This was a mail I wrote to my cousin when I was in Redmond about one unforgettable incident...
We went to Mt.Reinier (about 3 hours drive from here) on Sunday and it turned out to be an unforgettable day in many respects. We reached a point 5400 feet high in car and climbed for 2 hours to reach a point 7200 feet high!!! There was almost noone there and we had snow all around. We were so close to the peak. We played there for almost an hour. It was the best adventure I ever had.
Finally at 8.30 we decided we need to go back and started the descent. It took almost an hour and finally when we reached the car all exhausted and drained, I found that I had left the headlights on and the battery had completely drained!!! Then we found that the visitor's
office and all such places were closed as it was sunday night!! Finally there was a hotel there and we went into that and made a call to the Emergency services of the rental agency (Avis) and they arrived in about 2 hours and we waited patiently.
I should say Mt.Reinier is quite a sight in the night with the clear sky and countless stars in the background (though the temperature must have been around 10 degrees or lesser). Infact we took a few pictures of our incredible car with the night sky in the background!! The mechanic finally managed to jump-started the car. Finally we started at 11pm and bingo!! we didnt know the proper route back as the maps we had taken had some road named incorrectly.Also since I didnt want to risk a half-filled tank, we stopped at a petrol bunk and my friend went and filled the fuel. Then just before we left I noticed the name on the fuel station and it was written-DIESEL FUEL. I was totally dismayed.
We kept driving hoping that the diesel part would not enter the engine until we reached home. Finally in the darkness of the night (with occasional bursts of fog) we finally managed to get back through three freeways and reached home by 1.30am.
It was an unforgettable day in many respects and now, I am more confident of my driving than I have ever been in my life!!!
Yours,
Arvind Sharma.
Showing posts with label redmond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label redmond. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Microsoft@Redmond
Well, we didn't get the opportunity to get into any of the Microsoft buildings in the first 2 days and it got us really restless...we had seen them from outside ofcourse, because Redmond is filled with them. Redmond is a small village in Washington state and I should say it is "filled with" Microsoft. To my knowledge there are atleast 115 buildings there...these are not huge ones though, each would have a maximum of two floors, the exceptions being the buildings containing offices of Bill and Steve which are 4 storied ones. Since Washington area is prone to earthquakes, there are limits on the number of floors a building can have.
The buildings are all surprisingly similar from outside (even our new campus at Hyderabad has the same exteriors), but very distinct on the interi0rs. Each building has a theme for the interior decorations. Ours was Paintings, and the walls were filled with illustrated paintings. JP's building theme was customers, they would be filled with life-size "cut-outs" of different customers of Microsoft, one would be a German customer, explaining his features, like "Marc was born in Germany and is an accountant, he has been using Windows 98 for a long time and is thinking of moving over to XP. But of-late he has been hearing a lot of stuff about something called Linux. He is an advanced user of Excel 98 and..." I am not doing a good job of reconstructing the profile here..:(...anyway it would be focussed on a German customer's perspective on software.
There is no concept of cubicles here and everyone from the lowest level programmer to the CEO gets a cabin for himself/herself. We saw cabins decorated in every wild way possible. In one cabin we saw some 200 cans of pepsi, coke etc piled neatly one on top of another to form a man-sized pyramid. Some people had comfortable sofas installed on their office. We saw a few people who used to sit on the floor outside their offices working on their laptop..couldnt figure out why...maybe they liked it that way.
I and JP were lucky to get our own cubicles all for ourselves since others had to share an office due to lack of space. But I got so bored sitting all alone day long that when Arun came over I made him share the office with me.
The kitchen deserves a special mention, the principle seemed to be anything liquid is free and everything else is charged...there was a really huge refrigirator housing hundereds of cans of coke, pepsi, chocolate milk (my favourite ofcourse:)), sprite and a number of American drinks like Dr. Pepper (it has a real horrible taste) and canned fruit juices like apple, cranberry, grape etc. There was also a pay-with-a-coin style parlour which housed stuff like chips chocolates and everything to make you fat (and people blamed me for getting fat after the trip!!!!)
People who were really busy (or atleast pretended to be) put a sticker outside their offices saying "DND-Email Only". I really liked the way in which people respected other's privacy. Even my mentor (an Indian) would get my consent before setting up a meeting or even for coming over casually to meet me).
There is a huge ground where football and cricket(!!!) were the favourite sports. We played quite a bit there. Apart from these, things that deserve a passing mention are the continuous shuttles which carried people around these 100-odd buildings, huge (really huge) car parks below the buildings, the fooseball table(which we managed to get here as well), the state a hall in Building 34 (Bill Gates's office is in this building!!) was after some beer-bash (it was just like what a director would love to show if he wanted to protray some "Saraaya-kadai" fight scene in Usilampatti-really nasty and last but definitely not the least my own office overlooking the street and the beautiful drops of rain dripping on the glass every time there was a drizzle:).
