From Confusion to Clarity

Today I've finally made a definitive decision over the biggest confusion a software professional in India faces.

I've met 100's of guys in London and now Houston who are staying onsite from years together. They came as singles and are now married (some of them with kids too). They'd love to go to India and settle down but they give me this reason and stick around endlessly.

There is more opportunity in the US. Also, going back to India, they won't earn as much money. So stick around.

Now, for those who think "It'll be great living in US", here is a real life eyewitness state of Indian people in US.

You can't really pull out the culture out of the people. So, Tamilians would stick with there jaat bhais and so would Kerelaites. In reality, all South Indians live a completely secluded life in the US. They form a mini-TN or mini-Kerala for themselves out here and are completely happy with it. They don't interact with anybody they don't go out very often. They don't wanna discover anything. Their life is a misery which only they understand.

As for the rest of the Indians, they mix up but, that mix up is limited to only Indians. They won't mix up with any of the natives. I've yet to meet a Indian guy from my last 2 years of experience in London and Houston who had really 'pally' English or American friends.

The only interaction with natives is on a office lunch , or a special party from the office like Christmas. Some of them, to show thier affections to thier bosses call them on dinner at home.

Also out of my 1.5 years of experience in London I might have spotted atmost 2wice or thrice some "British Indians" hanging around with native junta. Indians abroad have a community of thier own and they only limit themselves to that. Yes, I am also talking about 90% "British Indians" too.

So, "I won't earn as much money in India", what could this mean? When I think of myself saying this, the only thought that creeps into my mind is, I'm afraid of going back and making big on my own back in my own country. There is a fear in the mind, that I will need to work long hours, I will need to get into petty politics and after that what will I get? just a promotion? Instead of that I rather stay in US or UK so that I make more money.

Life for Indians in US as far as I can see is, " Something good will happen tomorrow. So let's wait and see. If it dosen't happen at least we'll have more money!"

I'm now convinced after thinking this through over and over that this is pure escapism. I'm no longer afraid of making it big in my own country. Only if I need fast cash will I ever travel abroad. And I will never settle abroad. It's not my piece of cake!

This is the confusion I've solved.

Free but Caged!!

I will regret the time from Feb 7th 2006 to March 7th 2006 of my life.

I have this complete month off. No work. But, I am still trapped. Its like a caged holiday. I cannot go anywhere coz' the plane tickets are very expensive, I can't drive since I don't have a SSN card, and to top that I need to search an apartment too!

Mexico is 3 hrs away to drive, but I don't have my passport.

Kapil lives in Dallas but the Greyhound takes 15 hours to reach there. And by car you get there in 3. Car? No, I dont have a licence.

SFO where a couple of my friends live is again 4 hrs by flight. And flight tickets at the 11th hour are too expensive.

I am trapped. This again proves that God does not exist. Coz' if he did, small inconvieniences like this could easily be avoided by some miraculous magic.

So here I am sitting in my hotel room like a sad ass and writing this piece of blog. I don't even know whether it will make sense to the reader.

Total inactivity is dangerous. Since you are bored to death you find new ways of passing time. For e.g. eating. Yes, I feel like eating every 1/2 an hour. I don't know why. First entire week I gave in to the cravings. However, considering the fact that I am already around 10 kg overweight I had to pull the strings. The only way I could avoid this was by only turning to liquid rather than solids!

I bought around 20 packets of soups from a Indain store here. Knorr soup. And everytime I feel the craving for eating something. I gulp down an entire cup of soup.

This is the wisest thing I could do since I couldnt get my cravings under control.

So what can i say,
An empty mind is a devils restaurant ?

Houston, Texas

Quit London, have reached Houston.

First couple of weeks are going to be hard since I'm gonna have to wait for my passport to be with me. Only then, can I move out into an apartment, have a licence, a car rental etc.

When you come to US, you realise their need for Oil. Here , in texas, people drive pick-up trucks, which can house at least 8 people , alone. Such vehicles give a mileage of 5-10 miles per gallon. Now you know why innocent Iraqis are being killed.

To add to that they have deliberately made nearly no public transport. Cities like Chicago,NY etc have a good interconnected public transport system, but the rest of the US drives. And for that it needs OIL. This was one of the most noticeable facts after I came here.

However, they are themselves realising the danger of being over dependant on OIL for a long time. You can clearly see that practically all American car manufacturing companies are rolling out prototype models with Alternative fuels.

Toyota has launched Toyota Prius Hybrid, which runs on a combination of electric powe r and normal fuel. Chevrolet has launched over a million vehicles which run on a combination of E85 Ethanol (which is manufactured from 'corn') and normal gasoline.
This is what excites me. This is what I call maintaing the edge, come what may.

On relative comparison, Mani Shankar Aiyer (for those who don't know, he is the Petroleum minister of India) is vooing the Iranian and Pakistani governments for allowing a Oil pipeline into India. While this step is completely welcome, the ministry needs to put in billions of rupees in alternative fuel. Coz' if we get ahead in the race for gaining our upper hand on alternative fuel vehicles, we can actually realise our dream of India becoming a super power 50 year quicker than current estimates.

I wish I was in the Government.

Might have lost crores of Rupees

I had an idea where-in we would start a company which manufactures electronic books. These are books which provide you the exact comfort as your good old books but are electronic. I and Sandy Yadav (whose unfortunately good for nothing. Pun Intended) did quite a lot of research on it in 2004. We actually went hunting for technocrats who might assist us in developing this technology. I was pretty sure that this was a billion dollar idea. In fact, I'm still sure of that.

