Of work and people

I have a mild hangover from yesterday's pub quiz with free drinks and food provided by the company. Unexpectedly, we weren't the bottom of the list either, although not far from it. That's not to say we're stupid, let's use a more diplomatic term here ... mentally challenged!
Nah, that's not it ... we had some organisatorial problems in our team, with 2 of us, me and the frenchie, arriving late, after the quiz started, another guy arriving even later and our boss arriving when they were footing up the score. It was also frustrating that they were general English knowledge questions, most of them ... eg. What's the name of the actor in the ‘70 series Name-That-Rings-No-Bells. I still managed to impress everyone by being the only one to answer correctly:

1. What's the capital of Slovakia - no pressure Ciprian, you're the only eastern european here, all eyes on me. It's Bratislava, duh!

2. What's the name of the element with the symbol Co in the periodic table - Cobalt!

At this point I should introduce you to my colleagues here; it's a small team, bear with me. I'll only use initials, just in case some of my readers happen to be part of this wizz-team.

B. - he's the boss, handling some management and also being lead developer. He's a nice chap; sometimes when the deadlines are tight he snaps, but he's cool. He likes to keep the distance a bit, maybe to be able to fire my arse when he discovers this blog! He's also a Liverpool fan and a coffee drinker trying religiously to convince everyone else to drink coffee!

moi - I'm the second developer, a bit of a sarcastic joker, thinking that every crisis can be solved with the right joke. Being a Chelsea supporter is a guaranteed source of banter with B. and C. below. Usually I have the upper hand as Chelsea tops the premier league at the mo. Tea drinker by default, flirting with coffee lately...

C. - head of QA, the only one born and bred in England out of the four of us (he's of indian descent). In the last couple of weeks, the other boys have added Lina after his name, to suggest he's too effeminate. Their arguments being he moans about everything, he drinks alcopops, he still lives with mom, maybe some others, I don't enjoy this bullying. I talked with him, he doesn't enjoy it either that much, although he puts his smiley face every time and tries to be brave. He's a Liverpool supporter too (for reasons that escape my understanding really) and a tea drinker. He's a talkative guy and he's my favourite character in the bunch.

F. - QA boy, french, so not surprisingly I've added a lot of jokes about the french to my portfolio recently. He "speakz like zis" too! He doesn't know or care about football and he's always left out of our banter about football. He's easily freaked out under pressure and the first one to pull his hair out when the shit hits the fan. I don't understand that, I thought the french were cold blooded! He has a thai girlfriend and he's a coffee drinker, the most prolific of all coffee drinkers out there, probably.

This is our main team. Now couple of random facts about it, in random order:

1. The QA boys do some development too, although they seem to suffer from an inferiority complex.

2. I'm the youngest of the team, at 28, the others being 31-32. But age is irrelevant.

3. We always have lunch together, a chance to catch up and most of the time it’s C. that starts up an endless topic … the latest being on how the drug companies do not act in the best interest of the sick people, just try to make profits and they all collude together to that end

4. I'm based on the 2nd floor with Operations people, the rest of them based in the basement, at least in the QA cycle. C. can't wait for the QA cycle to end and join me on the 2nd floor, he doesn't like the basement.

The extended team includes Ch., a south african like B., he's a support guy, technical though ... very funny guy and politically incorrect, which makes it even funnier. He was involuntarily funny yesterday when he couldn't answer correctly the question "How many colours are there on the South African flag?". It was almost as funny as F's reaction to "Who was the maid of Orleans?" ... I turned to him instantly "Joan D'Arc" and he goes "No no no, she wasn't a maid, all she's referred by is -virgin-". Guess what ... the answer was "Joan D'Arc".
P. was also part of the team, as product manager, but then she left for another department when the company decided that the product manager should be someone in the States. She lived for a while in the States but didn't like it that much, so she came back. English, she was the one to answer most questions.

We used to have a sales guy too, but he was sacked for not meeting his sales quota or being too lazy, or whatever. He had a romanian gf and he could say "Ce mai faci" to me every time, with an accent so horrible that I was "Excuse me?!" for 5 seconds before realising it must have been something in romanian. (Ce mai faci? means How're you?)

That's it, lunch in 10 minutes, how time flies when you do something that you like. I love my job!