How to Withdraw Cash from an ATM
It is so simple, right? You insert the card and do what the machine tells you to do. But there are intricacies if you are writing instructions for someone how to withdraw cash from an ATM. Firstly, where do you insert the card? There is slot on which it is written “Insert your card here”. By the way, what card do you insert? It could be your ATM/debit card or a credit card. Then you choose the language for the transaction (we say, oh, obviously English: but there could be a money-bag who has piles of cash but does not know English.) And so the story goes on… You could fill 4 pages before you come to “Collect your cash.’
I am talking of an arcane discipline called technical writing here: a technical writer has to look at a procedure from all angles – error conditions, the systems prompts from time to time, and so on. Many people think that any idiot can write these instructions; but it requires a special kind of idiot. One who thinks how things could go wrong at various points in a workflow. Take the case of an ATM. Sometimes, there is a notice saying that it is not working. But you can still insert your card, and at some point in the transaction, the machine tells you it cannot dispense cash – that is, after you have entered the pin, amount, chosen the account type and all that hype.
This essay is occasioned by a written test I had to take for a job as a technical writer: they said don’t make it more that 4 pages. Being a seasoned technical writer, even I thought initially, why it should take so long, but in the end I did end up using the upper limit to the document. There are a lot of job opportunities in the technical writing field: I recommend that for anyone with a flair for the language and an aptitude for technology. It is quite lucrative: it sometimes pays on par with software development.
Old hands in technical writing joke that it is a kind of 'manual labour' because it involves writing manuals!
Run up to Ganesh Nimajjan (Immersion)
Some Ganesha festival committees complete their puja a few days before the big Nimajjan day – which this time happens to be the 22nd of September. It has to do with Police permissions and that kind of bureaucratic hoopla. The Ganesh down the street was moved last night with huge fanfare. They started the drums and procession at 10.30 pm and at 12.30 am, it was still at the other end of the street. Late at night, some revelers came back with less of music but sufficiently ecstatic.
This season has been peaceful. In the good old days, there used to be riots and all associated with the Ganesh pandals. The police are alert, they are better equipped, and they rounded up people whom they suspect might create trouble. The specialty this time around was some old and middle-aged women dancing away to glory in front of the truck on which the idol was being carried. I haven’t seen this before, although for several years now, I have been outside Hyderabad during the Nimajjan season. Sighted among them was on big fat young lady.
When asked why don’t you carry on quickly, the ‘organizers’ of the procession said: sir, it’s only once a year.
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