Goodbye 2007, Welcome 2008!!!

I do want to write a blog entry today but am buckling under pressure. The pressure of writing something thoughtful and profound! If you think about it 31st December is just like any other day of the year. Then why should I feel that my blog entry today has to be something more meaningful than any other blog entry? Why do we celebrate 31st December so much whereas we should be celebrating every day of the year? (hopefully celebrating every day does not mean binge drinking :))

Enjoy this photo I took flying yesterday at Kamshet. It really goes well with the entire thoughtfulness theme of this blog...

This last month, I got whole new perspective as I experienced four people pass away.

• First one, in the family took place in a different city. Physical distance makes it so much easier to deal with such situations. For the 15 years that we stayed in US and away from family, deaths in family was a moment to pause and move on.
• Second one, happened again in the family. This time I came face to face with a dead body for the first time in my life.
• Third one, I witnessed while flying at Kamshet. A paraglider flying next to me collided with another one, both of them fell to the ground. Later I found out that one of them died on the way to the hospital. At one moment I was having a great time flying and the next moment I felt nauseating and wanted to land quickly.
• Fourth and last death, again happened in family. This time, I saw life extinguishing at an astonishingly close proximity and at agonizingly slow speed. I hope you never have to sit next to a person and watch their heart rate drop slowly over time to a flat horizontal line! It is not easy to fathom that the person lying next to you is taking their last few breaths!

The amazing thing about these series of deaths was that I got increasing exposure to end moments of life! It affirmed my belief that life is short and we have to enjoy it while it lasts!!

If I may borrow a song from my moondogger set of close friends,

People dying everywhere, happy new year!
People dying everywhere, happy new year!!

Chak De 2007

As we look back on 2007, it has been a year of massive change for us. After living in the (x=x+1) dilemma for number of years, we finally decided to take the plunge and make a move back to Pune. Only after we started packing our house we realized how huge of a task it is to wrap your life in packing paper and bubble wraps!  The whole ordeal of packing and shipping more than fifty boxes across continents, itself could have counted as a major accomplishment of the year. But that was just the beginning for us….

Then was the task of getting admissions into the only school we wanted Rhea/Roma to attend. We were lucky to not only get the admission but to also find out that the school uniform is color “green”, Rhea’s favorite color. Even just at 4 years, Rhea was letting us know loud and clear her opinions about how she does not want to go to a different school in a different city. We were quite relieved when she easily adjusted to the new school and new routine. Then it was Roma’s turn as she started her playgroup year at the same school and she also fell into a routine very quickly! A big sigh of relief! :)

Rhea and Roma have adjusted extremely well to the new surroundings. They especially love all the attention they are getting from both sets of grandparents. It also helps that they have numerous cousins to play with every day and night. Looking back it has been worth the effort to go through all the pain of relocation just to see Rhea and Roma enjoy the way they are here in Pune!

Medha went along with my decision to relocate and agreed to pack her life in a short span of just few weeks. In fact she was still in Pune on a vacation when we made up our mind to relocate. So she had to rush to Redmond, pack everything up and fly back to Pune. She too has adjusted well, although she is still not getting used to Pune traffic and routinely picks up fights with pune rickshaw-walas. I am secretly hoping that Rickshaw owners will boycott her, which will force her to learn to drive a stick shift and take on the Pune traffic! 

Me; on the other hand am still getting used to hassles of living in India. Slowly but surely am falling in a routine of getting up early enough when the traffic isn’t so badplaying badminton or tenniseating onion uttappa and filter coffee (ummm) breakfast at Roopali and then working from home! ;) It also helps that there is a great paragliding site near Pune which I have started frequenting almost weekly!

All in all we had a wonderful year and we are looking forward to more excitement and adventures next year. We wanted to give you an update from our side and wish you a very happy and prosperous 2008!

Cheers and keep in touch,

Roma, Rhea, Medha And Suhas
Pune, India

Desire to fly

I really like this clip. Captures the craziness people exhibit in order to realize their dreams!

Diwali 2007

So far we have been having great time enjoying diwali. It's been 14 years since I am in Pune to enjoy diwali first hand. For last 14 years, our diwali celebrations were done US style, which means simply getting together once with friends on the nearest diwali weekend. It used to be fun but clearly lacked real diwali atmosphere. May be because we didn't get to enjoy it for so many years, this year we are enjoying every scent, every aroma, every taste, every vision and every small moment of the spectacle that is Diwali.

