Humour strikes a chord with joblessness and absolute boredom

We’re trying hard to laugh. Well, most of the time. We think if we’re not funny, or if we don’t understand if someone else is funny, we’re not part of the “team”.

We strike animated conversations (exaggerated expressions and hand gestures) assuming that we’re visible only to the equally mad teammates and invisible to the rest of the office.

We fish for comments (read compliments), both offline and online. Offline, by trumpeting our day’s achievements…errr…tasks (which goes like – “my maid’s away and I had to get up early to prepare breakfast and lunch for my daughter” – and I pray they don’t ask “what did you make” – but they do – and I had to cough up the truth with a sheepish grin – “cheese sandwich for breakfast, cheese & shredded chicken sandwich for lunch” – and shredded chicken was the leftover-reheated version of my maid’s chicken dish, btw!). Online, by literally taking out a begging bowl and loafing from one blog to another, leaving traces of our footprints, so that they trace it back to ours and leave a nice comment, whether they like it or not.

Coming back to the topic of humour and how it connects with joblessness and boredom…The recession did it, I tell you. We were neck deep in work until then. We took the fourth person on board, because we couldn’t handle the endless jobs that came in with deadlines like “yesterday”. And then, recession came in. After which, new work hardly came in.

The joblessness is driving us up the wall. We’re sinking deep into boredom. Most often, we go searching for matchsticks to keep our eyes open, especially after lunch time. Now we’re waiting for the teeny-weeny morsels (any job – even if it’s just editing content) to be thrown our way, like wet-behind-the-ears puppies, eager to lap up anything that comes our way.

We throw in the humour just to keep our spirits up. We laugh at pretty much anything, even if remotely funny. I make funny faces & funny sounds (they join in) and narrate incidents at home – which primarily revolve around my 2 children (presuming that “they” are enjoying every minute of it). The 2 big time dreamers of the team narrate weird dreams and nightmares with each or any of us playing the weirdest part in it and I naively ask “how do you remember your dream so distinctly, when try as much as I do, fail to bring even 1 dream successfully to the table?”. She sings, nay croons, nay raps …jeez, I give up…she thinks she sings and expects a standing ovation. We keep the spirit up. We play our part. We give her a standing ovation. We laugh. We disperse. But we’re back after the short break. To continue our long, jobless, boring day with our self-amusing jokes, dreams, stories, songs…and other such nonsense.

-Espresso

A note to the boss: We’re not really jobless. Please do not throw us out of our jobs. We’re actually researching websites to improve our writing skills (like hell!).

To the girls: I was just trying to be funny!

To others: I’ve hyped up the ‘joblessness’ and ‘boredom’ bit - a bit, to make it sound a bit exciting. We’re not really that jobless, maybe just a bit.

The malady of redundancy

I hate doing nothing!
On some other day I might have said exactly the opposite. Opposite not in the sense that I love doing nothing, but in the sense that I hate doing everything. Now, don’t look at me as if both sentences mean the same thing. There is a slight difference there. In fact, quite an obvious one, i.e. when you look at it intently. When you say, love doing everything it means that you are….oh..ok…I got a little carried away, sorry, I won’t go on, on that. Happy?

Well…it’s been a long week, the last one. Longer still, because there isn’t anything interesting to do. And that’s the reason why I am blogging away (a month ago, I was slogging away! Come to think of it!!!). And I don’t know if the recession is to blame. Ah…let’s leave the poor thing out of this. I am sure everyone’s sick of hearing that word now.

But I am so thankful to this little, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, cozy-cuddly space of ours where we let down our hair, put up our feet and sit back in peace and type our way to relief. Er…the letting down the hair and putting up the feet part are used as the phrases they are meant to be. I mean, come on. We are in the office. How can we put up our feet?!

And when I am done with the blogging, I go back to work. Hit the key board and get bored(these days i.e. the story is absolutely different on hectic days). And that is when my eyes stray around. Not that there is a great scenery around but then, something is better than nothing.

I look right and there sits KK and typing intently. I crane my neck and look at her monitor. I stifle a yawn. She is lurking around our blog. Yeah, this one. I look left and I see Latte staring dazedly at the screen. I crane my neck again. Oh, she is checking the number of visits we’ve had on google analytics. Wasn’t she doing that a couple of hours ago too? Ah…whatever. I turn around and look at Espresso. Now she is doing some serious work. And then she yawns and gives me one of her animated smiles.

And she navigates her chair to a spot close to the three of us and we laugh over some stupid content we have been asked to edit. Like, ‘Resort XYZ is located on the absolute beachfront.’ Or, ‘the people of Kerala are gourmets. They not only taste different but are different in the method they are prepared.’ (Er, who? The people?! All of us gulp). Another masterpiece, ‘here you get many gastronomic opportunities…’ (haha! This is fun, yeah, really!)

After the giggling session that turns into a guffawing session, I go back to my seat. In fact, I am back at my seat now. I am looking at the graphic guys. One of them is scratching his head and staring at the screen(I must mention he has drawn something incredible, which I can’t make head or tail of), another one just belched loudly and he, on the far end, did he just try to pick his nose? I don’t know. Whatever, if he did, then my gaze stopped him right on time.

People, by now you know that I am having some idle hours. I wish to go on but suddenly, I remember one translation stuff I have been procrastinating. Lemme get back to it.
Will get back to you real soon. It’s a promise!

-Cappuccino