The idea failed. We never reached anywhere.

Now, in 2006, Sony has launched the first version of its e-book. Read it here.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/29/sony-to-announce-us-e-book-reader

Imagine if I had started off manufacturing these. I could have been a millionaire man!

But i lost it. :(

An Idea can get u xtra 3K a month!

I'm a guy whose got new ideas. I keep getting them and they keep coming in. Here is another one.

I've invested in a couple of mutual funds which are giving average returns. The returns are around 3K in a timespan of 6 months. The principal invested in each of the mutual fund is 10K.

Now dig this.

What if I keep investing 10K every month in a new mutual fund or as an SIP in each of the already invested mutual funds? I only need to take care that I dont invest in some really bad non-performing mutual funds.

There is a plethora of new MF's which keep listing all the time. I just need to pick up the more well known fund houses and keep investing in them.

Lets do a bit of maths:

10K * 12 (investing each month of the year) = 1 lac 20K

This is nothing when you compare to my stock investments which were 2 lacs once.

Even if each fund gives me 4K a month, it will be an extra income. :-)

See, I told you I get bright ideas for earning more money.

Alright then, I'm off to study some good performing mutual funds.

Boredoom setting in

End of first week in London and the same old boredoom is setting in. Last year every friday me and the roomies used to get to Central London and drink our way through the night. However, I dont like it anymore. Same old guys (the roomies). One of the guys is cool and the other is currently pursuing MBA. He is in a different state of mind. We keep talking the same old things. I guess today I will stay at home. Won't accompany them anywhere.

Morever, there is no point ogling at the english chicks which we used to do, I hate it. I'm thinking of getting a chick of my own ;-). I'm on a major hunt this time. God knows what was I doing last year. Should have started doing it then.

Depression man .. manic depression. I can make a good song right now if I was a musician. Emotions are running high.

Reached London

Well, whenever I try to see my blog I dont see the last 2 updates of mine on it. I can see all the rest. Looks like this blogger.com software is dodgy. Will give it a week. If it dosen't get sorted out I think I will switch to rediff. That's pretty good I heard.

So, the saga has gone 7000 miles apart now. I've reached London. There are quite a few things to talk about now.

Firstly, I might be included into a new project called COMS for which I might have to get to Houston. There are hurdles to it but. As you know life aint that simple.
Some big time manager there is being asked to influence my onsite manager here to get me out of this project and include me into that. Its kinda long shot but lets see how it goes. Till now everything is being going smooth.

So now my quitting plan needs to be rethought. It might be like this. I go to US on an H1. I see that I am getting a better Salary outside so I switch.

In case going to US fails things are as they are, meaning, quit here in UK and get a newer job. Now again, that has strings attached. Work permit issues and all that Jazz!

Time to quit

The time has come to say bye-bye to CTS. I'm completely bored to death in this company. The project I'm in has no value addition to my career. Moreover, after going to London now I will have to work on ulrta crap technologies like Winrunner. I will be a part of regression testing. My great development skills wasted end to end :-).

The way I'm planning for it is like this. 8th Jan I am back to London. Before that I'm gonna prepare myself for a rock solid technical Java interview. As soon as I land in UK I'm gonna frantically search for a job.

In UK, when you are on a work permit, switching jobs is not as easy as its in the US. You need to find a company which is desperate enough to take you in and sponsor your work permit transfer. Finding such companies is difficult. However , I'm gonna try really hard this time. Hope it will work out.

Now, If this dosen't work out I'm NOT going to stick around. I'm coming back and switching the companies here in India itself. Fuck UK. I don't care a shit about the money there.

One thing which I have realised is, I can't see myself as a Senoir Associate or a APM or a Manager in this company. I constantly have this incling that I'm built for starting up on my own. Now, how I'm going to do that I know not, but till the time I can figure that out I can at least work in better company, meet different people, if not anything at least enjoy life.

So the winds of change have arrived and I'm flowing with them. This is the first time I've felt completely confident about quitting and I might as well do that.

The sad part.

I will have to format a parting mail when I resign and I'm really bad at writing senti stuff.

Meetro

Today I checked out this fantastic service called www.meetro.com.

The idea is to get people are in physical vicinity of each other to meet over IM. All major IM's are supported.

Imagine what this can do?

I wanna go home at 7 pm but the company bus is at 7-30pm. If entire IT park in Pune is on Meetro, I can search for all the Meetro'ers who are in 1/4 Km away from me. I can just post them that "I need a lift". This would save such a hell of my time.

There could be millions of other possibilities like my Mom instructing the Kiranawala to fetch milk over the internet !

Increased interest in politics!

Recently I've been increasinlgy following Indian Politics for some unknown freaking reason. 2 months before, I wouldn't even care a shit about what Laloo and Nitish are upto!

Back home in MH Shiv Sena's battle to integrate itself after Raj gave kalti is also getting interesting. The fall of Shiv Sena is good for MH coz' there are better leaders out there like Sharad Pawar et al.

Another startling fact I'm rising upto is, I'm having this faint inclination towards getting into politics myself ! Yup, totally absurd I know. Seedha Saadha guy like me will be eaten alive among those wolves. But then someone needs to come out to make the difference. What do you think? Will you vote for me? :-)