One thing I have realized is that regardless of how technology has helped make the world smaller (or flat) there is no substitute to "being there" to enjoy something....

Enjoy some of the photos of our diwali celebration. Can you notice how we are hedging our currency fluctuation risks for 2008? :-)

huh?

From NY Times article on November 4th,

The emergency rule came into force less than 24 hours after Musharraf met here with the senior United States. military commander in the region, Admiral William Fallon, who warned the Pakistani leader that U.S. military assistance would be in jeopardy if he introduced martial law, diplomats said.

Soon after Musharraf’s emergency decree, Washington officials said it was unlikely that the military aid would be cut.

Huh?

Flying at Tower Hill

After looooooooong time, I finally had a flying day. I joined the gang of Temple Pilots and went to Tower Hill at Kamshet. It had been over an year (I couldn't believe it myself that it has been so long) that I was able to paraglide so obviously I was feeling a bit nervous. We gathered at a restaurant "rangoli" at the Kamshet phata on old Pune-Mumbai highway. Temple pilot guys had arranged a jeep to take us up to the launch and for retrieve. You go anywhere in the world the trip to launch is always in a some overcrowded SUV type vehicle where all you hear is paragliding talk. I think paragliding inherently is a solitary activity so when sharing a ride to launch or sitting around in LZ, pilots tend to over-socialize :) As we reached on the launch, the wind was coming in too strong. The launch is a wide , smooth grassy area quite big enough to top land easily. After para-waiting for about 3 hours I finally launched in a perfect straight cycle. Once in the air I felt much comfortable and all the nervousness of the new site was long gone. I had a really good low save and was back on top of the launch. I decided to practice my not so good top landing skills and came in and landed rather fast. Then soon enough I launched with another perfect launch! I was the last pilot to land in the LZ where we got picked up by the jeep and brought back to Rangoli. After a gap of 12 months, I was finally able to go out and fly . I had the silly-a-good-paragliding-day-grin on my face all the way back home! :)

Random sight on Mhatre Bridge

Random sight caught on camera while crossing mhatre bridge....No idea how all those balls are being held together.

chicago a sister city of new delhi?!

Just got back from a crazy one week trip where I visited Atlanta, Cincinnati and Chicago all in a span of five days. You can find some photos of this trip by clicking on this link. If you keep your eyes open and camera ready you always find something interesting to blog about. e.g. Did you know that Chicago is a sister city to Delhi :) Also did you know that real Chicago-ian pronounces as chicago not as sheecago but as chi-as-in-chicken-cago? I did not know it until my recent trip :)

The other new experience for me in this trip was eating at a Brazilian steak house, boi-na-braza in Cincinnati. The meat they serve in that restaurant was very delicious and I will highly recommend experiencing the Brazilian steak house at least once in your life.

it's official.....16 hour flight worse than space travel!

You won't believe who was with me on my marathon 16 hour flight from Mumbai to New York!!!! Even I didn't realize it until I saw few people asking for autographs from that person. She was standing right next to me, waiting for her bags to arrive on the conveyor belt.

She was none other than Sunita Williams, woman of Indian descent with a record of longest stay in space!!!

Many people were asking for autograph and taking a picture with her. I didn't feel like doing either of those two things. The fact that I got to personally meet her and talk to her is something I can cherish for life and I do not need a scrap of paper with her autograph to prove it...But anyways, I did want to talk to her. So I asked her which one is more difficult, sitting in the non-stop 16 hour flight from mumbai to JFK or the space travel. And to my surprise, she said that the 16 hour flight was more difficult....(maybe because we had just crawled out of our fetus position after that long flight :)) But there you have it....it is official.

Although I have to admit that it was not that boring of a flight. There were plenty of movies on my personal entertainment center. (Yes I did get my personal screen even in the economy section....thanks to cheaper electronics!!!) I was able to catch up on many bollywood movies and few of my favorite US TV serials such as Office! For the geeks reading my blogs, the entertainment system was running on Red Hat linux (last build 2004 :)) and it crashed at least 3 times which caused a plane wide reboot. I have to admit that it is very discomforting to be staring at your personal screen and see messages such as "demons starting...." pop up on it... LOL

free WI-FI internet at Mumbai airport....what a jackpot

Ok, i must admit it, it took me a while to realize this... :) As I was waiting to board my flight to JFK, I spotted a wireless router. Since all other airport wireless networks cost money, I was not interested in connecting. So quite reluctantly I chose to connect to the wireless network. Sure enough my browser got re-directed to the wireless network provider's page. But to my complete surprise, it had a FREE access. All I had to do was type in my mobile number and soon enough I received a SMS that gave me my jackpot username and password.

