farewell speech...

Let me tell you a story, a story of a journey, the journey of a wandering probe to the youngest planet of the brightest star in the universe...The stars, and there were many of them, used fuel to create more fuel. This was done by the probes, who had built engines. And our star had the most efficient engine to do this. It produced the most fuel and was the envy of the entire universe.

The story starts about 9 eons back, when the probe, against all odds landed on this planet. This was the probes first journey, and the planet, although had not light of its own, shined bright, bathed in the white light of its star. There were many other probes who landed along  with our probe here...and as soon as they landed, they were told "go to our star, see and understand its ways, learn how to make fuel, and then come back and make some on your own." And so they took another journey, flew to their star. And the star was all that it promised and more. Our probe and all others were in awe of the star, and had the best of times. They learned the ropes, and had a great time doing so. 

And then it was time to come back...and well you can't live anywhere for free, so the probe started contributing to creation of the fuel. But the planet was almost as good as the star it served, and so the probe enjoyed. There were many other probes, old and new, and our probe learnt a lot from them.

But there were a toxic chemical reaction brewing on the star, on all the stars actually. You see, the stars were mixing lot of bad fuel with a little bit of good fuel to produce what they thought and sold as awesome fuel. But the bad fuel showed its colors, and the engines started misfiring. And one day a couple just exploded. Others stars became dim, some died a slow death. But our star was still shining, still the brightest. You see, our star only kept the best probes, probes who created the best in class parts and an engine which could create fuel out of pretty much anything.

But for how long...this was a gravitational wave which had hit the universe, a gravitational wave created by the collision of two black holes named greed and fear. The waves were fondly called bubbles, and this one was stronger than most, and lasted longer than most. And our star started flickering, and became dimmer.

And in this darkening environment, an enlightened probe with a powerful torch and illuminated an idea.  So what if the engine is not performing well, and your probes are leaving, you still have all the parts, he said. Let's just replicate the parts and sell them for fuel.

All the fellow probes loved the idea, so the enlightened probe got to work, and he brewed up a dust storm which is still to settle. The crust of the star got eroded and the probes feared that even the core might burn out.

But the story is about our little probe, the wanderer who was feeling lost, and looking for his own beam.  

Fortunately (or not) in all of this confusion and darkness, our little probe got the invitation for a journey on another galaxy, and the choice was to wait for the dust to settle and the bright star to emerge again, or go on another journey. And he thought, what the heck, time to create my own little dust storm.

Incidentally, the star is fondly called the firm, and today is my last at the firm.

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This was my talk for our toastmasters club CC2, on the last day at my previous job.