What to do?

All right! So its done!
I had my first tape-out in my new outfit yesterday.
Can you imagine a tape-out without nights-out? One in which at no point of time you think that things are out of control? Well this one was like that. We got into tape-out mode one week ago, but tape-out mode was just another extra hour in the evening. Everyone still managed to leave work at seven. Only at the last day I had to stay till three and that too because I had made a mistake in firing a really long simulation and had to fire it again.

Now apparently the entire team has a "rest-period" for six weeks while the chip arrives.
Six weeks!!!
A colleague of mine was telling me the other day that silicon can be expected only six weeks after release to fab. I innocently asked him what people do in that period. He looked at me in confusion, looked at his compatriot with the expression, "what's with this guy?" and says "Nothing of course!!"
Then it was my turn to have the expression, "What's with this guy?". But its true! For the next six weeks nothing has been planned. I guess I will catch up on my reading for a change.

Have you noticed how boring it is to land up at work and have nothing to do? I sit and gawk around. Then I check gmail. Then I check rediff. Then timesofindia.com. Then a few blogs and in fifteen minutes I do not know what to do next.
I tried searching about string theory to put myself up-to-speed on the developments but gave up on it in five minutes. They talk pure Swahili!

********

Today this associate of mine e-mailed me from Bay Area. The signature on his email read:
(Particulars changed to protect identity)

ABC Kumar
Converters Group
XYZ Semiconductors
San-Diego USA
"Arbiet Macht Frei"

(Arbiet Macht Frei loosely translated from German means "Works makes you free". This was the motto of the Aushwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp)

I think he is over-worked.