Admit it, you are reading my blogs to pass time and get out of boredom but this is the first time I am able to blog to pass time! So we are even now! :-D

TCS strength becomes 100000

Yesterday's (October 1st) Economic Times reports that TCS crossed the 1lakh employee mark. This means that every 12th IT person in this world will be TCS employee. (this is what the article claims) It further adds that if you count Infosys (75,000), Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and Satyam then every 6th IT person belongs to these consulting companies. Quite a feat indeed! Incidently I also learned a new acronym. The top consulting companies in India are now known as SWITCH (Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL) Now go impress your colleagues with this new tid bids of knowledge :)

This news does remind me of a PJ.
Teacher is teaching a class about population and economics. He says,
Teacher: In India, there is a woman giving birth to a child every ten seconds...
Suddenly Buntasingh stands up from back of the classroom and shouts, "We must stop that woman Sir!!" :)

(not) Looking forward to my 16 hour flight!

Last February when I flew from San Fran to Sydney, I thought I already experienced (suffered) the longest single flight! (it took over 14 hours to reach Sydney) However, as I looked into my upcoming trip itinerary, I was shocked to see a SIXTEEN hour flight! I will be flying non stop from Mumbai to Atlanta with a stop in JFK on a 16 freaking hour long flight! It is good that I will reach my final destination sooner than any other competing itinerary but I sure hope I can walk after I come out of my economy cocoon after 16 hours of flight! :)

BTW, even though I boast a VP title, does not mean that I get to travel business class :( In fact these days I find myself in the back most section of the planes, it starts with first class, then business class, then economy plus and then economy. The lavatories at least have doors on them..

Notice the total flight time, does it ring a bell? :)

Trip to Bonn, Germany

I haven't had time to blog for long time recently. Partly because I have been traveling a lot. Just got back from Bonn, Germany. You can find some pictures here.

Some highlights of the trip,

• Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located about 20 kilometers south of Cologne and 170 kilometer northwest of Frankfurt on the river Rhine. It was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990.
• My hotel was called Hotel Beethoven. Everything in Bonn is something or the other Beethoven. Quite naturally as Bonn is the birth place for him. Beethoven is one of the most famous and influential musicians of all time. As some of you may already know, Beethoven composed some of his best symphonies even after he was completely deaf at the age of 20. Every September Bonn celebrates a Beethoven festival and even when I was there the city square had musical programs going on daily
• Mercedes must be costing a lot less in Germany. Every third car was a Mercedes. 95% taxi cabs were Mercedes! Never seen so many mercs and beemers in the same town. (not even in rich redmond where many micro$ofties have them)
• Every week there is a hindi movie on german TV channel. I got to see "Salam namaste" dubbed in german! :) Apparently Germans are big fans of bollywood movies. This was a total surprise to me.
  
• I got to travel on the cool ICE trains. These trains travel at the whopping speeds of 300 km/hr. That is 80 meters per second! One point I was sitting in the Siegburg station where I saw an ICE train approaching. Before I could take my camera out the train had passed the station. VERY COOL! ICE stands for Intercity express. The brand name "ICE" is among the best-known brands of Germany, with a brand awareness close to 100%, according to DB! Apparently some crazy teenager has already surfed the ICE. You can see that video here.
  

White water rafting

Last Sunday, we went to Rivertouch resort near Karjat. Other than having a good time at the resort swimming pool, I was able to do white water rafting in river Pej. The rapids were no where close to what I have experienced in Colorado or Seattle rivers but even then the experience was priceless.

it is not all punekar's fault!

Lot has been said about how pune-ites are bad about following traffic rules. Much of it is true but there also another reason for their collective behavior. I feel the following things cause some people to dis-obey the rules even despite their best intentions to do so,