The buildings are all surprisingly similar from outside (even our new campus at Hyderabad has the same exteriors), but very distinct on the interi0rs. Each building has a theme for the interior decorations. Ours was Paintings, and the walls were filled with illustrated paintings. JP's building theme was customers, they would be filled with life-size "cut-outs" of different customers of Microsoft, one would be a German customer, explaining his features, like "Marc was born in Germany and is an accountant, he has been using Windows 98 for a long time and is thinking of moving over to XP. But of-late he has been hearing a lot of stuff about something called Linux. He is an advanced user of Excel 98 and..." I am not doing a good job of reconstructing the profile here..:(...anyway it would be focussed on a German customer's perspective on software.
There is no concept of cubicles here and everyone from the lowest level programmer to the CEO gets a cabin for himself/herself. We saw cabins decorated in every wild way possible. In one cabin we saw some 200 cans of pepsi, coke etc piled neatly one on top of another to form a man-sized pyramid. Some people had comfortable sofas installed on their office. We saw a few people who used to sit on the floor outside their offices working on their laptop..couldnt figure out why...maybe they liked it that way.
I and JP were lucky to get our own cubicles all for ourselves since others had to share an office due to lack of space. But I got so bored sitting all alone day long that when Arun came over I made him share the office with me.
The kitchen deserves a special mention, the principle seemed to be anything liquid is free and everything else is charged...there was a really huge refrigirator housing hundereds of cans of coke, pepsi, chocolate milk (my favourite ofcourse:)), sprite and a number of American drinks like Dr. Pepper (it has a real horrible taste) and canned fruit juices like apple, cranberry, grape etc. There was also a pay-with-a-coin style parlour which housed stuff like chips chocolates and everything to make you fat (and people blamed me for getting fat after the trip!!!!)
People who were really busy (or atleast pretended to be) put a sticker outside their offices saying "DND-Email Only". I really liked the way in which people respected other's privacy. Even my mentor (an Indian) would get my consent before setting up a meeting or even for coming over casually to meet me).
There is a huge ground where football and cricket(!!!) were the favourite sports. We played quite a bit there. Apart from these, things that deserve a passing mention are the continuous shuttles which carried people around these 100-odd buildings, huge (really huge) car parks below the buildings, the fooseball table(which we managed to get here as well), the state a hall in Building 34 (Bill Gates's office is in this building!!) was after some beer-bash (it was just like what a director would love to show if he wanted to protray some "Saraaya-kadai" fight scene in Usilampatti-really nasty and last but definitely not the least my own office overlooking the street and the beautiful drops of rain dripping on the glass every time there was a drizzle:).
Monday, February 21, 2005
The Stay
We had a few imaginations about the place we were going to stay in. But the one we got surpassed our wildest imaginations. We were given the biggest apartment I have ever lived in. The entire floor was covered with a soft (I am not sure what to call this..) flooring which is the norm here for all apartments. I felt sleeping on the floor more comfortable than my bed back home:). The rooms were spacious and we had every home appliance that one could think of- Refrigerator, microwave oven, dish-washer, knife-set, washing machine and so on. Ofcourse for $100 a day which my company was paying them these were the least they could do:).
Ofcourse we left all the kitchen equipment almost untouched. The appliance we found the greatest use were indeed the TV and VCR (you read it right-here VCRs and video cassettes are are still immensely popular. We watched a movie almost every weekend. More about that in
another post.
I was feeling a bit eerie with the huge house and living all alone and decided to move in with Raghu (he had a two-bedroom apartment). Then began the party-time. Raghuram often became so sick with hotel-food that he used to cook at home and ofcourse I helped with him in the most crucial part-eating and certifying his cooking skills. He is so sweet that inspite of being enraged at my watching TV endlessly while he toiled with rice and puliyotharai mix (he became a specialist in making puliyotharai-tamarind rice) and making empty threats of cooking for him alone-always at the end of it there it was....I had steaming rice, watery, but tasty sambhar, sometimes curry, curd and to top it all-Puliyotharai:). You are a pleasure Raghu:):)
Towards the end we took detailed videos of the whole house. Here apartments are not stand-alone entities. They have a set of apartments forming a community kind of thing and they have facilities common to them. There was a small swimming pool for the place and we deigned on it only once during the whole stay. They had a tennis court as well.
We had the chance of watching the firemen in action twice during our stay. When there is smoke in one of the apartments there is an alarm that goes off for the entire building. Everyone in every apartment who hears that is supposed to leave everything and rush outside. The firemen are automatically alarmed and they arrive within few minutes. They are very professional. In full gear, a few of their men march inside the house and make sure there is nothing serious and declare "All Clear". People can go in only after that. Both the times thankfully only the fireplace had had some problems and was emanating too much of smoke.
Ofcourse we left all the kitchen equipment almost untouched. The appliance we found the greatest use were indeed the TV and VCR (you read it right-here VCRs and video cassettes are are still immensely popular. We watched a movie almost every weekend. More about that in
another post.
