Life has taken a little twist. It has  been a week since I have landed here.  Yes, I am in Uncle Sam’s land. It took almost 27 hours to travel 15000 kms. I had to change two flights one at Paris and other at New york.  Both are very huge airports. I have to travel through train and buses to change terminals at both airports. Although I had traveled through air before, but hadn’t got opportunity to travel on daytime. It was nice to see the land and ocean well above the clouds

Well talking about the city where I stay.. it is calm.. infact very very calm.. full of greenery and very well organized. People are seen hardly on roads. In bangalore, if you throw a stone it either hits dog or SE. But here, if you throw a stone, it either hits a car or another car. Public transport is pathetic. Life becomes tough without car. One must have car. Kansas City has spread across two states Missouri and Kansas. There is one state line road that divides these two. I work in Kansas City of Missouri state and I stay in Kansas City of Kansas.

Talking about the cars, one can get to drive the cars that one had never ever imagined of. People drive cars crazily. Traffic rules are always followed. Things cannot go wrong on roads and if they go.. don’t ask.

Everything is organized to the core.

Regarding the work, I am the 1oth infoscion who joined here for the client of size 500. Office environment is very good and office culture is very different from the one that we have in India. Loads of formalities, exchange of greeting s and smiles. Good thing about these people is they treat everyone with the same respect be it a CEO or a housekeeping guy. Everyone does their job and they do it properly. Working hours will be 8 hours usually from 8 to 4 or 9 to 5. People never stay in office after office hours unless required urgently. But one mentionable thing is .. if they work for 8 hours , they do only work and nothing else. Lunch break will be usually of half an hour. Most of times, people have  their lunch at their desk.  Like us, they too wait for Friday to come. There won’t be any important meetings during Fridays. People start leaving office from 3 pm. Everyone will be in weekend mood on Friday.

I am here on long term assignment. Hope, I soon get adjust with this place.

My tea-mies, Prazy and Amar, presented this before I come here ( I am still missing our daily tea sessions  )

I believe that everything happens for a reason and I hope this my new phase of life would make me better than what I am now. Onsite has  definitely a lot to learn from work perspective as well as life perspective.

Oh.. Grrr… when did I blog last time?

I apologize for such a long non-commercial break.  Where was I? I haven’t been anywhere.. I am here only in Bangalore doing well ( well ? ) .

It was not facing a blogger’s block or writer’s block or whatever.. I have been very busy for last few weeks. Well, you know, I work for a company which is 23 kms away from my home. Can you imagine that I travel 46 kms a day.  It takes 1 hour 15 mins in the morning and 1 hour 45 mins in the evening. That means I spend 3 hours daily in traveling. Thanks to the company, it provides bus facility which makes my commute easy. Otherwise, I can’t even imagine travelling such distance in such traffic in such time in bmtc bus ( well even the bus that I travel daily is also a bmtc bus for that matter but it is on contract.. so that means.. enough seats to sleep or to take rest or to listen to music or to read a book or to the whatever you want to )

You know long time back they have made a rule that every bus ( and obviously all employees who travel in buses ) should enter campus within 9. Thanks to them. Now i have my last bus at 7.30 AM !!! That means.. I have to wake up atleast 1 hour earlier. And the damn bus will be on right time and waits for none ( unlike cabs ). So most of times I endup running from home to bus stop . This is how my morning begins.

Offlate, I have rejoined the GYM ( this time .. the office gym ). Talking of gym, office gym is much much better than the one I used to go earlier nearby by my house.  Gym after office hours means… that much of delay in coming to home.  Being a lazy bum, I have started bunking gym also.. Hey wait.. not every time.. but only few times. Most of times, I bunk because of  office’s hectic schedule. Well that’s ok.. Because of all this, I reach home daily after 9 PM.

I read morning news paper with cup of tea at night.. i mean after i come from office. And after that dinner.. and some spamming on twitter ( well I do this most efficiently during commuting especially while coming back from office ) and some browsing and some chatting and some mailing. By the time, i finish all these, it will be almost 12 AM.  This is how my life is crawling. This is the reason why I am not able to blog.  Infact, I am unable to do anything. I am unable to study. I am unable to watch movies. I am unable to learn anything new. Life is just passing.. just like that. How can I organize myself in more better way? How should I manage time so that i can use that time to learn new things? Help? Pls?

I have a lot to do.. No time.. One life is definitely not enough !!!

Ordered these from @pringoo …

Author: Unknown

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t know and may or may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.

You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren’t so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough to get to know better. You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while wining the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Source: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/text/quarterlifecrisis.html

More on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

Yes. that was what 2008 for me. More bitter.. Little sweet. 2008 was more depressing to me compared to 2007. The year end was even more worse. Well, some lessons are always learned in a hard way. Lets not discuss about the bad things that happened to me. There were few good things too..

• I went to Bangkok this year and stayed there a whole fortnight.
• H1b Visa got initiated and petition got approved too. However, stamping postponed till now due to some .. you know ^^^^ reasons.
• Made a lot of good real nice friends in InfyBLOGS. This is one of the best  thing that happened to me in my Infy career.
• Became hyper active on twitter. It is addictive. It is crapville. It is knowledge sharing platform. There are many definitions for it. If you haven’t tried it yet, try it once. But caution.. either you get it or you will not.
• Professionally improved a lot according to my team expectations but not as much as I had wished. I yet to gain technical expertise on many areas that i daily work.
• Music became part of my life. I got introduced to diversed music by fellow friends. I bought Sennheiser PX 100. Music controls me now. It has power to change my emotions. It heels me. I yet to listen/discover hidden gems of different part of world music.
• Joined gym but gave up after a week. I have become more fat now compared to last year. Fitness was in 2008 year resolution and it will be continued this year also.
• Had 3 days Hyderabad Trip. Hyderabad is one of nice tourist attraction. I totally loved Golconda Fort.
• Started swimming and learning guitar but had to stop temporarily due to shortage of time and bangkok trip. will start both again.. thats for sure. One thing i learnt after joining guitar classes is ‘guitar is not the easiet instrument to play’. If you have that in mind, give it a try.
• I had Lasik operation for my eyes. Now, no more glasses for me. Eye operation was in my to-do list for last 3 years. It took 3years for me to fulfill it. It was postponed several times till decemember.
• Decemember was the most depressing month for me. I was disturbed a lot. I never expected that i will become so weak emotionally. I will not write anything about it. I hope this new year 2009 brings a smile on my face.

Happy New year to everyone

Welcome 2009 !!!