"I should be picking you up now", said the driver of the airport shuttle as he pulled up in front of the Hilton hotel. It was 1:35 pm on a gray afternoon in Houston, TX and I was glad he had picked me up earlier than I was scheduled. My flight was only leaving at 4 pm but I just did not want to take chances. After all, hurricane 'Ike' had just visited Houston and its aftermath was writ large across its landscape. "Just one more stop after this at the Hyatt and we should be on our way to the airport", said the driver gleefully. Was I happy? I was going back home after being out for 3 days and was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed that night.
Having said that, the driver of the airport shuttle left me to my own devices (read my blackberry) and went looking for the fare he was scheduled to pick up at this spot. The email junkie that I am, I immediately immersed myself into the blackberry and didn't step out for the next 6 or 7 minutes. When I did come out of my trance, I realized there was a humming noise I was hearing. No prizes for guessing what the hum was, it was obviously the shuttle's engine that was left running by the driver. I looked at the watch on the dashboard of the van and it showed 1:42 (I got my math right, didn't I?).
"So this is how America is dealing with its energy crisis, is it?" I wondered loudly. I looked out of the window towards the hotel lobby and there was no sign of the driver. So I decided to really track how long this nonsense would go on. I started looking at the clock on the dashboard and towards the hotel lobby alternately. The clock struck 1:47 and the driver walked out accompanying two passengers. He was in more glee as he was talking to one of them and soon I realized that the reason for his increased glee was that the passenger talked the same language as he did (and which I didn’t). As this passenger settled in to the seat right next to the driver's, they both let out guffaws to what must have been a joke.
To me, this was certainly not funny. A 14-seater passenger van (and we all know the miles per gallon it delivers anyway) had been left engines running for 12 full minutes and here were this driver laughing to glory. An additional minute had passed by the time he finally pulled out of the Hilton parking lot at 1:48 PM.
Next stop, the Hyatt. This time the gleeful driver (he had not stopped smiling yet) found his fare in 2 minutes, so I did not have much to complain. Well, hell and destiny played its part. There was this huge Chevrolet Suburban truck that was parked right ahead of our van, engine running and we had no room to pull out of the area (Have you ever seen Double Trouble?). It was another 2 or 3 minutes before he finally pulled out of the lot, maneuvering the van between two other vehicles and was on the road again, headed to the airport. The smile never left the driver's face all along the ride and he finally got us to the airport at 2:45 PM, after having missed an exit on the highway and having made several circles before he got back on track. He still managed the smile when he handed me my luggage.
For the last one year, I have been in America, witnessing fuel prices go through the roof and how the presidential candidates have gone after each others' throats on whether offshore drilling is better or developing renewable sources of energy is better. It has certainly helped to have a close cousin who works in a large international organization for its renewable energy division. He helps me put things in perspective sometimes. However, even as I was walking the long pathways of the Intercontinental Airport in Houston, trying to identify my gate, one thing was clear to me. Whoever becomes the President of America does not have to go far to find solutions for the energy crisis. All they need to do is walk into hotel driveways and turn off the engines of the several shuttles that are waiting for their fares. And run meaningful ad campaigns telling people to switch off their automobiles when not needed.
Don't go away yet, for this is not over. My flight boarded sharp at 4 PM. Every passenger was comfortably seated, the doors were sealed and the aircraft pulled back. "Ah! Home, at last", I thought. Then the rain came pouring down. "Ladies and Gentleman”, the voice of the flight’s captain came crackling through the public address system, “welcome aboard this flight with direct service to Philadelphia. As you can see on your right, the weather is not what we would have liked it to be and we have a long line of flights waiting to take off. I am told that we are 40th in the line and it may take us about half an hour to take off. However, as there are some arriving aircraft that we need to make way for, we are going to pull out of here and move to another area, where we will wait till the air traffic control clears us for take-off. We apologize for this inconvenience but assure you that we will be in the air as soon as we can. We appreciate your business and thank you for your patience".
I was surprised, because I was actually smiling. I had decided to take it in my stride. Luckily, I had a friendly, conversational neighbor and time passed by pretty fast. At some point, we ran out of more things to discuss and then I pulled out my laptop from my bag and started writing this piece. I am not wearing my watch today so I just pulled out my blackberry and turned it on to see what the time is. It is 8 PM local time and we have been sitting on the tarmac for 4 hours. The engines of this grand Boeing 737 have been running all this time...
http://content.msn.co.in/MSNContribute/Story.aspx?PageID=bbfc0c2e-e6bb-4e25-98d6-dca457ee5840
Friday, October 17, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Email Stress!
