Being an Intern (The Flip Side)

If I hadn't finally, at 26, been a few months away from starting a career (that's right, 26 and starting a career. Not 'building upon' or 'improving' or 'progressing ahead on an already brilliantly successful path', but starting.), I would've called this blog 'The eternal Intern' - really, I would've.

I've done, let's just say, several internships. And lucky for you, I'm in a wisdom dispelling mood today. Now, I'm a sneaky little intern. I'm not going to tell you which thing I learnt or did or didn't do where. I'm not naming any places I worked (or might be working) at, on account of I don't want to discredit anyone and lose my own credibility with them. And respect and stuff. So. Here we go:

Things about being an intern that you should be aware of (the flip side):

Starting out at the very bottom
You will have to put your ego aside. And you will have to do this for many aspects of the job.In India, in a lot of places (especially government organisations) they have 'chaprasis' or 'peons': people whose job entails doing errands, making chai and serving it, carrying files and messages across and so on. This is not the case in Germany. Everyone does everything here. That's the official version.

So your position as an intern is very low. Imagine a deep, mouldy well with smelly fungus at the bottom and rainbow cakes on top. You live in the slimy fungus. Now, in some companies, a few rainbow cake crumbs might be scattered your way (good quality work assignments, new things to learn, etc) and sometimes, they literally send across internship caviar - this is usually when they're short of a colleague and so you have to do the job. Except you do it for free.

Just to clarify, I have never done an internship where I wasn't respected and the people weren't really nice. I'm only talking about this in terms of the sort of work you're given. Or not given, as the case may be.

Show me the moneh (or don't)
How shall I put this: you're literally not even going to be paid a cent. I have never been paid for doing an internship (although I have earned money for articles I've written while doing the internship, yay!). And it sucks. And it really makes me think about the way interns are sometimes exploited, where doing the internship as a part of a course is obligatory and you're doing a full time, unpaid internship. How is it fair if you have to pause your student job in lieu of an unpaid one?

When you have an interview for an internship, it's tricky bringing up the topic of payment. I've gotten used to asking it as a sort of customary question which is always answered negatively. Don't be surprised if the question is met with muffled laughter - it hasn't happened to me, but there was this one time I asked the question, I was answered with a "sorry, we don't pay interns" and I swear I almost heard laughter and this subtext: "bwahahahaha. Oh, honey. NO."

I've just remembered, I did once get a gigantic packet of toilet paper rolls at an internship because they had ordered too many. I genuinely thought that was awesome of the boss. Does that count as some form of payment?

No one has high expectations of you
Which is horrid when you first thing about it, but it's great because (a)you're starting with a clean slate and (b)you can ask for and will receive honest feedback without feeling bad about it because the whole point is that you're there to learn. Which makes me think that people are probably more careful when they start out, they try to do their jobs better, you know? Like how you drive more carefully when you've just got your licence and five years later you're swerving like it's the bat mobile and not the pot hole filled roads of India?

Your time is the least important in the entire organization
Not having anything to do while you'e an intern is arguably the very worst bit. I detest it. I mean truly, completely abhor. If it was a tangible thing, this waiting, I'd go find one of those clubs they show in prehistoric age cartoons and batter it and beat the crap out of it till it was no more.
But this is something that my experience as an intern has taught me - your time is less important than the lone office fly every one is trying to swat. And less important than the people trying to swat it. Less important than the boss who calls you into their office via telephone (via telephone, this bit is crucial to what follows) to DIAL NUMBERS for long distance calls they're making. This actually happened to me.

It's bad. But you just have to learn to deal with it. And while you're dealing, find ways to kill time while still managing to look busy (basic tip: don't surf cat memes with mouth half open). Step one while doing useless internet surfing at work? MUTE THAT COMPUTER. In fact, you know what? The very first thing you do when you start an internship? Mute that computer! You don't want to leave the sound on and then accidentally click on the video of the dog that laughs like a hyena. Or a Harlem shake video - imagine that blasting in your office space.
My point is, you're going to spend a lot of time doing nothing. A LOT. A lot, a lot.


I'm not going to finish this off by tying a pretty little bow around the whole thing and saying that oh, it's not that bad. You still meet new people and learn how not to be. You start forming your own professional network. Because you do. Of course you do. But I'm not spelling it out.

Because the good stuff spoils you and let's you think life's alright. The bad stuff, however, turns you into a tough mofo and lets you know that being a grown up is not easy.
Not easy, but still, it's good fun. You get full freedom to decide when to clean up the cat poop in the living room. And, no one forces you to eat your greens.

