that's supposed to be funny
Being in R&D is interesting. And fun too. But at times fun is not all that funny. At least, not at certain moments. Though I couldn’t resist laughing at it later (and I’m laughing even now thinking of it), I was literally hanging myself at that nick of the moment.
We are starting a new task. And we are quite enthused with it. We got all the needed approvals for our idea and broken successfully through the red tape of getting everything going. We let out a final sigh of exhausted relief and get down to business. A wide smile lingering in all our faces. It’s tough trying to convince the senior folks with our ‘innovative’ idea. That’s what we always call them. Everything we come up with is always termed ‘innovative’ by us. Whether it is actually innovative or not, is another matter altogether though. But atleast this thing, was pretty good. Honest!
The week-long laborious efforts paid off when the people who mattered finally began to feel we are after all not talking all nonsense. A little nod and we got the necessary affirmations to get going, along with the usual paraphernalia of best-wishes and stuff.
Now, we are a small team of 4 people including me. We started working on the initial designs and an approximate plan of how we would go about it. The next step is to get enough people so that we could come up with something substantial within the time frame we have promised. And a pretty ambitious promise at that!
Getting people into the team is another headache. But after a little sweating we got a guy to work with us. I took him to a conference room to give him an overview of the concept and our plans on going about it. Starting that minute, I was glued to the white-board. My hand drawing waves of circles and boxes and sketching alphabets trying to diagrammatize everything I was trying to visualize. Once in a while I turn back to him and ask him if I’m clear with my points. He doesn’t nod. But neither does he look as though not listening. That looks good enough and I continue my talking.
After some 30 minutes, apart from the pauses to ask him if he has any questions (he didn’t seem to have any), I let out a heaving sigh. Like Shankar Mahadevan sighs in the last frame of that video after singing the song Breathless. And then, with a mixed bag of emotions with the pressure of promises and expectations to keeping them up and the 30 minute talking, I let a tired smile and ask him 'So.. did you get the big picture?'
With the same nonchalant grim face that he maintained all through the time I was explaining the points, he instantaneously says 'Whose picture?'.
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We are starting a new task. And we are quite enthused with it. We got all the needed approvals for our idea and broken successfully through the red tape of getting everything going. We let out a final sigh of exhausted relief and get down to business. A wide smile lingering in all our faces. It’s tough trying to convince the senior folks with our ‘innovative’ idea. That’s what we always call them. Everything we come up with is always termed ‘innovative’ by us. Whether it is actually innovative or not, is another matter altogether though. But atleast this thing, was pretty good. Honest!
The week-long laborious efforts paid off when the people who mattered finally began to feel we are after all not talking all nonsense. A little nod and we got the necessary affirmations to get going, along with the usual paraphernalia of best-wishes and stuff.
Now, we are a small team of 4 people including me. We started working on the initial designs and an approximate plan of how we would go about it. The next step is to get enough people so that we could come up with something substantial within the time frame we have promised. And a pretty ambitious promise at that!
Getting people into the team is another headache. But after a little sweating we got a guy to work with us. I took him to a conference room to give him an overview of the concept and our plans on going about it. Starting that minute, I was glued to the white-board. My hand drawing waves of circles and boxes and sketching alphabets trying to diagrammatize everything I was trying to visualize. Once in a while I turn back to him and ask him if I’m clear with my points. He doesn’t nod. But neither does he look as though not listening. That looks good enough and I continue my talking.
After some 30 minutes, apart from the pauses to ask him if he has any questions (he didn’t seem to have any), I let out a heaving sigh. Like Shankar Mahadevan sighs in the last frame of that video after singing the song Breathless. And then, with a mixed bag of emotions with the pressure of promises and expectations to keeping them up and the 30 minute talking, I let a tired smile and ask him 'So.. did you get the big picture?'
With the same nonchalant grim face that he maintained all through the time I was explaining the points, he instantaneously says 'Whose picture?'.