One of the advantages of working in a young company is that even the seniors are not really 'senior'. The average age of our team of 6 could probably be 30. The vibe is really swell, everyone can laugh at the same jokes and its a great bunch of guys to hang out with. Typically all of us head out for lunch together and we're doing team lunches almost all through the week (except that we foot the bill and we do NOT talk about work). Today was one of the rare days when none of the senior guys from our team could head out for lunch as usual, since they were caught up in a meeting.
We'd been planning to go to Spices since last week and everytime something or the other was foiling plans. Today since the 3 of us had enough time on our hands we decided to head for the Thai place. Spices is notorious for its lunchtime rush and S had warned us well in advance that whenever we were doing lunch there it'd be best if we made reservations or went in late. We were already late heading out, so this was our best bet.
I was the designated driver for today since S had already driven yesterday. Not surprisingly, 4 out of us 6 drive coupes. The 2 who drive sedans reluctantly, are married. The place was a short drive off the highway but the hardest part, like always in SD, was finding a parking spot. Now this place has a huge parking lot with lots of shops in and around, but to our luck we were left driving around, debating whether we should switch plans and head to some other place nearby. After completing 2 rounds of the lot we found a spot, ironically, right in front of the restaurant.
A 10 minute wait and we were comfortably seated with lunch on it's way. I was feeling really adventurous so I ordered the Spicy Noodles. S stuck with her staple Pad Thai and L ordered Broccoli (!). My roomie had been here a couple of times earlier and had recommended the Thai iced tea. Usually, I'm not big on the whole iced tea thing, but since my roomie had (almost) sung paeans about it, I decided to give it a shot. I was glad I did. This was probably the 1st time that I enjoyed an iced tea, Thai or otherwise.
L has joined us about a month back so he started talking about how he was finding a lot of things unusual at work, stuff he'd never seen in other places he'd worked so far. S is the senior-most of us juniors, working for close to a year here now. She told us that when she started here she used to be at work promptly before 8 am. Soon enough it was 8:15, then 8:30 and now she comes in anytime between 9 and 9:30. She told us how she was getting late to bed (10pm!) almost every night and was snoozing the alarm for close to an hour everyday before finally waking up. I too am going through a similar phase right now (8:30) and I was glad to know that I wasn't the only one (slacking :P). All of us unanimously agreed that waking up early morning was a hard thing :) One thing led to another and our talk veered towards names.
L & S have closely similar last names. Oddly enough, L is of Chinese descent and S of Vietnamese. I had assumed that L is Vietnamese too, making this association with S's last name and I was surprised to find he's Chinese. He said he got that a lot because of his unusual last name and told that sometimes people even went so far as to ask him if he was sure he was Chinese and not Vietnamese =)) While we were on that, L got another of his name pronunciations right. We have a colleague at work and almost everyone comes up with his own way of pronouncing his name. S was happy to fill in with the right way to say his name. She said she hated it, growing up, when everyone butchered her last name and so she now has a thing for pronouncing names correctly.
The food arrived quickly after and it was delicious, totally worth persisting to find that parking space. Running through all the food quickly (it was past usual lunch time!) we trudged back to my car. On the way back I realised an interesting thing. A chinese, a vietnamese and a desi just had a hearty Thai meal :)
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