. The task was not that exciting as it looked in the first place. The person who booted the server somehow forgot to boot the disk station. Problem solved. Back to virtual world.

By the way I am using this new flavour of Linux called PinGuy OS. Looks good till now. Actually better than Mint that I used before. Trying to sort out a silly problem of how to disable touch-pad while typing. Hope to figure that out soon.

And then there are these seniors who suggest that I should leave this organization. Reason being the outside world is full of glamour and I am wasting my time here. I know there is not much to learn, there is nothing to cherish. But then the hope that a new server will be purchased soon and there will be so much to learn keeps me happy.

And last day Kings XI Punjab won. I was a big Preity Zinta fan and my friends specially the simulation project team members know better :D

That's all for today. Hope my promotion to junior manger from Management Trainee will see some change.  

Attempt Two: The Arrivals

Headlines can be misleading. Almost all of them are. So is the heading of this post. I am not going to talk about my arrival but it looks like this is an arrival season. First the chairman arrives, which he rarely does. Then arrives the most awaited new DGM for my department, which he does from Bhilai. Trust me when I say that anyone coming to this plant that too from Bhilai will be far more disappointed than the Lalu Yadav not able to form the government in Bihar. Will come to this later.

So chairman arrives and we have this whole bunch of housekeeping going on inside the plant. The steel plant is shining as if it were a software industry leaving me to wonder why don't they do it on a regular basis. And then I found out the reason. Work has been shut in the plant for 2 days to decorate and to keep the area clean. All for arrival of one person. The loss making plant may incur some more loss but it must look clean. The customer delivery might be delayed but the chairman should not see the working of his plant. But then everyone wants to keep him happy and the end result is as expected. No talks on salary hikes, no talks on bonus, no talks on employee benefit; just some general blah blah of taking the plant to profit as if we didn't know anything about that.

So as the chairman leaves, the very next day our new DGM, with lots of hope and excitement for new place, arrives at out place. He enters the department and just in time I get to watch the expression on his face. I am not a very social person and hardly able to read the body language of other people. But that expression on his face, unmistakeably, was of utter shock. I would give him credit that he was able to conceal that within matter of seconds, but God.. He was shocked, as was I when I first entered the room. In a modern day computers department you at least expect to see a terminal and PC with P1 processors. But here it is. Can't be helped.

As far as I am concerned, just a formal introduction was enough. And that ends the day. Hope to write again sometime. :)

First Attempt

I don't know and don't care why I have started to write this blog. Maybe I was getting bored, maybe I didn't have anything else to do. Maybe because I know no one is ever going to read this.

First things first. I used to be a software engineer-- systems engineer rather (As Infy calls it) until I joined this steel manufacturing unit called SAIL. Now I am called a Junior Manager. Still can't figure out the difference between the two posts. Nothing has changed for me in the last three years.

Sitting idle can be very dangerous. It can make you blog it seems. Same thing happened in Infy and same is happening today. History repeats itself. What I will do is post the relevant and irrelevant things that happened for the day at this forum. Afterall the kids at google are working so hard to provide this space on their hard disk; someone gotta use it.

So the day starts with the cuckoo's voice from the mango tree outside the hostel. A sweet voice, really makes my day. Came to office half and hour late as usual. And then I get a call from GM(P&A). He is not a very talkative person and seems like some 35 years old or something but is really 56. So when you receive his call be assured it's either to scold you or you are urgently needed. So I go to his office to find out he is busy with some graph making on MS office (which I simply don't like). He looks at me and says "you are a CSE graduate. You must be knowing how to make graphs." And I was like-- what the :beep:. Which engineering college has a course on MS Excel that too graphs!! But since he is GM and I have to make impression I sit down and start doing some bullshit with graph. And the end result is that I changed the whole thing and he likes it. Saved :D

But these college should include MS office suit as a course. This is used in any software company (saying it from my experience from last job). May be I will give suggestions about this to them when I become the president of India (oops!! Secret revealed).

And yes.. The hottest topic for the day.. Anna Hazare. My full support is with him. May he succeeds in his mission.

Amen!