Friday, June 25, 2004

Burning the Midnight Oil (and how!)

It's been a while since I stayed at work till 2:00 in the a.m. A long long while. Having stayed today, I realise that of all the things I used to miss about work when I was doing my MBA, this was not one of them.

One by one over the course of the evening, my team-mates slunk out the door and out into the heady Friday night. (This is why "Stealth 101" should be a compulsory course at B School. More advanced courses could then be called "Sneaking Around 102" and finally, "Smooth Operator 102".)

Funny, actually. On the AIESEC in India MC, we used to spend nights on end in the office. 3 days in office without a break, and then 10 days at a conference - surviving on intravenous coffee and alcohol, and an hour of sleep a day, and gathering energy from the 20 odd cigarettes we'd smoke each day (there was never time to eat a decent meal - not to mention the fact that for the longest time, we starved from sheer bankruptcy!).

But here's the thing I miss most about the AIESEC MC office - we used to keep a sleeping bag, a sheet and a pillow in the office. Anytime we stayed late, or stayed over, or even felt sleepy post lunch, we would drag the ratty old things out, spread them out in the exact centre of the office (so that others working would have to keep jumping over us awkwardly) and drift off to dream land. THAT's what I truly miss.

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