Restaurant Decor

In the last 6 weeks I have stepped foot in over a thousand restaurants, and once you get accustomed to the foot aches and cramps you notice the beauty beheld behind every door. I decided to compile an album of photos with the uniqueness of the restaurants' decor and how little trinkets and extravagant antiques add awesome effects to a place and brighten up the ambiance, lighten up your soul and set you in the perfect mood to chill! 

Snippets:

Bar - effect 

Reminds me of Wake Up Sid! 

Cute Sauce pots

Are you game? 

The paper-weight on all bills! 

The romance of candle light dinners and wine clubbed together

Break from the rosy canvases and scenic pictures 

Perfect for a Cafe! 

This one was by the museum

What a collection! 

Stand-Up Comedy

PS: Should have done this in Turkey too!

EOD

In the three and a half months which have spanned my life at Zomato, these three letters have taught me a great deal.

My day ends with this and the early morning sun rises on my world, shining on the significance of these same letters.  

EOD, in Zomaland stands for End Of Day. The crux of importance in my grand scheme of functioning is my EOD report. As a fresher, and semi-new to this world of jobs, tasks, duties and departments; I was fascinated with the EOD Report concept from the very start of my career graph with Zomato.

The EOD Report is a mail which each of us send out at the end of the day. This report essentially enlists the work we have done for the day. The subject differs across departments, but mine read 'How I Contributed Today'. Now if that can't enliven your sub-conscience, nothing can! This mail is marked CC not just to the head of department, but also to the founder himself AND to the whole department across all Zomato offices.

What's so cool about this practice on my Zomaland? 

It accounts for total accountability.

One cannot take away credit for work done by others, cannot exaggerate the work you've done because your entire team is receiving the mail. One tends to take the work a tad bit more seriously only because of this teeny-weeny mail. It connects you to the founder directly, regularly. 

It is because of this EOD that all day, I find myself writing down things I've done. My to-do list merges with these pages in my daily diary and I feel I am touching the epitome of being organized. 

Such an impact this has had on my grey cells that when I meet people engaged with other forms of employment, I think to myself, how boring/ exciting/ funny/ mundane/ mature/ childish their EODs would be! Here's how my thought process works: 

1. In a bank, early on a Saturday morning, I rest my chin on the cash counter as I wait to withdraw cash for my father: I think to myself, that the man behind the counter would have only 1 line to write, 'Processed X number of transactions today'. 

Verdict: Boring

2. At the neighborhood grocery store,to  buy stuff for home, as I run errands for my mother: I see this man chat at length with more than half his customers. He could write at length about his awesome communications! After all, it will help him keep track of each customer's life. Anyway, his son will take on after him and at that time, these reports will help the little lad as he is enlightened by life around him.

Verdict: Indian, print edition of Gossip Girl

3. In a bus: This one's semi-short for the bus conductor. Just a line of "so-many" tickets sold in the day. If he picks fights, gets engaged in brawls or gets caught breaking traffic rules then, he'd be adding spice to his life! 

Verdict: Moody.

4. I step into the mandir and the pandit is caught up with the morning rush of people: His EOD would be full of his experiences of seeing hypocrites in fellow "devotees" who visit God periodically. Would the persons concerned ask him to keep track of the number of people who stepped in, (footfall in the temple) number of garlands offered to the deity? Would he be writing about the commission he negotiated with the flower vendor outside the temple?

Verdict: Off the beaten track.

My thoughts run wild and my brain cells run a rat race when I think along these lines and try to picture the whole world in the Zomaland way of doing things! 

3 months at Zomato!

Yesterday, I completed three months of being employed and can proudly say I have been through as many cycles of learning experiences. As my probation ends, and the calendar takes the liberty to mark a milestone in my career, I sit back and think how life has changed over the last quarter. 

I have found a second home in my extremely cosy office, with the rest of my colleagues. I eat,drink and sometimes, even sleep, there. We find our comfort zones within the many walls of our office, and just settle in. 

While leaving home at a fixed time has become a habit, the lack of such a stipulation for my return does not upset me even a little. 

Before Zomato happened to me, I'd never care much about menus. Even in fine-dining places I'd order typical dishes which one would know by common sense. Dal Makhani at a North-Indian joint and Chili Garlic Noodles at a Chinese place. You still couldn't tag me as a boring person, because I would thoroughly enjoy the delicacies which were innovative platters, and off the beaten track. But you ask me to order something new, and I'd turn to my friends or my mother, and go by their choice entirely! The difference between then and now, is that, I am obsessed with menus now! I collect them. We prize them close to our hearts and we go to such and such extremes to get them.

Most importantly, the most significant change of all has been, to find people from diverse walks of life: meeting everyday at the same place, sharing the same space endlessly day after day and working in unison towards a common goal: May the Zomato flag fly high! #respect

Joys at Work

I am well into my third week of being a Zoman, and the happiness is boundless. The sense of contentment and the joy of a full-time occupation that it brings to me in unfathomable and it won't be an exaggeration to say that eventually I am beginning to get emotionally attached at work.
Even though, some of my closest friends would advice me against it, I bring work back home. I take work everywhere I go because this city of joy has no dearth of eateries! In plain and simple words, my work is fun.

Therefore, my pensive self surfaced as I was walking down a busy street in this city, where a flyover decided to kiss its lower counter-part yesterday. Just by the way, the world stops for none: A day after a busy flyover caved-in, cars still raced their way down. At some point, I was below a flyover and remembered the Almighty to bless me with a long life, and then in just the next second, another thought overtook this one: How brave were those who took the flyover which was towering above my head, just then! Bravo for their bravery!

