The first day of work

Home, 15th May
I eat the remains of the chapattis from home, and decide to take a short nap. (Its 3:00 pm)
I sleep away the effects of the tortuous sleepless night before, and wake up at 6.

6 am.

16th May
The first day of work beckons, so I get ready. I'm ready by 7, and I decide to go wake up a fellow intern in the same hostel whose room number I happen to remember. A quick breakfast of home food, and I'm off. Work is two buses away, and the schedule reads:

Leave home at 8:14 am.
Reach bus stop (about a kilometer away) by 8:19.
Get on the 8:21 bus to Bahnofplatz. (Allowance of an extra forty seconds to accommodate for a red light at a cross road along the way)
Reach the city center by 8:27.
Get the 8:28 to Am Weichselgarten.
It reaches at 8:51. Walk two office blocks, reach the office by 8:57.
The schedule works like a charm, and a buffer has seemed entirely unnecessary until now.

And the office door is locked. I try pulling, pushing, sliding- nothing works. So I wait. (I found the bell by the door three days later)

Fortunately, a BMW slides next to me and Prof. Durst gets out. He is, apparently, overjoyed to see me. For different reasons, the feeling is reciprocated!

Everyone else at the office is already here, and I decide to await further instructions.
Prof. Durst calls all the interns for a briefing, and we oblige. (There are three of us)

He explains to us why he's called us here.
"Karthik", he says in his characteristic drawl, with considerable emphasis on , "You're a very theoretical person. You do theory, for the sake of theory. And you're very good at it."

'Oh, dear...' I'm thinking. Two reasons. One, I'm not good at it at all, and two, I won't like the sound of what comes next!

"You don't get paid... for your hobbies", the professor says. I'm worried now.
"If you spend a hundred thousand dollars on research, and the outcome is a publication,"- he holds up one of those- and you hand it in-

... TO BE CONTINUED LATER ...