Reading East Of Eden

I make it a point to read this book once a year and I have been doing so for over 10 years. Some of you might think that I am intellectually challenged (And you might have a point there) but I would like to imagine that there are some books which offer you a different perspective every time you read them.
To me East Of Eden is perhaps Steinbeck's finest work. The characters in the book are such that as you are reading you find that people you have met in life seem to fit those characters very well. Someone you know is bound to remind you of Samuel Hamilton and someone else will seem to be cut from the same cloth as Adam Trask. Besides Steinbeck has captured mankind with all its foibles in a manner which seems to suggest that for all the talk of change being the only constant, man has never really changed.
What caught my eye this time around was a small passage where he exhorts us not to fall prey to the idea of the team. He points out that a great idea only comes from one individual. Others may embellish it, better it but that single inflection point comes from the individual.
In a world where we increasingly see mass consumption (Everyone eats at McDonalds, drinks Coke, wears Levis) and mass branding (metrosexuals, singles, gays —everyone seems to be part of a larger group and targeted with one common message) eroding our urge to search for our individuality it is refreshing to find that he saw this coming that far back.
Will write more on the book later have to rush now for a meeting to discuss how 'WE' are going to work more effectively :-)

Lost In A Good Book

Wonder What Our Parents Did In Office

Every day I come to work and find that there is very little work. Fortunately we live in the times of the internet and therefore one can always kill time searching for music, emailing, chatting, playing games or just tooling around on google.
But that's now. Of late I have been wondering what people before us must have done to kill time in office, considering that even back then they could not have been busy all the while. Did they play with their out-trays and in-trays? Did they take an inordinately long time crafting letters in the Queens English just to kill time? Did they keep re-tying with their shoe-laces?
None of the above somehow seem like things they might have done. You might say that they chatted a lot to kill time, but that I think is unlikely given the stiff upper-lip atmospheres in offices of yore.
I sometimes wonder if I would find work bearable if they took away my computer or disabled the net. It would be quite like they pulled the plug on me. If any of you think you know how guys killed time before the PC or want to speculate please do so.

Dabull
PS
Maybe they made paper fans and fanned themselves given that AC workplaces were fewer :-)