I once read a joke. It went, "You know you are an e-mail junkie when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but before you go there, you check your email, there is nothing, so you go to the bathroom, when you come back, you check your email, there is nothing, but you hit your refresh button anyway, there is still nothing, so you go back to sleep".
You think that is funny? Let me tell you something. Whoever wrote that joke doesn’t know me for sure.
I don't think an instrument or technology has yet been developed that can measure the number of times I hit the refresh button in a day. When I start the day, I usually have a few emails. They are all routine reports that I receive every day. I just breeze through them and I am disappointed that I don't have any other emails. So I hit the refresh button and that’s when it starts. Every time I see a small pop up on the right-hand side bottom of my screen, I immediately leave what I am doing and jump to my email browser and hit refresh. Every once in a while it is an important email and I pay attention to it. Most often it is just rhetoric and that frustrates me. I need an interesting email. So I hit the refresh button again. If a few moments pass without a new email, my blood-pressure rises. I hit the refresh button several times violently as though hitting the refresh button is going to get the emails flowing. It is like an obsession.
If you thought hitting the refresh button is my only vice, my company recently blessed me with a blackberry (God bless them). So the vice continues long after 5 PM. I drive home and on the way I undergo severe withdrawal symptoms because I am prohibited from pulling out my blackberry from my pocket. I promised my wife I will not check email when I am driving. Once I get home, I pick up my son and take him to his evening vocations. As soon as I have dropped him off at his karate class, my blackberry is out of my trouser pocket. There may be a mail or two and I am unhappy. This time the blackberry would go into the shirt pocket only to emerge a couple of minutes later. No email. So I will move to the address book and call someone. That way I have killed the next few minutes in anticipation of the next email. As soon as I am done with the call, I check email again. None. So I will aimlessly move the trackball of my blackberry to see what I can do next. Maybe call someone else, or go to the browser to check what's happening on my personal email. I just do not spare it. Once I have done that and know that I do not have many that are worthwhile, I quickly close the browser and am back to the menu.
There is that small icon of an envelope that has the number 2 next to it. "Wow"! That means 2 emails but that takes only 20 seconds to review and discard. Thank God there is no refresh button on the blackberry (or I am unaware of its existence), but with this gizmo I have another vice. I would scroll to the lock keypad icon and lock it. When an email arrives, the small envelope with the number next to it usually pops up even on lock mode, but even when there is no such icon, I soon unlock the keypad to see if I have email. After all, the blackberry is a man-made invention and it can still make a mistake. Lock, unlock, lock, unlock…
I am relieved of this vice only when my son walks out of his class because now I have to drive and the blackberry has to compulsorily go in my trouser pocket (where I can't pull it out of in the middle of the road). But that's only until the short five minute distance has been covered, for before the seat belt can come off, the blackberry comes out. Check email, no email. Then I go into my home, check email, remove my shoes, check email, drop off my bag, check email and finally, I reluctantly decide to plug my blackberry into the charger. I wish someone invents a blackberry that gets charged on body heat, so I don't have to ever part with it. So the blackberry kinda leaves my body for a couple of hours. Of course, every time I pass that desk between then and bed time (read a million), I hit the trackball to see if there is a small yellow envelope with a number next to it. If there is, I check email and duly lock the keypad but leave the blackberry in the charger. Not bad for self control, eh?
Soon, it's bed time. I need an alarm clock because I need to wake up at 5 AM and hit the gym. I wish that was my vice but that's only my excuse to pick up the blackberry again, set the alarm and put it under my pillow. Hold on dear reader, tired as you may be of reading this, that's not it. I wake up several times during the night and I have to pull out that blackberry from under the pillow and see how many hours I have before the alarm goes off. And if I chance to see that yellow envelope with that number next to it, I thank God my wife can't see the glee on my face. I check email. I go back to sleep happier than ever, only to wake up shortly after and repeat the entire routine.
Soon, the alarm goes off. I am up in a flash and in some kind of involuntary motion my hand grabs the blackberry and once I have dismissed the alarm, I check email. I am up dutifully and the blackberry goes into my pockets till I brush my teeth and then before I re-unite it with its charger, I check email. They can stay united for some time, because the next thing I do even before I turn on the lights, is pull out my computer from my bag.
