Working deep in the mines

Nowadays the majority of my working hours are in discussions, either passively listening or taking notes or explaining or negotiating things.

With the remote working nature, even the simplest discussions and interactions need to go through elaborate chaos of noise, dropped calls, and overlapping voices. Oh I almost forgot the great villians: Echo and Delay.

Also, it seems like everyone is almost always in discussions/meetings, so its hard to have quick drawing-on-the-board discussions or idea generations over a cup of tea.

I find the impacts to be mainly on topics which require convincing people, sending subtle reassuring messages using body language, and generally to capture everyone's attention. The people you want to convince are either busy doing something else when you are carefully articulated sentences are pronounced, or they have connection problems or worse they misunderstood your voice modulations.

Also working from home, with a small kid and spouse also employed, meetings sometimes become a nuisance as it disrupts the family ceremonies like lunch,dinner and conversations. This is also partly due to the lack of any fixed start or end timelines for a working day. At least when we used to commute to office, one could just be away from the seat ( be it sipping tea, or at restroom, taking a call, puff or even gone home for the day ), and others would let you be unless its urgent. Now, all this happens through meetings, especially with colleagues of different geographic regions competing to fit the schedules into those of others.

My son who has just started speaking already has words like Appa Amma Meeting, Aptop ( laptop ) in his vocabulary and imitates me typing with headphones on, sipping green tea.

With no boundaries between office life and personal life, there is no space for social life either. And there is nothing to blame the office life for that since the virus takes the primary blame for it anyway.

Now with all this chaos around us, when work requires one to think deeply and extract its gems, there is an interesting condition. When one is able to sink oneself into the deep workings of the mind, making connections, all the din outside fades away, replaced by quiet neurons at work. But as always the deep work sessions last but for a few minutes. Many a times the deep sessions happen by themselves like at loo or while doing something else which require mechanical repetitive actions. Also the time just before sleep invades at night and just before sleep retreats in the morning brings along with it various insights which enhance or correct the previous day's deep thoughts.

The meditative state of the mind is so satisfying and enriching that one yearns to keep going back there and it requires significant investment in isolation and time. So naturally, it keeps many shallow tasks aside, which requires others around you to pick them up or if it suits, they'll just wait for you to get back to it.

Notes from Coronapril

Notes from April 2020
This lockdown and isolation is gonna last for a month more. Oh god. How do I bear it?

Even the thirty day subscriptions or Prime and Magzter would come to an end soon. Then I would have only cooking, workout, music, books, writing and painting to keep myself mentally sane. And there is the garden too which is quite ignored. And of course, I almost forgot, there are the extremely crushing office schedule, collaborating with remote colleagues and some really lengthy training modules too.

Also, on Magzter, what could be the inspirational motivation to read the magazines on Architecture, Aeroplanes, CoViD updates and medical news? I have earmarked a lot, but unable to start reading them. I find myself only looking forward to reading on travel (which is the last thing possible now).
-----End of notes---

PS: Nothing happens the way one notes down about it. I ended up either binge reading every single magazine on Magzter before its subscription ended, or deleted a few I realized were too dry. I ended up not doing any workout, did no painting or writing and just stuck to movies, office work, books and magazines.

Reading in the time of Corona

The months of lockdown also meant months of reading hundreds of magazines and books from free eBOOK apps and physical ones. I was extensively using Magzter and Juggernaut apps on the phone. I continue to use the latter while the former was stopped after its free version ended. Since there was a deadline, I also read feverishly and later sat down to vomit it all out to a diary to see how much I could recall. Now I am just digitizing some of those notes .. for fun.

In fact, as of today, I have 40 books marked Read in Goodreads, compared to the usual maximum of 20 a year. This doesn't count the hundreds of magazines and books which are not in Goodreads. If I try to recall the genre of magazines, I can quickly recall Architecture, Landscape, Science, Travel, Technology, History, Facts, History, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Indian Mythological Fiction, Health Foods, Crime and even some Malayalam Literature.

There was this article I read about the Archer fish, originally found in the Sundarbans.
The fascinating aspect of this fish is that it beats refraction aspects and manages to shoot perfectly at insects high above the water line even while its eye is below it.

Then there was the article on the Basilisk lizard that has perfected running over water with a mechanism of running. It helps it to survive and gives more options of escaping compared to other similar organisms.

I also came to know that Band Aid was created by an employee whose wife kept having cuts and bruises at the kitchen. It was prepared by sticking pieces of gauze with anti-septic stuck on small tapes for easy application.

Also I realized that all dogs are the same species though they vary in lots of characteristics. This is because they are able to inter-breed between breeds.

The invention of MRI is a disputed one between some American and British scientists.

The head feels rotating in the direction opposite to the actual motion as it is still undergoing the cancellation action ordered by the brain to retain some kind of equilibrium.

The reason air is invisible is because it doesn't alter the photons which pass through it. Other materials like water in it does it and causing it to translucent.

There were some tough science topics also that I read about a lot like the Corona Virus, T-Cells, Lymph nodes, generation of antibodies, and the history of deep bores into the Earth. Looking at the vast topics these are, I can justify not having written down lengthy notes at that time.

Then there were the stories of exploration of the Angel falls, detailed full magazines on Ladakhi architecture, garden landscaping ideas and stories on sustainable living environments.

Since I am not able to locate the other notes, I might keep putting more posts on what I am able to recall, more as a memory recall exercise than anything else.