Life in US of A

There have been quite few things going on. So where do I start from?

Ok, let me tell you as they occured. The initial few days were more of getting adjusted phase. Bills (electricity, rent, telephone, mobile - had I even cared about them when I was back home.. Nahhhhhh), cooking (even though its twice a week). It actually feels nice sometimes to be independent but still miss the pampering by the family. It was like being alone in this big world with everyone around busy with work and me wondering how actually should I handle this as disturbing them would actually be the last thing that I wanted to do.

Then there was this phase where I felt really dejected as I started to feel that Iam not doing good in the work assigned to me. I was waiting for the six month tenure to complete asap so that I could run away from all this. But finally, with Almighty grace, everything seems to be much better now.

The initial days, as it is expected, I was more excited to know the place that I live in and never missed a chance to explore it on my own on foot. But with everyone around scaring me that its actually very risky to go out alone and since we are more near to downtown, its not advisable, now it has been almost one month that I have gone out alone... Even the shopping that I had been planning to do on foot has not happened and I don't see any probability of that in the near future too.

There was one more thing that actually came as a surprise to me when my client announced that I have been transferred into another project (that I had worked on before for one year) although it was for the same client. I still am trying to understand if it was because of my worst performance in this project or was it because I did some good work(if ever I did) in the previous project.

I had been expecting something good to happen on my birthday and as expected, the great news that I received just one day before my birthday was me getting promoted. The next event that happened on my birthday was my PU (practice unit) reaching "The Hundred Million Dollar" mark and we receiving a certificate of accomplishment. The other great news that I received was my client appreciating me for the work that I had done. The exact words in the mail -
"
Mike,

I wanted to send a quick note to recognize you and your team for the great work that was done on the new commission and bonus interfaces. The interfaces were delivered on time and had little to no issues. We even threw in an enhancement request at the last minute that was turned around the next day. The commission interfaces are in production and now and we will be moving the bonus interfaces into production very soon. This project was a great success!
Nasira did a great job on these interfaces and was a pleasure to work with.

Thanks for all your help with this,
Ashley
"
This was something I had really worked hard for staying awake late till 2 to complete the task. It was really good to see all the hard work getting paid off. Later this month, I received "On the Spot" award for the appreciation that I received from the client(which I had expected to happen). One of my friends said in the congrats mail, "finally you got this".
So in all, it was a great birthday week.

The other task that I had been working on was something which I had been scared from the beginning with all the feedback about the end-user. But finally that was completed successfully with few late and sleepless nights. Hope I get another client appreciation for this. That would be some kind of accomplishment to get one from a client who is a terror in the office.

Now with me into the new project, life seems to be very hectic... It has only been two weeks since Iam in this and it looks like I have been working since ages... Lets hope these initial trauma also goes off similar to as in the previous project.

In May, I finally managed to get my driver's license after taking driving classes from 'Maruti Driving School'. Should say, Vinod has a lot of patience and really is a good teacher appreciating each time when the driving was good and encouraging when something went wrong that it was ok, and it happens and I can do better. I had heard about the other driving schools that my friends had been where they were shouted at for doing something wrong. I was in that way, lucky to have learnt from one of the best tutors...

One thing that would actually surprise you is that it has been 5 months that Iam here and still I have not gone out anywhere (Not even to NASA). I have been confined to my apartment and office. Even the memorial day that we had last week was wasted with me spending the three days at home. Hope that in the coming days, I get to travel a lot and when I come back to post the next time, I have more interesting travel stories to tell and ofcourse snaps to show you....

So signing off now.