Another day of email stress has just begun…
This is an original article published on msn.co.in on 13 Oct 2008.
You think that is funny? Let me tell you something. Whoever wrote that joke doesn’t know me for sure.
I don't think an instrument or technology has yet been developed that can measure the number of times I hit the refresh button in a day. When I start the day, I usually have a few emails. They are all routine reports that I receive every day. I just breeze through them and I am disappointed that I don't have any other emails. So I hit the refresh button and that’s when it starts. Every time I see a small pop up on the right-hand side bottom of my screen, I immediately leave what I am doing and jump to my email browser and hit refresh. Every once in a while it is an important email and I pay attention to it. Most often it is just rhetoric and that frustrates me. I need an interesting email. So I hit the refresh button again. If a few moments pass without a new email, my blood-pressure rises. I hit the refresh button several times violently as though hitting the refresh button is going to get the emails flowing. It is like an obsession.
If you thought hitting the refresh button is my only vice, my company recently blessed me with a blackberry (God bless them). So the vice continues long after 5 PM. I drive home and on the way I undergo severe withdrawal symptoms because I am prohibited from pulling out my blackberry from my pocket. I promised my wife I will not check email when I am driving. Once I get home, I pick up my son and take him to his evening vocations. As soon as I have dropped him off at his karate class, my blackberry is out of my trouser pocket. There may be a mail or two and I am unhappy. This time the blackberry would go into the shirt pocket only to emerge a couple of minutes later. No email. So I will move to the address book and call someone. That way I have killed the next few minutes in anticipation of the next email. As soon as I am done with the call, I check email again. None. So I will aimlessly move the trackball of my blackberry to see what I can do next. Maybe call someone else, or go to the browser to check what's happening on my personal email. I just do not spare it. Once I have done that and know that I do not have many that are worthwhile, I quickly close the browser and am back to the menu.
There is that small icon of an envelope that has the number 2 next to it. "Wow"! That means 2 emails but that takes only 20 seconds to review and discard. Thank God there is no refresh button on the blackberry (or I am unaware of its existence), but with this gizmo I have another vice. I would scroll to the lock keypad icon and lock it. When an email arrives, the small envelope with the number next to it usually pops up even on lock mode, but even when there is no such icon, I soon unlock the keypad to see if I have email. After all, the blackberry is a man-made invention and it can still make a mistake. Lock, unlock, lock, unlock…
I am relieved of this vice only when my son walks out of his class because now I have to drive and the blackberry has to compulsorily go in my trouser pocket (where I can't pull it out of in the middle of the road). But that's only until the short five minute distance has been covered, for before the seat belt can come off, the blackberry comes out. Check email, no email. Then I go into my home, check email, remove my shoes, check email, drop off my bag, check email and finally, I reluctantly decide to plug my blackberry into the charger. I wish someone invents a blackberry that gets charged on body heat, so I don't have to ever part with it. So the blackberry kinda leaves my body for a couple of hours. Of course, every time I pass that desk between then and bed time (read a million), I hit the trackball to see if there is a small yellow envelope with a number next to it. If there is, I check email and duly lock the keypad but leave the blackberry in the charger. Not bad for self control, eh?
Soon, it's bed time. I need an alarm clock because I need to wake up at 5 AM and hit the gym. I wish that was my vice but that's only my excuse to pick up the blackberry again, set the alarm and put it under my pillow. Hold on dear reader, tired as you may be of reading this, that's not it. I wake up several times during the night and I have to pull out that blackberry from under the pillow and see how many hours I have before the alarm goes off. And if I chance to see that yellow envelope with that number next to it, I thank God my wife can't see the glee on my face. I check email. I go back to sleep happier than ever, only to wake up shortly after and repeat the entire routine.
Soon, the alarm goes off. I am up in a flash and in some kind of involuntary motion my hand grabs the blackberry and once I have dismissed the alarm, I check email. I am up dutifully and the blackberry goes into my pockets till I brush my teeth and then before I re-unite it with its charger, I check email. They can stay united for some time, because the next thing I do even before I turn on the lights, is pull out my computer from my bag.
Another day of email stress has just begun…
This is an original article published on msn.co.in on 13 Oct 2008.
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