Pondicherry Trip – Fun and Anger

The title of this blog would not be making sense, how can fun and anger go together and why be angry when you are on a fun trip. Anyways you guys will get to know.

It’s was a normal routine day for me. Woke up at 4.50 am and hit the gym. I started for office around 9.15-9.30 am as usual. It was a dull and boring day, didn’t have much work to do too. My cousin called up and asked for my car, he and my second cousins had planned a trip to Pondicherry. They were already five so I had decided earlier that I won’t go, but when I handed over the keys to him those guys convinced me to come along and the next moment I was on my way to Pondicherry. (Of course after shedding my stupid formal attire). So a dull and boring day had turned into an exciting one. We started at 12.30 pm from Chennai and reached Pondicherry at 2.30 pm. We had lunch at a sea view restaurant called Ajantha. The food was decent but a slightly expensive for the kind of place it was. After having lunch we i.e. I, Arun, Honey, Priya, Arthi & her husband Jayant went for a walk on Gandhi beach. The sea breeze was soothing to the skin in the warm weather. Some movie was being shot at the beach and the only familiar face I saw was of the comedian Mayilsami, and I seriously wished I hadn’t seen it. The heroine looked familiar but was equally bad.

We were feeling sleepy so decided to have some coffee and what better place than a French coffee shop which faces the beach. I had a café late, a strong coffee with nice aroma but I needed a lot of sugar cubes as it was stronger than what I could drink. After having some nice coffee we went to a beach called Paradise beach. It’s a small island beach and you reach it on a motor boat. The journey was as enjoyable as the beach itself. After that we decided to check into some decent hotel. (Of course not one likes Hotel Decent :)). We zeroed in on Mother Sea View Residency after consulting a few friends. The rooms were good and we had a comfortable stay. After some rest and freshening up in the evening we decided to go to a pub. We went to this place called Asian Hotel, this place was nice but the music and lights were dormant. The pub comes to life during the weekends and alas we were there on a Tuesday. God makes sure when we have girls to accompany us to a couple entry place, the place is no fun. Poor married guys, the only time they laugh at us is when we don’t find girls and get shooed of from such places. A very small incentive for the huge price they pay.

The place was too calm and boring, but I got to drink fosters here which I wouldn’t have been able to in Chennai. We decided that we will go to some other place, so having a drink each we left for the hotel Ajanta. The view from the roof top was very nice and we spend a lot of time in the sea breeze. My tummy was full and couldn’t take more but Arun insisted on going to Pizza Hut and we did go there. After that we planned to go to Baskin Robbins but it was closed at that hour so we went to Le café again where we had nice Brownie with Vanilla Ice cream and Strawberry ice cream with Strawberries.

We retired for the day and the next morning we went to Aurobindo Ashram and Ganesh temple. The temple had good vibes which made us feel at peace. The Ashram was very peaceful and well maintained. The ashram had different kinds of flowers and they were well maintained. The ashram looked beautiful because of the flowers.

Now is when I get the news from my colleagues that the appraisal rating are out and they tell me that my ratings are screwed and I have got a third bucket which basically means you are among the last performers of the company. I was shocked and so were many of my friends because I was someone who was involved in lot of other initiatives other than my work. Have given domain training to resources of other accounts and have been proactive in my work. Sometimes you feel that the performance appraisal is a sham. I don’t know why companies fail in this exercise. It can ruin careers but still no proper investment and research goes into this area. The rationale behind my rating was that they had very less time to judge me, as I had joined only a few months earlier and so we were made the scapegoats. Those who joined after us got a default rating of second bucket and those who joined before us got first and second bucket. Why the hell do they even call it performance appraisal when it just relates to the time you have spent at the bloody work place? I was very angry the day I came to know this, but I know I cannot do anything about it. I know one day I will have to appraise people under me and I will know the difficulties then. I just want a better system which has clear metrics and which bases your rating only on the performance.

Let’s get back to the sea view of Pondicherry from the abyss of a bad rating. We went to the sacred heart church which reminded me that this town was a French town a few decades back. We started off our journey to Chennai, and courtesy of my A star it was a comfortable one.