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:).
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Life after Hostel...
This is a mail I wrote recently to my hostel groups...(edited a few sentences to protect privacy of some of my friends)
Those were really memorable days...every minute was fun:)
Hi all,
So nice to see this group up and running. I thought I would do my bit to keep the discussions flowing in the group.
There are quite a few things I miss about college life...the comforts of life have definitely increased manifold mainly due to the new-found financial independence...but still here are a few things that have changed....
- My slippers dont get lost anymore...a few days back I was searching wildly for my pair of bathroom slippers to go to the terrace….and then found them on my roommate's feet. We laughed over the fun times we used to have searching for our slippers in the hostel from room to room early in the morning and I have been guilty of putting on the first pair that I can set my eyes on in PN’s room or AN’s room or wherever with the good intention of returning it where I took it…just when I am done..someone would come over and ask for it “Machan…koncham seruppu kodaen…” then I would give it saying “Return it to PN’s room…” and there begins the never-ending journey of the chappals…
- No more gang-watching of movies…though we guys in
- No more queues in bathrooms….first year we used to run all the way from yoga class to the bathrooms and whoever reached first would bath first….then we used to have buckets queued outside…but when people started putting their buckets a day before…then we started the amazing practice of “solli vaippathu..” till date that is the best application of a linked list I have seen…
- No more birthday fun…we do celebrate birthdays….but nothing like those wonderful nights when starting 12am we used to be dripping wet after lots and lots of bums and a dip in the holy “thotti” water…I was lucky to be among a benevolent set of friends to be getting only some 5-minute bumps….I really used to pity (though I also gave them my share) some fellows whose bumps kept going endlessly for hours with stalwarts like AN doing their job…
- No more discussions…But the thing I miss the most are the marathon discussions we used to have on anything from sex to Ramayana and Mahabaratha….every time there was an assessment we would go to some room with the sole intent of “studying”…then as we dozed off with the books…someone would ask some doubt…that would lead to something else…then something else….finally after 2 hours we found ourselves at the same page but having discussed 101 “important” things…boy that was fun….
These are only a few things I can spell out right now…but I am sure there are 100s of other things which made those four years memorable…
Those were really memorable days...every minute was fun:)
Monday, February 21, 2005
Black Magic....
Almost every time we watch a movie, there are a few things that linger on to the mind; a few scenes from movie, or a character, or just a place. And I have a habit of judging the quality of a movie by how long it is able to cling on to my senses.
Well here is one movie that might be able to create an impression for a lifetime. I am hearing the songs (actually the background music) of the movie right now and the scenes run through my eyes...the most visible form of magic for me I should say.
As all of you must be knowing by this time, this is a story of a blind and deaf (and hence dumb) girl and her tutor, played so effectively by a small girl first (I dont know her name anyone?) and then Rani Mukherji and the maestro Amitabh Bachan respectively. This would definitely go down as one of the best performances for both of them. As for the director, very frankly I for one, never expected a story like this from the creator of Devdas. The parallels in the two movies are the breathtaking settings. But thankfully the similarity stops there. The director found something better to fit into the grand settings:). Kudos to Sanjay Leela Bansali.
Some of my friends have been judging the movie by the number of times they cried...by that measure, yes..I did have teardrops in my eyes, but unlike other movies (and also unlike what I expected), these were for most parts, tears of joy..of optimism, of a feeling of a vicarious thrill for the girl on the screen. One heart rendering dialogue which I am still thinking about is this-"Mainae shayad Jindagi se kuch jyada hi maang liyaa thaa..."-which translates into-" I probably asked a bit too much out of life."- the misery of a girl not able to get things that others take for granted couldn't have been put in better words. In order not to spoil the experience for those who are yet to watch the movie I will stop here.
The best thing about the movie is the ringing optimism in it. If you are expecting a teary portrayal of the miseries of a girl with such disabilities, be warned....neither the director, nor the tutor is in a mood for that. There are beautiful jokes scattered here and there which make you smile without losing perspective of the bigger picture.
This movie deserves every accolade film industry can provide...but more importantly it deserves audience's support for producers to be able to do away with the "Murder"s and "Jism"s which have come to plague the Hindi film industry.
After you watch the movie do drop in your comments.
Well here is one movie that might be able to create an impression for a lifetime. I am hearing the songs (actually the background music) of the movie right now and the scenes run through my eyes...the most visible form of magic for me I should say.
As all of you must be knowing by this time, this is a story of a blind and deaf (and hence dumb) girl and her tutor, played so effectively by a small girl first (I dont know her name anyone?) and then Rani Mukherji and the maestro Amitabh Bachan respectively. This would definitely go down as one of the best performances for both of them. As for the director, very frankly I for one, never expected a story like this from the creator of Devdas. The parallels in the two movies are the breathtaking settings. But thankfully the similarity stops there. The director found something better to fit into the grand settings:). Kudos to Sanjay Leela Bansali.
Some of my friends have been judging the movie by the number of times they cried...by that measure, yes..I did have teardrops in my eyes, but unlike other movies (and also unlike what I expected), these were for most parts, tears of joy..of optimism, of a feeling of a vicarious thrill for the girl on the screen. One heart rendering dialogue which I am still thinking about is this-"Mainae shayad Jindagi se kuch jyada hi maang liyaa thaa..."-which translates into-" I probably asked a bit too much out of life."- the misery of a girl not able to get things that others take for granted couldn't have been put in better words. In order not to spoil the experience for those who are yet to watch the movie I will stop here.
The best thing about the movie is the ringing optimism in it. If you are expecting a teary portrayal of the miseries of a girl with such disabilities, be warned....neither the director, nor the tutor is in a mood for that. There are beautiful jokes scattered here and there which make you smile without losing perspective of the bigger picture.
This movie deserves every accolade film industry can provide...but more importantly it deserves audience's support for producers to be able to do away with the "Murder"s and "Jism"s which have come to plague the Hindi film industry.
After you watch the movie do drop in your comments.
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....
Monday, January 31, 2005
Just a passing thought
Today I had an interesting chat with a friend I havent met for quite some time. All his friends know him as a silent, composed person who keeps his deepest feelings and thoughts to himself but is always cheerful with friends. He has just joined a very good company (lets call it L) after a long and difficult time. So as is usual with anyone, I started off asking "How is life at L?" and he asked "What do you expect as an answer". I told him "Honestly I am not 'expecting' anything...so go on and tell me whatever your answer is..
Then he asked "Is it life at L or L in life? I feel it is the other way round...isnt it?" For a second I didn't understand him...then it struck me..it was like an "Aha reaction...":). Most of us limit our (and others') lives to the mere circumstances and work that we do at that moment. But life is bigger than that...to realise that life is bigger than Microsoft itself was a big realisation for me personally:).
I am not going to conclude this entry with my judgements like I generally do.....I leave it to you to decide for yourself how you want to interpret this one...
Then he asked "Is it life at L or L in life? I feel it is the other way round...isnt it?" For a second I didn't understand him...then it struck me..it was like an "Aha reaction...":). Most of us limit our (and others') lives to the mere circumstances and work that we do at that moment. But life is bigger than that...to realise that life is bigger than Microsoft itself was a big realisation for me personally:).
I am not going to conclude this entry with my judgements like I generally do.....I leave it to you to decide for yourself how you want to interpret this one...
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