The Cyniqueen

P.S: Seriously though. It's pretty okay. Don't be afraid.

Again and again

What's with me and monsoon-sickness? I woke up today and with my eyes still shut against the noise of the world, I could tell that it was overcast outside (well, mostly because dazzling sunshine wasn't trying to rip my eyes open like it usually does. I have flimsy curtains). And for no reason, I thought of how it is when the monsoon finally starts one late evening and it's absolutely divine because the heavens have saved you from the scorching heat. And the lights go out of course, because that's what happens in Goa. It's a natural reaction to everything. 

So anyway, you don't care about the electricity cut because it's raining and it's finally cool now. You slap on some mosquito repellent (anyone else remember the sticky, goopy, thick, pistachio-coloured, strong smelling Odomos cream?) and get into bed, happily lulled to sleep with the rhythmic sound of the rain drumming on the roof.

Do you remember that feeling, when you wake up the next day and you've forgotten that the monsoon started, but then you feel the overcast darkness and hear the errant drops still falling softly from the leaves of trees? I didn't even know that this was a thing, that it was a real, legitimate feeling like the first day of school until I woke up today and felt it.

I must be homesick again, because every time that happens, I start dreaming of family weddings in minute detail. Cousins happily married in real life are made to go through the wedding ordeal all over again in my dream world, houses are exchanged (relatives from dad's side of the family get married in homes from mum's side of the family and vice versa). Last night, it was two cousins getting married at the same time. I guess it can't be anything but homesickness.

Or maybe it's just escapism? The last couple of weeks  have been tinged with an oozing guilt, leaking out of my mind. I still have some time to go before I submit this thesis, but sometimes I find myself thinking if I honestly need that second Master's degree. It's bollocks, actually, I'm just trying to avoid it all.

Started reading 'Autobiography of a Yogi' by Paramahansa Yogananda in an attempt to cleanse mind of bad thoughts. And because I need to read something before I sleep every night. I thought of re-reading Bridget Jones' Diary or The God of Small Things, but then I thought may be I need a dose of spirituality in these troubled mental times.

Also, I finished reading Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, my very first time reading him (brilliant, but not for me) and The Great Gatsby, which was also sort of okay.

Anyway, I have decided to work at home today, because it's raining so perfectly outside. And I'm wearing my tent like night gown and I don't want to change into decent day clothes accepted by society just yet.

I love wearing lazy clothes while I work, don't you? I love being a slob sometimes, I love it.

Raindrops and wisdom,
The Cyniqueen.

When it rains in Berlin

By Anomalily via Flickr

Something finally gives way. The panicked desperation for a delayed spring, still needing to wear earmuffs and thick gloves. Piles of old snow blankets, dirty and tinged with Berlin's black soil but determinedly solid, unrelenting, refusing to thaw. They cling still on tops of shrubs, collected in muddy heaps on sides of roads and sidewalks, on hidden corners of roofs and deserted patches of earth.
The sparrows still chirp, their loud cries defiant, shrill in the unseasonably crisp freeze at this time of the year.

Then, something breaks. You're too warm in that winter coat, so you switch back to your thinner jacket, still cautious, still painfully aware of Berlin's fickle weather swings.

But it stays that way. And then, out of nowhere, snow turns into rain. Not piddly no-drops like you're standing next to a fountain, but rain rain. Drops like spears, crashing on the perfectly smooth pallid roads, barraging on everyone, ratting out weak umbrellas.

You blink around and wait. For that muddy, earthy fragrance when the first drops of rain sizzle on the scorching, wrinkled, thirsty soil. For the wafting smells of hot fried bhaji, pakoras and samosas. For warm, roasted peanuts in newspaper cones. For signs of little stalls crowded with people, squinting at the rain, a rustic glass of hot cardamom chai in their cool hands, blowing on it to cool it down.

You wait for that squelch of shoes in the water rivulets born out of the downpour. For the splashes of water as people on two wheelers, late for work, irritated with errant raindrops sliding through their raincoats and wetting their backs, speed by, drenching hems of Kurtas and pants with muddy water.

It starts to rain harder. I wait for chaos. For street urchins and school children on their way home from school, jumping in puddles. For the loud croaks of hidden frogs. For the electricity cuts that don't happen.

Back in Berlin, the tram rattles to a stop and everyone gets in, irritably wiping the raindrops off their minds.

