Startup Time

I am planning to buy a Digital SLR shortly and lot of research is going into it. Whenever I buy something I research. I have got duped a couple of times due to lack of research so these days I am extra careful. My research for DSLR camera has thrown an interesting concept called ‘startup time’. In digital cameras this matters a lot. You press the ‘Power’ button in the camera and then how fast the camera is ready to shoot determines the start up time. This is very important if you venturing into some serious photography because photographic opportunities come suddenly and thereby you need a camera whose response time is super quick. And Digital SLRs have generally a startup time of 0.2 second, which is pretty fast. But never had I realized that this startup time will apply to my life also when I go for a pee in my office bathroom.

I work for a pretty big IT giant. They have eight offices in Delhi/NCR. Out of these eight offices, seven are built in huge premises with every modern facility. Cool Swanky! You feel like working when you enter these buildings. I have worked in five of them and I can say by experience that productivity is directly proportional to the kind of office building where you work. Now the office in which I am working currently is not like the other seven. It’s a blot on the reputation of the company. This building is almost 20 years old and looks like a godown from the front. The air conditioning system is historic and so is the furniture inside. Everything gives you the feel of a senile old man desperately trying to survive. God knows why they have not renovated this office.

There are two bathrooms in this office, one in the ground and the other on the first floor. I always use the first floor bathroom despite having my seat in ground floor. The ground floor bathroom is chaotic with only 2 peeing stations, two wash basins and two latrins or as I generally call them Nirvana Chambers. The First floor bathroom has four peeing stations, two wash basins and two Nirvana Chambers. This bathroom is bigger and has less rush compared to the ground floor one. I use this always unless my stomach requires some very fast Nirvana where I have no other choice but to the rush to the ground floor bathroom. Off late the peaceful first floor bathroom is having many visitors. I guess the reason is the front corridor, which in winter gets abundant sunshine and draws lot of employees for “Dhup Shekna” session. After getting warm they quickly enter this bathroom for the release session. This has created a nuisance in my life. I am a private guy. I hate peeing when others are also simultaneously peeing beside me. Its not because I have some defect or something else. It’s because there are a lot of guys who while peeing looks down at the other’s person’s peeing activity. This is extremely irritating and extremely embarrassing. Wish I could tell them “Concentrate on your instrument please. Mine is working fine. No need of extra concern brother”. But somehow I adjusted myself to this problem when a new problem popped up. One of the wash basin tap refused to work any longer. I our company it takes a lot of time to get things rectified. So it’s already two weeks but the tap is still out of order. As a result there is a rush at the wash basin. And here comes the concept of startup time. Suppose four people enter the pee area simultaneously. Now the one who finishes the pee session faster will have the first access to the only tap available. Rest three have to wait in a line. And some times, as most people will agree that despite having the instrument positioned it does not pee instantly. It takes a few seconds to deliver. Now whoever has the most responsive instrument starts the pee faster and concludes the session before the others and thereby gets the first access to the basin. Few seconds delay in pee delivery means waiting at the wash basin, which is such a big time waste. And as the bathroom is not cleaned often the wait become more intolerable. So in order to avoid the wait I am googling a lot on how to make the pee instrument respond faster to the call of duty. And you never know. My instrument may just become the fastest peeing machine in the whole world. What say?