Well the Kindle is cool if you`re a bookworm, if not, then you would certainly look down on it as a useless tool. I am a bookworm and ever since I got the Kindle it seems that it is accompanying me everywhere, except, of course, to the loo. Even if I was taking it to the loo I wouldn`t be telling you about it, right?

Yeah, so, well the Kindle is accompanying me everywhere. Even today as I was having lunch all alone `cause my colleague and partner in crime was out for a conference, I was reading the Kindle, a wonderful novel my Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if you want to know. I wouldn`t tell you where I got the books though.

Anyway, anyway, all those blabbering to let you know that the Kindle is awesome, that I took a day off the day I got it to be able to read all day long, that its cheap and that the battery life is a miracle. 

If you happen to have one, you`re a lucky bastard. If you want one, go for it. 

Oh and by the way I got the orange cover. Cool, ain`t it?

Granted today was a special circumstance. Something pressing. One of those events when people insist that you go home 2 hours earlier. But that kind of circumstance won`t be repeated in the near future. But I`m just saying, I`m more productive when I leave home 2 hours earlier...

Working 6 days a week sure takes its toll on me and I need some serious vacations!

So long dudettes and dudes, I`m off to watch a horror movie, that`s another one rare pleasure.

Work is cool! It's the typical Dilbert thing (with Catbert, the evil HR), except that I'm the Catbert in this case. At first I was tender at heart. It's hard to call people for interviews and not giving them the job, it's hard to hear the hope in their voice when they believe there's a possibility, it's hard to see them signing a contract which unfortunately does not match their expectations. But well, it took some time for me to toughen up and adopt a holistic way of thinking instead of considering cases by cases.

But well, the good thing is that we`re adopting new HR policies that would soon make everyone`s life better, including mine. So that would soon be a win-win. 

Talking about the long weekend, on Friday 12th we celebrated our country's Independence day. I spent mine with Jev at Choisy with Mauritian foods and drinks. And on that day I got to know something great about him, that he is a patriot. You see, I am a patriot too but I guess that those are the things that we don't really say out loud. It's kind of hard to start a conversation with "Hey honey I'm a patriot! Did you know that? What about you?". And so we ended up not saying this to each other. But it was on Friday when he was buying flags and quadri-coloured ribbons that I actually got to know this aspect of him. And so it was while we were hanging out in the car watching people making the most of their day at the beach that we talked about what the independence day means to us. This brought me to comment on Eski's Independence Day ad campaign.

Our "national lemonade" brand has plastered billboards all over the country showing hands of people from explicitly different races and religions doing friendly gestures. All this is fine and I'm sure many of us are already befriending people irrespective of religion or other differences that society has created, except that it feels wrong and quite hypocrite when you actually show people doing it in advertisements. 

Taking my own example, my friends are varied, in a lot of aspects but I'm not about to pronounce myself as an equal opportunity friend. Friendship just happens, it does not happen because of the colour of someone or his/her religion. It just happens because something clicks. It did not occur to me that "Hey Deborah we are so different, let's be friends because I have to befriend someone from your religion." It just happened that Deborah is a foodie and so am I. 

And so I thought why not show real friendship? Friendship as it really is? Sometimes it would be with people from the same religion or caste as you are and sometimes it would be people from completely different religions. Because friendship happens with the people and not with the religions or races. The sooner we overcome the religion, caste and race barrier, the closer we would be to the actual state of equal opportunity...

Remember when Gmauritius was going to be held? I'm sure some of you must have heard people asking about certificates. 'Cause it seems that they would not be able to learn much from Google, so they might just have a certificate to prove they were there!

Just last week when some buddies were talking about a training that the HRDC would be offering, some people dared ask about whether we're gonna have a certificate. I'm sure they did not register for the training because we don't know as of yet whether there will really be certificates.

Forget about the certificates dudettes and dudes, make the most of the experiences...

I've never always been a partisan of hope but I've often been a positive person. I'm saying "often" here because sometimes some situations make it difficult to adopt a positive approach. 

Anyway, I like to think that good things come to those who deserve it. Despite being called a cynic by people around me, deep down I can be a hope freak. Just last Sunday when Jevin told me matter-of-factly that our printer would never work again, I told him it would. I told him there's hope and he silently acquiesced, perhaps because he did not want to hurt me. To cut the story short, the printer worked...

Maybe it was bound to work but I feel great to have kept my hopes high and not losing faith in the printer. 

There are several more instances when I did not lose hope and good consequences prevailed; for my academic results, when my dogs got very sick and the list is long...

I might be called a fool for believing in hope but well... I like the little mystical element that hope brings in one's life...

So dudettes and dudes, do you usually keep your hopes high or are you more likely to lose hope in tricky situations?

1. The plush toys. 
First, those things are freaky. What kind of psycho would want to sleep with a plump thing that keeps its eyes open and constantly wears a stupid smile? And second, they give me allergies.

2. The fake flowers. 
Fake flowers should be banned. They cause allergies with all the dust and crap that they attract and are horrible to the touch and smell. I wonder why in all those years of technological advancement no one has ever thought of making a fake but realistic flower for Valentine's Day. It's because no one cares. This day is not important. Period.

3. The mushy couples. 
Yeah it's awesome to proudly hang out on Valentine's Day with your fake flower and plush toy, looking like a total idiot who's just got some kind of trophy. Except that in a few weeks the gifts won't mean big deal. You might even forget the name of the person who gave it to you.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those who would not want to have a baby one of these days. Come to think of it, babies are definitely in my future plans, just like education and a job were. Babies are a necessity, you know, to have a family and to have someone to whom I could narrate my life, just like my mum does with me. I've even thought of their names; I intend to have one called Jade and one called Jake, if ever there's 2 of them. That's to show how much I could want to have kids.

But my point is, people should not be obsessed with babies. They should instead think of the baby stage as the phase where they will be having sleepless nights, mood swings, a bare minimum sexual life and all other complex situations that follow. The only positive point about the baby phase is the pictures of that devilishly cute creature you will be sending to your relatives. People will say that they envy your life as a new mom but you'll know that's utter crap. But since your memory's quite short term and since you love your kid, after 4 or 5 years you will be forgetting all about the baby's tantrum and will concentrate more on telling your kid how cute and undemanding he/she was as a baby. 

Anyway, for me, the best years of child rearing are when the kid's grown enough to use words to communicate with you, that's around 18. Ok, I'm kidding. Let's say that as from 6 they would start to express themselves clearly and would start going to school so they could make you proud of all the efforts you've put in to make them become who they are. 

On the hard side, I know I'll be a good mom. That's cause I'll be applying HR principles to the rearing of my children. You know, motivation theories, leadership styles, commitment to the organisation (family in this case), remuneration and rewards, everyone of those would play a crucial role. You gotta use your education one of these days.

On the soft side, I'll be the caring and sometimes overprotective mom who'll be baking pies and cookies and spending some awesome time with the kids.

And so, dudettes and dudes, I can wait to have kids of my own in some years but I'm not naive enough to happily look forward to the pre-school phase.