Because here, in this perfect world so far away from home, not a hair is out of place. Bright umbrellas have popped up everywhere, people scurry past me. No one's cooking food on the street, no crowds have huddled around rickety food and chai stalls and no one is cheerful at the spring that has brought warmth but rain instead of sunshine.

How could they be happy about it, how could they begin to understand, when they don't know what magic monsoon conceals in its muddy, splashing, trickling, cooling folds?

*******

I wrote this on one of the first days of spring a couple of days back, when it felt like monsoon in Goa. In Berlin.

And this song kept playing in my head on loop all day. Sigh.

-The Cyniqueen

A random list of miscellaneous things

Since I think I've sort of been bogging everyone down talking about the depressing winter that REFUSES to end, and also because it's been long since I've done one of these, I'm making a random list:

Via weheartit.com

• Snow and frosty cold in Berlin is a fuckillion times better than boiling heat in Pune or Goa.
• I'm getting a lot of great practical experience in my new internship.
• And it's in this lovely neighbourhood with just the right balance of diversity, coffee shops, cleanliness and quaintness. I've honestly never seen anything like it.
• I scrubbed the floor of my tiny apartment last weekend and it is now back to a respectable standard of cleanliness. Before that, it was so dirty (oh god I can't believe I am typing this even as I type it) that I was too disgusted to exercise on it, because I sometimes do Surya Namaskar, where it's imperative to have a clean floor *hangs head down in shame. And then sees now sparkling floors and feels less bad.*
• I don't posses the ability to pack light. Like if you took all my DNA, pried it apart or wrung it really hard to get every single essence of my traits (dormant and active), you would not find amidst the greasy juice, the trait of packing light. My bag which I carry to work (which is half an hour away from my place) hurts my shoulder because it weighs like 18 kilos. It seems that my prehistoric ancestor should not have survived on account of the giant dinosaur would have killed him if he insisted on carrying all his cave rocks and animal skin-skirts with him everywhere. But then again, I'm really good at raising each eyebrow in quick succession to a beat and it seems to me that evolution decided that the unibrowed Neanderthal should be allowed to pass on this miraculous talent to his progeny. (Okay, Neanderthals and dinosaurs didn't coexist, I'm aware. But two words: poetic license).
• I love wearing kurtis in Berlin. Besides the fact that kurti and jeans is the most comfortable daily wear on the planet, it makes me feel very exotic. I can never, ever wear a bindi on a kurta here, though. Just, no.
• For a while now, I have found this brand of ceylon-assam tea bags that taste like proper Indian chai. And then I found ginger tea bags, which is actually just ginger water. So I mixed both to make adrak chai (ginger tea). Didn't work.
•  Not being able to talk to my family regularly sucks. Internet problems make Skype impossible at times. I love whatsapp though.
• I had started reading Churchill's biography (because I like biographies) but last week, I officially and very guiltily abandoned it because it was too full of military, imperialistic jargon.
• Once, when I was extremely distracted by my own thoughts,I walked into a wall. This happened in class. Embarrassing as it was, thankfully, it happened in Germany. If it was in class in India, I would have tots had a white chuna mask on my face to add to the mortification.
• People sometimes leave garbage bags in the elevators in my building. I hope they crap their pants in public for every time they do this.

-The Cyniqueen

Ain't no sunshine when you live in Berlin

So cute I can't even

There's a strange glowing light in the sky right now, and it feels...different, a little like biting cold, but extremely pleasant somehow. Oh wait, that's the sun. No wait. Nope, never mind, its gone back into the butt of the clouds where it has been residing for the last few months. Seriously? I'm not even exaggerating. Remember how I started off my last post? I don't always do that.

Usually, I'm not the sort of person who sits with my chin in my hands, pining away when it's a cloudy day. I mean, sure, it's really pleasant when the sun is out. Except in the summer in India when it just stops short of searing into your skin and makes you want to wear an unmeltable ice-outfit at all times.

So anyway, over the last few weeks, since January actually, the sky has been a dirty mix of ash grey mingled with a pale dying blue. All the time. And I thought may be I was making too big a deal out of it, but then I read that this winter has been the darkest since 1950 something and it's been the second darkest winter in Germany since they started keeping records. So I'm not paranoid.

After all of this hopelessness, we had a glorious four or five days of sunshine and *gasp* warm-ish weather last week. Everyone hastily packed away their winter things, made plans to go sit in the sun with closed eyes and idiotic grins and started shaving their legs in anticipation of short, springy dresses (I mean just the women and our transgender friends, obviously. And cross dressers. You know, in a city like Berlin, this list could go on for a while, so I'm going to stop here).