Anyway, thoughts were racing, as if in a Formula 1 race, which had scheduled itself on my mind, without prior notice or permission. It has been a little over a fortnight since I joined work, and I can easily list five instances, at work, which make me smile almost everyday:

1. When we all walk in, and either the previous day is discussed in a new light, or the day ahead planned in a fleeting manner.
2. When my 'boss'(who by the way, hates to be called so) reiterates lines which I call, her signature sayings. These usually pertain to various work situations and giving out all of those with their context would be letting out 'internal information'! *wink**wink* Here's the best one: "If you snooze, you lose."
3. When 'randomness' prevails in the room, and has us rolling over in peals of laughter.
4. When the Hunger Lord makes our office, his home and abides in each one's heart, er, stomach. The first person to voice his/ her need for food is usually the one to make the mini-meal for all.
5. When one person asks for directions to a certain place and minutes later, he/she regrets being vocal about it because everyone present in the room has a different suggestion, a different route and a different opinion about the estimated time of travelling. No, we do not claim to be the creators of Google Maps, its just the 'Happy to Help' instinct!

My love for my work brings me to smile everyday. When you have joys aplenty, you share them like this: 

Self Criticism

Sometimes some days just give you an insight into yourself. When that insight becomes too deep, you tend to get confused. My confusion for the day revolved around self-criticism. Whether it is good, bad or ugly. Smart people would say it is good in moderate measures. Well, my question to you is: How moderate is moderate? How exactly one measures such things I have no idea, but what  I do realize is that these ideas leave me terribly confused and sometimes even, leave me with a feeling of self- loss.

Before I get something, I am scared if I'll achieve it, if I'm capable of it, if I deserve it and so on.
After I get it, I rewind, review and recall and still criticize myself about things not done, undone or partly done.

So here's a note to myself:

Do not beat yourself about things wrongly done. Mistakes are human and everyone's allowed their share. Learn from your errors and move on. Do not beat yourself blue over it. The more you criticize yourself, the worse you get. Keep room for improvement but do not take everyone's each word to heart and allow self-doubt to creep in!


The reason why I made this note public is because such thoughts were abound in my head even at the end of today: Today, I secured my first job. Today, I became a content-writer at Zomato. Today, I got my first offer letter even before I graduated. Today, I became a Zoman. Today, I nailed it!

Yet, today, I allowed this negativity to dwell in me.

Be proud of yourself and what you do. Allow mistakes to happen, because along with mistakes happy things also happen!

Love what you do

Busy days have dawned again and this time it is an internship which takes all my time, making me wish for over 24 hours in the day!
I recently got recruited as an Intern at Zomato, and thereafter I've found out what is truly meant by loving one's work. A popular barometer used by most people to measure the pleasure of working is, the feeling they get when they wake up to a weekday morning. If you go by that scale, my happiness and joy is at its peak if I know it's a Zomato-day! This I realized today, when I woke up and figured that it was a holiday.

The place is cheerful and the Kolkata office which offers livelihood to about a dozen people is always lively. We help ourselves to Maggie and Chocos, when our mouth waters after having screened home delivery calls for restaurants, and listening to the repeated utterance of delicacies from various cuisines. At Zomato, there is an hierarchy but it does not super-impose itself on people's individual personalities. People remain people, and their names are more commonly used without the suffixes of 'Sir' and 'Madam'. All Zomans take their work seriously, but when that serious work is interspersed with a little leg-pulling, witty remarks and silly jokes, achieving targets doesn't seem so much of an uphill task.

So much joy, without being a permanent employee!
Proud to be a Zoman!  :D

My Apple World

As time passed by over the last few days, morning turned into night and then again to a bright, sometimes cloudy, morning; I found myself multi-tasking more than ever. It felt tiring and strenuous at that time, but now when I look back I have a sly smile. Honestly, if you've ever been loaded with work and later, been blessed to be relieved off most of the load then you know what I mean!

Through these unusually long days, I found respite in the wonderful App Store, on my iPhone 3GS. Some of the applications have blessed my phone for long now but it's just now that I am grateful. Hence, I decided to put together this list and it shows that everytime you're on the phone you're not necessarily texting someone! There's so much more to do:

• My Wonderful Days: A wonderful application, in the truest sense. It is essentially a daily diary app. But it doesn't end at that. You can add a daily picture of any moment which defines your 24 hours, two symbols to ear-mark the weather and additionally, the app is password locked for privacy!

• Project 365:  A yearbook of sorts, this app helps you maintain a photo-book throughout the year. To summarize each day in a picture is somewhat difficult. But the good part is, ever since I've downloaded this app I click pictures of random things: from momos that I eat to the books I read! At the end of the day, I sit down to pick and choose which one classifies to my Project 365.

• Zomato: A fantabulous app which is super handy to pick a place to eat. Meant for all foodies!

• Grateful: Even though I feel each app is the best, I think this one is truly exceptional. I plant sunflowers of gratefulness! Each time I'm grateful about the slightest thing, I plant a seed and watch the plant grow, bloom and shine. Moreover, the app reminds me five times in a day that I'm supposed to be grateful. Believe it or not, the reminder comes just at the time I need it!

Explore your phone and enjoy it, relish technology at its best!