I was feeling a bit eerie with the huge house and living all alone and decided to move in with Raghu (he had a two-bedroom apartment). Then began the party-time. Raghuram often became so sick with hotel-food that he used to cook at home and ofcourse I helped with him in the most crucial part-eating and certifying his cooking skills. He is so sweet that inspite of being enraged at my watching TV endlessly while he toiled with rice and puliyotharai mix (he became a specialist in making puliyotharai-tamarind rice) and making empty threats of cooking for him alone-always at the end of it there it was....I had steaming rice, watery, but tasty sambhar, sometimes curry, curd and to top it all-Puliyotharai:). You are a pleasure Raghu:):)
Towards the end we took detailed videos of the whole house. Here apartments are not stand-alone entities. They have a set of apartments forming a community kind of thing and they have facilities common to them. There was a small swimming pool for the place and we deigned on it only once during the whole stay. They had a tennis court as well.
We had the chance of watching the firemen in action twice during our stay. When there is smoke in one of the apartments there is an alarm that goes off for the entire building. Everyone in every apartment who hears that is supposed to leave everything and rush outside. The firemen are automatically alarmed and they arrive within few minutes. They are very professional. In full gear, a few of their men march inside the house and make sure there is nothing serious and declare "All Clear". People can go in only after that. Both the times thankfully only the fireplace had had some problems and was emanating too much of smoke.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The Flight.
I actually had imagined quite a few things about the flight journey after hearing that in Singapore Airlines each seat had a LCD monitor and each passenger had a choice from 17 movie CDs to watch and also that Lufthansa was even better than Sing Air. Well...it turned out to be otherwise. The seats were cramped and there was one small monitor for some 20 seats, the person in the corner seat has to stick out his head to see it avoiding the over-head baggage box and as luck would have it I was in the corner seat quite a few times.
Frankfurt airport was quite something. It is not huge, but it is bustling with activity. There are 2 magnetic levitation train between the 2 terminals with a frequency of about 1 in 5 minutes. It was truly amazing to go in that. We saw the freeway of Germany and the speed with which cars flew (literally!!) was just amazing. We did a lot of window shopping until we were tired enough to return to the boarding gate. There are car-like vehicles inside the airport for old people to commute!! The security check was amazing. Each person was asked to remove everything metallic (even shoes..if they have metal strips) and put in a seperate box which goes through the scanner. They frisk you completely with gloved hands (no metallic detectors). Then we flew to Los Angeles and got down. The queue at the immigration check was simply amazing. There must have been atleast a thousand people there!! We waited for almost an hour on our queue. After that was done came the dreaded customs and agricultural dept checks (where they throw out most our indian foods if they are not satisfied with our explanations) and whew..there was no checking at all. They let us go without even stopping us for a moment. LS airport is huge with a lot of terminals.
Finally we reached Seattle and took a taxi home. The taxi was moving at a speed of almost 75mph (120kmph)..little did I imagine that I would be driving at 100mph very soon!!!
Frankfurt airport was quite something. It is not huge, but it is bustling with activity. There are 2 magnetic levitation train between the 2 terminals with a frequency of about 1 in 5 minutes. It was truly amazing to go in that. We saw the freeway of Germany and the speed with which cars flew (literally!!) was just amazing. We did a lot of window shopping until we were tired enough to return to the boarding gate. There are car-like vehicles inside the airport for old people to commute!! The security check was amazing. Each person was asked to remove everything metallic (even shoes..if they have metal strips) and put in a seperate box which goes through the scanner. They frisk you completely with gloved hands (no metallic detectors). Then we flew to Los Angeles and got down. The queue at the immigration check was simply amazing. There must have been atleast a thousand people there!! We waited for almost an hour on our queue. After that was done came the dreaded customs and agricultural dept checks (where they throw out most our indian foods if they are not satisfied with our explanations) and whew..there was no checking at all. They let us go without even stopping us for a moment. LS airport is huge with a lot of terminals.
Finally we reached Seattle and took a taxi home. The taxi was moving at a speed of almost 75mph (120kmph)..little did I imagine that I would be driving at 100mph very soon!!!
Redmond....
I was fortunate enough to be sent over to Redmond by Microsoft for three whole months to undergo training. These three months were definitely an experience I would cherish for a lifetime, not just because this was my first foreign trip or because the place was "so cool", but more because I was there with a set of very close friends, an opportunity that few people being sent "offshore" get. We had so much fun there the term weekend itself has acquired a special meaning for most of us:)
And while I was there, I used to write mails to myself describing the experiences at the place, starting from the flight, to the food, places we visited etc. I couldn't complete it there. I will try to do that here. From now on I will post our experiences under different headings.
I wanted to do this earlier, but didn't get the bandwidth to do it. I will delay this no longer....
And while I was there, I used to write mails to myself describing the experiences at the place, starting from the flight, to the food, places we visited etc. I couldn't complete it there. I will try to do that here. From now on I will post our experiences under different headings.
I wanted to do this earlier, but didn't get the bandwidth to do it. I will delay this no longer....
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