YAMU’s new office in Nugegoda is way cooler than the previous one, in terms of temperature; but not so much in some other aspects.
Food
Food is mostly prohibited here; you would get occasional snacks and yogurts etc. from the taste-offs and you get tea or coffee – twice a day, served by a lady in a uniform. Nobody dares to bring in alcohol since we moved here although it hasn’t officially been prohibited (as far as I know). Instinct, probably.
Pictured: The biggest fan of the Tea Lady, Lamindu – the youngest YAMUite
In the beginning, Malinthe used to make coffee with Indi’s old, yet fancy coffee machine; but he no longer does so, as the machine is kinda buggy.
The grand old Pureit® has been replaced by an American® water dispenser, so you can get hot, cold, or room-temperature water now. Fancy!
Service
We no longer have the land-line, so no more people calling to make reservations in restaurants, inquiries on available rooms to take their ‘girl’, or calls looking to contact Uber. The latter is kinda sad because instead of repeating the same phrase “we are not Uber” like fifteen times a day, we could've signed them with PickMe (ha!).
Internet is scarce here (according to our calculations, around 250Mb per person, per day). They want it to last the whole day, so the speed has been rationed. If you are internet savvy, better bring your own internet or at least a stress ball.
Ambience
The new office is way smaller than the old one and has a more office-like vibe. One thing I love about it is the A/C. Unlike the sad little A/Cs at our old office, we have a giant A/C here in the center of the office, and it's well capable of freezing you to death (if it wants to). That's exactly the concern of half of the office people, so they've united to fight and ‘tame’ the A/C using various remote control apps.
But this old Chinese beast is too arrogant (and probably too old to read signals sent by modern smartphones) and continues to keep the place 18 degrees or cooler, no matter what they do. I'm glad about this.
Another plus: you no longer have to climb the stairs. The new building has an elevator, although it is slower than a 154 bus.
People here are less-weird now (AKA ordinary), so no more funky (or weird) stuff like Bulbeshwaran, Ramsay (both used to be resident shrines in the previous YAMU office) or pink flamingos. Indi is probably happy about this because it spares him the embarrassment of explaining these silly things to the curious people of our food delivery partner passing by the office.
Conclusion
Like everything else, YAMU has grown older over time, and like most old people it has become somewhat grumpier. But we are glad it's still around, live and kicking and hopefully remain that way for the foreseeable future.
And despite of old age, we won’t stop whining and dining (of course, outside the office) and ranting about our food and drinks. So, stay tuned!
