My day begins on a very positive and encouraging note. I get up early in the morning. Not so early that I disturb the late sleepers, but early enough to experience the freshness of the crisp dawn, the slight chill in the air, and the sonorous sounds of unknown birds. As the day progresses, the stress level rises correspondingly - the race to the bus stop; the early morning problem reports; documents to be delivered; code to be debugged; fights with the client; broken coffee machines; mown lawns; fire drills. It all adds up and unless you are very sound in mind and body it can get to you pretty badly.

My friends and I have discovered a great relaxation technique to beat the stress out of the Software Engineer’s life: a light-hearted, free-for-all joke session! At the fag end of the afternoon, before the evening sets in, we all migrate to the canteen. Over snacks and a cup of tea/milk/juice, we poke fun at each other, denounce everybody around us and crack jokes that range from the abysmally pathetic to the utterly comic and brilliant. Often, promises are made to murder the perpetrator of the bad jokes.

Depending upon how much work each person has, anything ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour is spent in this state.

I will relate a recent joke that induced a lot of mirth all round. It is an improvised and expanded version of a two-liner I read somewhere. Here it is:

When Shakespeare died, he reached the Pearly Gates, and demanded to be admitted to heaven. God looked up Shakepeare’s past appraisals [an Infy term and method, that produced much laughter] and remarked that he had done an admirable job in progressing the English language. However, they liked people who knew a bit of mathematics, and it was company policy [hear, hear] to admit only those people who had satisfactory numerical skills.

So God said to Shakespeare “I will set you a simple problem, and if you are able to solve it I will let you in.” Old Bill had no choice, and so he agreed, but pleaded with God to make it simple.

God said, “You have been a great poet and I respect that. I will give you one of my simpler problems”.

Bill was extremely pleased.

God said, “It is a quadratic equation. Solve for x; x squared minus four b squared is equal to zero.”

Bill was zapped. He had absolutely no idea. He desperately tried to remember something from his childhood flirtations with mathematics, but it was hopeless. He did not have a clue. He thought to himself, “There is no way I can solve this. Let me impress him with some of my poetry”

Aloud, he started, “To be or not to be…”

God: “Fantastic, you are in.”