None of my business

A few days back I had a technical session on mmmm…. Forget it.

I happen to be someone who is supposed to understand the business side of things in an IT company. Which means that if my mother is cooking something, I only need to see whether I am getting the dal I was promised earlier in the day or if I still have to make do with the bitter gourd. It does not matter whether my mom is coming from office, if she has sufficient time to cook, whether the lentils are there at home and if there is someone at house who likes something else. When you have something so intellectually challenging to do the whole day you certainly turn inside your boots when you come to know that you are supposed to attend a technical session for an hour and half.

Its scary because you don’t know a penguinshit about whats going to be explained in the next 1.5 hours. So the person who was chosen to take the session reminisces about his experiences with context specific SLs and class action files. And how he bravely lifted a Lib jar to save a struts config. And how he had the presence of mind to upload an EJB before cruelly killing the server. You utilize this time to think about the deeper meaning of life. Of how to clear the darned 8^th level in the mobile game. Of how to chat on gmail without the PM getting to know about it. Of how to act as if you have a call and escape from the class room.

Then you find the techies looking at you giving one of those irritating “poor fellow – he is lost” smiles. And a few adventurous ones ask you if you have any doubts in it. You pray that all these guys sit once with you in a session on “Derivatives and Options” and you get to do all the sniggering. Of course the prayer will also have an addendum asking for none of them to ask any questions to you. Knowledge is power as long as there is no one asking questions.

It is very difficult to get any value out of these discourses. One good way of countering this is to look straight at the instructor and act as if you are damn interested and you would die if you don’t know whats coming next. This way you can polish your expressions for a bigger stage. The downside is that the person taking the session may take you for a scholar and may ask you to confirm whatever he is saying. In such situations, You can counter his “Don’t you think so?” by an “Ah! But… however… its Ok” using your eyebrows for maximum effect.

Or you can look absolutely bored. You look at the white board, then look at the person next to you, then play ‘Bounce’ on your mobile, then look at the white board again to see if there is anything new scribbled on it, then look out of the window, then look back to see if the techie sitting behind you is able to see what you are desperately trying to avoid and so on. Thank God for the eyes. If I was blind I would have to be all ears in a tech session which would be more than what I can chew.(sigh...)