Monday, August 18, 2008

The Place - Germantown

Germantown Transit Center. This is the place where i get my bus route no. 75, 13mins to office. Its about 10mins walk from my Apt 11, Crystal Rock Drive, Hamptons. The Busses are extremely good hardly 6 people get-in to the bus every trip i go at around 7:30am, 8:15am in the morning. The Bus driver would recognize you easily without any issues and your RIDE ON bus pass from montegomery would be very handy in these.
Express Bus Service to Shady Grove Metro. It reaches the metro in 15 mins, and its non stop bus. This is how we have the BUS Stops at different locations. Just one board and its a bus stop. This is a bigger bus stop. They call it Transit Center (bigger bus stop), Germantown, Transit Center.
Washington DC Metro. Looks like our Delhi Metro. The ticket counters look the same, instead of the token coins that we get in delhi, we have tickets that can be feed-in. I take the metro from BWI (baltimore) Airport often.
This is my Office Building in Clarksburg, Maryland. The number on the buildings are pretty clear and neat and its all just one flat ground floor as the space is too abundant.
 This one is the entrance of my Office. Its Suite 200, with a swiper on your left of the wall and a small white piece for the new comers, which is a bell that rings...

The Busy Schedule goes on...

Past few weeks have been restless for me. Work has broke me most of the times, but it has always been like this with me. Starting from Pune to Bangalore to US, everywhere it has been tight for me at work. The only good part is i get counted for every hour i work and paid for it. Consulting rocks sometime but life isnt stable untill you discover yourself in trouble on one fine morning saying project is over. There is a really good market for a whole lot of techies who have really worked in the industry and proved themselves. I am sure research oriented folks can find their jobs very easily when they are here in US but everything is relative. I have seen the right balance of life with work here in the country. Cass and Jason both leave at 4pm sharp and they are working in for exact 8 hours a day unless asked to work more on demand. The Texas project has titled everyones life a bit while it is still going on with a very tight deadline and i had almost no break for the last one month. It sounds crazy but yeah... its ok. There is less fun at work these days coz of the timelines.

Pizza's are a bad diet but when you dont feel like cooking you like them... when you eat them more you realize its over-eaten and you realise yourself in trouble with your stomach. Shopping with KOHLs has been good so far. This weekend, mitesh (my roommate) and I had gone to KOHLs at the Observation Dr, Germantown.. There are discounts going on... Mitesh had a gift coupon of 30% extra off on all items. I picked up nike shoes of worth 60$ for 25$... And i use it for playing Tennis everyday. I never played it in india while i saw a lot of my friends playing it. Its real fun and requires a lot of stamina. Well, i should say i am just starting but i am loving it.

I dont really miss a lot here other than a whole lot of friends from my adobe, everyone back home.. I get everything at this place when i want to eat / cook, lot of indians but still its out of place rear in one of the cornors.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

My First few days @ Maryland

As i flew in, i realized it was a sweet city i am in. Its called Germantown. Good number of indians here for sure. And yes, sulekha.com works. I didnt had my SSN number and i never had my credit history, so getting an appartment on my own was a bit difficult initially. Later i found through a friend that you can find for indian roommates in any location in US using sulekha.com. Well, that worked for me too. I had some options for accomodation. I found a good friend in this whole process. Ajay is his name. He is good and helped me a lot in my initial days of my germantown. The city climate was more like bangalore chill winter climate. But they call it summer here. Also i heard that since i am on East the winter here could be as low as 23F or -10 to -15 I am just waiting to see the winters though.

I am liking the summer here. Its nice and pleasent. Apart from the cheating light that longs last till 9pm which decieves you from cooking your dinner early, rest is all good. I stay in Hampton's group sharing my appartment with Mitesh. He works for NIH, a govt. project. The place is new but mitesh and I go around every place to get groceries, house holds, bla bla. I am loving playing Tennis here. I never touched Tennis racket while i was in India. Still trying to learn to get on to a player phase. Its not so easy as it looks initially.

Work is good. I can reach office pretty easily from home. I get a Bus pass for 10$ and i can walk from hamptons to Germantown, transit center via Taco Bell. Its a 10 min walk. Then i get Bus - 75 to clarksburg and i am right infront of my office within 10-12 mins. The busses here run on time with a minor deviation. They are centrally managed though. Every individual here has a respect. A Bus driver is considered to be treated as your friend. He will identify you every day if you get into his bus. "Thank you, have a great day" - is the statement that brings smile on your bus drivers face and yours while you get down from the bus. The Pulling the wire to activate the "Stop the bus" signal is something thats interesting. Walk to the right, and be careful with your hands especially when you are with another indian, just walk with distance :-! Learn the culture. No wonder you get every indian item here. I work as a consultant and i enjoy working 8 hours. I get over paid for working extra hours or extra weekend.

I have a sweeet team here. We have a jel of Coldfusion and Flex team with backend DB team. CF team works on writing webservices that gets exposed to the Flex front end. Myself, James Alley and santosh form the flex team. Casses Sealy, Jason Heaslet, Phil Nacelli, Aaron Miller form the CF Team. Vaideki is our project lead with a core knowledge of functionality of the product. Vipin Wagh heads us as VP. I love interacting with every one in my team. They are extremely friendly and extremely smart... but I need to learn a bit more on what they do actually. They pursue their personal ideas and goals, personal creativity, personal extra curriculars, personal business, personal start up idea implementations on their own after their 8 hours work.

I am loving Cooking too. I dont miss any indian food, well i do a lot but i just dont want to get into the thought of missing my mother land. Rest is good. Life here with slight adjustments to the salary ratios and couple of months with DL in hand and a car would make it a perfect fit. There is no life in US without these things: Laptop, Internet, Mobile, SSN, Credit Card, Car, GPS, TV, Self Cooked food and some friends around you... I had been to the Taco bell, mexican restaurant and had my chicken chilupa, yesterday i was at Chipotli, another mexican restaurant having chicken roll. Chicken Steak Sub was my lunck on the friday noon. Life is just going on with some interesting things happening in steps... Lets watch for more...