• Traffic lights are not functional after say 9pm. I don't understand why they can't keep them on all night because what this encourages is the behavior where people think it is okay to not obey traffic lights at night!
• Many times, half of the traffic lights in an intersection are not working. e.g. as I approach SP college traffic lights, the lights are completely blank/not working. This leads me to believe that traffic lights in all directions are not functioning. However that is not the case. The lights in other directions are working fine. Once again this creates confusion whether or not I am supposed to stop at the non-functioning traffic lights.
• Just yesterday I saw traffic police directing traffic EVEN WHEN traffic lights were working just fine. So essentially the traffic police was OVER-RIDING the traffic lights. So here I am supposed to go through a red light because a traffic police is asking me to do so. Tell me that this does not lead to people not stopping at red lights.
• For the life of me, I don't understand the sequence of traffic lights in some intersections. Around the corner from my house (Girija/Kalpana BheL chowk) the traffic light goes green, then briefly becomes red and then goes green again. If you have stopped on the crossroad trying to get on to TiLak road, then you feel that you can proceed when tilak road light becomes red but then again it turns green! My logical mind goes for a toss every time I pass through that intersection.
• Do you have any more such supporting instance? if so please add it in the comments!
  

history about to repeat?

On July 10th, I blogged about how crazy sensex climb seemed to me. I wish I had shorted stocks since then cause sensex since then has been on a nose dive! See the graphics of it just this month. I hope rest of my musings don't come true! :(

India Inc.

It has been about three months that I am working in India now and I have been totally amazed with the talent that is all around me. Every one (and that means everyone!) on my team has a bachelors degree in engineering AND a MBA degree. Keeping the education qualification apart, my team members are smart, talented, dedicated and more importantly ambitious. With right leadership and work ethics, these talented guys (and girls) will be able to achieve great things. I am very bullish that Indian IT companies are soon going to make the transition from a back-office offshore type business model to top notch product model. The only bad part of working with such talented/young group is that it is sometimes hard to keep up with them :) I must be getting old(er) :)

Things I miss about not being in US

Now that I have already blogged about, "Small things i thought I would miss about USA but am not" it is time to write about things that i do miss about USA.....once again I will start with small or rather peripheral things before delving into personal things...

1. Customer service : Just before coming to India, we needed to do some mortgage related work in the bank. The teller gave us a particular time and was waiting to open the door for us at that exact minute. He promised to get our application approved in a specific amount of time and it was done in that time frame. He even called us home to notify us of the status.

Even now I needed to call King county records department and was able to speak to a live person within minutes. She was not only helpful but followed it up with an email so I could communicate more easily. Try that in any indian government office!

All fifteen of the things that we needed to take care of as part of putting our house in Redmond on rent happened at scheduled time; cleaners came on time, painters came on time and did the work in specified time and within budget, landscaper came on time, garage door repairman came on time etc. etc. etc.

People value your (and their time!)

I contrast that with my experiences in India, Tata Indicom person took our order and check. Then lost both the form and the check. Then didn't tell us about it for a month. Then wanted a second check before they could process our order...I made a feeble attempt to remind him about "customer service" but it was so blatantly obvious that he did not get it. It is not his fault. The culture itself is like that. Not that I didn't anticipate it and was able to manage it in the end but still it is one thing I would like to change.

2. Simplicity/non-showyness of people : While in Redmond, I would go to the gym where I would frequently (in fact every wednesday morning at 6:30am) see Steve Balmer. I don't even want to know how many zeros apart we are from each other in terms of net worth. But the very fact that I had access to the same club as him felt very good. Even in other places, I met numerous people who owned large businesses but drove non-flashy cars and behaved as normal human beings.

Here in India, I was on my way to Pune airport and suddenly all of the traffic was stopped because a caravan of some important person was passing by.......Membership to various clubs, poona club in particular; is regarded as a status symbol and people go there just to show that they are one level above everyone else. Everyone gives you advice on what car to buy that would suite my "status"....Why, why and why?

.... more coming later....

How much is enough?

As it might be apparent from my earlier blogs, one thing that keeps bugging me that I am making less money than what I used to....regardless of what other gains I now have, this feeling is still there somewhere! But in reality how much you make really does not matter but what matters is how much you make w.r.t. those around you! :) (The good old percentile methodology)

I came across this great article just today from New York Times. May be it was some type of omen that I ran into this article.....i like some of the following comments from it...

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Or the article concludes with the following remark,

To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.

“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.

“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”

Monthly expense comparison

This is another post that I am sure many of you would-be R2Iers are debating/mulling/looking forward to...

Feel free to agree/disagree/point out missing expenses for me....

Obviously not included in this comparison are annual expenses such as vacationing etc. But trust me, I just booked a 4 night 5 day vacation to Goa, to-fro flights from Mumbai and all inclusive meals for 25k Rupees, you can't beat that price

To my surprise, overall the monthly expenses came to about 25% of the US monthly expense. Thats a comforting thought considering the 50% pay cut I had to take to move to India :(

Small things i thought I would miss about USA but am not

Okay, so these are probably the series of blog posts that many of you have been waiting for. I will start with the easy things first in this blog entry and then tackle hard more delicate things later! :)

Small things i thought I would miss about USA but am not..

