We’d just got back from lunch when Jerry called her into his office.

They were still inside when I left office at six.

I love Gouri. But Shreya is so hot.

God, can I handle two ladies at the same time?

I think not. I must choose and make my move before Jenson does anything. He saw us in the canteen and I am sure the bastard has the hots for Shreya too.

Tomorrow we’ve been asked to reach office by nine for a series of meetings with someone from Staffing.

I hope Shreya and I can go for coffee or something after work.

29 May 2006

11 p.m.

I know … I know. It’s almost midnight and I can hardly keep my eyes open.

What an utterly exhausting day, Diary. But things are finally moving. I have some sense of what is going to be my first live project.

I reached office this morning at exactly nine and the entire gang was already there by then. Later Vineet told me that Jenson had come in by EIGHT FREAKING THIRTY and then waited outside the office till a security guard opened it up for him.

What a pandering, overdelivering bastard!

Anyway, we had to wait till 9.45 before a firang lady walked into the office and introduced herself as Samantha from Hong Kong Staffing. She told us that henceforth she would be taking care of all our staffing requirements and our ‘continued experience and career development as consultants’. She seemed very nice and warm and promised us that we would all get a chance over the course of the day to sit with her and chalk out the next one year of our career in the firm. She then asked if we had any questions. No one had any except Jenson who had been taking notes the whole time.

He also made a stupid ‘thank you’ speech in the end on everyone’s behalf.

I swear I felt like throwing something heavy like the fax machine at him.

She then called each of us into her room, one after the other. Vineet went in first and spent two hours with her before returning with a big file of papers. He looked very pleased and whispered to us that Samantha was awesome.

She’s not hot though.

Apparently each person would be asked to answer a personality assessment questionnaire followed by a professional competence questionnaire before Samantha conducted a detailed interview about our likes and dislikes. Then she would tell us which projects were in the pipeline and choose two or three that fit us best. We would find out which projects we had been assigned to within a week. This elaborate process is one of the highlights of the Dufresne System and ensures that each consultant works on the projects that best suit them.

I was quite impressed with this attention to detail and couldn’t wait for my turn.

We were all very excited and she spent an hour and a half to two hours with each person. Jenson took two and a half hours. After his session Samantha told us that if we all had more than fifteen or twenty questions we should just email her later and she’d answer them when she returned to Hong Kong.