But then, before you could say Betriebswirtschaft, it started snowing again. And it didn't stop all weekend. Out came the winter coats, the fancy hand creams and everyone's grumpy winter faces.

Now I really find myself craving some sunshine. At this point, I absolutely insist that you go here and see this one in particular. Someone at my office where I'm doing my current internship discovered it and everyone was laughing for like five years. Makes most sense for people who live here, of course.

So. That was the weather report for this quarter. Next week: Could your house plant be killing you? Stay tuned.

Suspiciously,
The Cyniqueen.

Image via google.com

Kickass cloudy procrastination

Berlin has been having a LOT of these days lately. On most days, it doesn't bother me me much. But I've slowly started waiting for the morning a splendorous shining sun just bursts through the clouds like an arrogant rock star and tells winter go to shove off. That would be nice.

Operation clean up, as I had called it in my mind because it sounded kickass, has in fact, not been kicking as much ass as I thought it would. But I try doing a little bit here and there when I have time from watching movies, which has been my main task lately. 

As Utopian as it sounds, it's true: I have to begin writing what is called a Master thesis for my course soon, and I'm looking to do something with movies and the portrayal of journalism. So everyone I know has been obligated to produce a list of movies they can think of with journalists in them. I really want to do something with the movie Chicago, one of my all time favourites, but I watched it again last night (for research, you understand. The cookies were merely a tasty aid to get my intellectual juices flowing) and I have a feeling I'm going to have to let it go. So any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

Also, Pinterest is threatening to destroy my life with its magnificent procrastination inducing powers. 

And, I miss India.

Love and warm, glittering sun rays hitting you like pew pew pew!,
The Cyniqueen 

Dirty talk

What's brewing, Netizens?

I've been feeling very positive about writing recently. Turns out, a figurative kick in the creative part of the brain helps.

Until a few days ago, no amount of proverbial kicking and prodding seemed to ignite my will to clean my tiny apartment, though. It was not a pretty picture, let me assure you. I kept sliding down a spiral of disillusionment. See, I always figured that at some point in your life, you stop acting like a child and kind of get your shit together and have this efficient household.

Getting your shit together means being a grown up. It means becoming the kind of people your parents were when you were a kid. It means that things in the house progress smoothly and efficiently. It means bills being paid properly, the subscribed paper actually being read everyday, pets being fed at the right times and having a well stocked kitchen at all times. It means periodical cleaning and never running out of milk in the house. It means taking out the garbage every day and changing the sheets and pillow covers every week. It means the laundry getting done before you have to reach into the laundry bag to retrieve dirty socks because there aren't any clean ones. Thank God, at least I have a laundry bag and not some big old plastic shopping bag whose mouth wobbles every time you throw something in.

It really scares me to think what will happen if I never grow up and have like a baby or something. I have these really disgusting thoughts -- will I forget to change it, will I lose it in a pile of papers or forget where I put it? What if I have a family and I can never teach them that you're supposed to fold your clothes, keep them in the cupboard and pick them out in a civilized manner everyday? What if they think that the norm is to keep a knotted pile of wrinkled albeit clean clothes in the laundry basket (or in my case, one of those big, blue, brilliantly shapeless IKEA bags) and wear them out of the bag till it's empty and that's how you know it's time to wash the clothes again. Small saving grace, though: I always, but always, make sure my kitchen counter is clean, because I grew up with the 'food is sacred' philosophy and I end up feeling really guilty when it's dirty.

When I was a child, and then when I got older, I just figured somewhere down the line everyone kind of 'adults up', stops messing around and starts living like someone's watching them. I was still waiting for my imaginary beobachter (*watcher/observer. But it sounds so much better in German). But I guess they're not coming.

So after this horrid phase of disillusionment, I admitted to myself, very grudgingly, that there is no magical, springy moment where you learn to be grown up -- you just have to do it.

And that's how my week's been. Other things? Cooking chicken curry for friends over a really fun dinner, landing a very promising internship, beginning to be able to see a still-hazy but certain end to my student-life a few months from now and really, really wanting a cat, thanks to this NGO in Mumbai who's doing such a commendable job and posting the most adorable pictures of animals for adoption on Facebook. Which makes me break into a string of incomprehensible, mushy baby talk. Which  makes for some embarrassing moments when I'm out in public, with sane, functional people around and I realise that I can't control the mushy squeals.

Eeeeeeeeee,
The Cyniqueen