1. Starbucks coffee.
I was never a big fan of starbucks but every working day :) I would go grab a cup of non-fat, no-whip, extra-hot latte or mocha. I thought I would miss it but Rupali's extra strong coffee has filled that void perfectly. And it comes non-fat by default too! :) Barista's latte is also very good although it is more like "flat white" coffee that you get in Australia and less like starbucks latte. Barista has been a good place for quick business meetings similar to how people use Starbucks.

2. Pro Club health club (by far the best health club in the entire world)
Yes I do miss it a bit but not so much as I had thought I would. Tennis on Sundays, tekdi on weekdays and swimming in Tilak tank every once in a while has been very good. I think lack of club facilities has been compensated with good company of friends....so far!

3. Food
Believe it or not, I actually thought I would miss italian, thai, mexican and just plain old american food. I am a big fan of fresh sub sandwiches and was sure that I would miss them a lot. I do miss them somewhat but so far it has not been an issue. Occasional desire for cheese can be satisfied by visiting local Pizza Hut! :)

...More things to be added as I think of them!

Lonavala villas

This photo is taken from pune-mumbai expressway in Lonavala. Due to monsoon, the entire lonavala area has turned into beautiful velvetti shades of green.

How NOT to pay toll on indian roads

All you have to do it belong to one of the categories listed here and you don't have to pay Rs. 15 toll! It's that easy :)

outlook feature request

Ok. This has nothing to do with return to india but hey while I have you reading my blogs why not make you read this too! :)

Here is a feature request for Outlook (Aparna B are you reading?). Wouldn't it be nice if as you hit send button, outlook scans your email looking for word attached (or enclosed or attachment), then it checks to see if the email has an attachment and warns you if there is none? It would save so many of us from sending those "oops forgot to attach, here you go..." type of emails!!! Do write a comment if you ever had to send such an embarrassing email to your colleagues.

day at the zoo

One of the biggest problems of moving back to India is how to entertain the kids on weekends. We are very used to having lots of open spaces such as parks, lakes and hills in a close proximity of our house in Redmond. Such places do exist here but are not within easy reach and are at least few hours drive away. When we asked other parents their response was that we take our kids to mall or to a restaurant or simply leave them alone to play in the neighborhood. None of these options are very palatable to us, yet!

So we took our kids to a local zoo, Rajiv Gandhi Udyan. This zoo is built upon a large area which also has a very nice lake, katraj lake. This entire area used to be outside of Pune but due to the recent growth of Pune, has now come inside of the city limits. There are buildings all around this nice zoo, some of them I would imagine have a direct view of tigers and other animals! I wonder if the builder puts that into his marketing brochures! :) Upon entering the zoo we were treated with this artistic map of the zoo. We thought this was a real map and kept on looking for the elephant exhibition area. In fact we hyped it so much that Rhea/Roma kept on asking for elephants. Only then we discovered that the map had nothing to do with reality and was just there as a piece of art! :)


The zoo turned out to be pretty nice. Here are some pictures of it,

























After the hectic two hours (?) at the zoo we HAD to take the girls to a place they would feel like at home.....Pizza Hut! :) You can see how much they enjoyed savoring the cheeses based on the smiles!!

hidden treasures of pune : Hanuman Tekdi and Vetal Tekdi

Even with all the urbanization there are still some gems in Pune. Hanuman Tekdi (tekdi == hill) is one such place. From where we are currently staying, Kanchan Galli (galli == street) one can easily walk to the trail. Comparatively, hanuman tekdi is pretty small. I can jog up to the top in less than 6 minutes! But then one can continue behind it and go all the way up to the Vetal tekdi (vetal==ghost) The entire round trip from our place to observation deck takes less than an hour and is my current attempt of keeping in shape! There is an observation deck on top of the vetal tekdi that gives you 360 degrees views of Pune and it's urban crawl. Very few people go up all the way to the observation deck so it is a nice place to sit, meditate and worry about global warming :-)

Here you can see the observation deck from a distance.

We also did a small family hike the other day and took Rhea/Roma all the way up to Hanuman tekdi. Both girls were so happy to get some open space to themselves and enjoyed quite a lot.