Back in Bangalore

I got into EMC project, within a few days of me joining TCS Bangalore.
Well, Ive been enjoying my days in Bangalore, meeting friends partying almost every weekend, going around with friends, movies, fun all around. No pressure at work, and add to that I have few of my close friends in my project, so fun at work place as well. At work, I’ve been in good terms with my seniors. I got my TCS confirmation rating- 5 on 5 :-)…

Before joining the project I was confirmed by my PL, that if I perfom well I’l be give an onsite opportunity to Belgium. And after 4 months of hard work in EMC,  I’ve been given an opportunity to work in Belgium for 3 months. It took almost 2 months to get my work-permit and visas ready. I’ll be flying shortly, on 5th of April to Brussels…. 🙂

Look out for my updates on my EuroTrip…

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Being a Wooly at Chennai

After I bid adeau to Trivandrum, fate drove me to Chennai. I tried very hard to get a transfer to Bangalore in vain 😦 .. nothin worked out for me….I had no other go but to go to Chennai.
It was a scary start, I almost missed my bus to Chennai. Reached Chennai at 3.30 in the morning, I knew no one and dint know what to do, where to go :-0.. Autowala charged me 200 bucks and took me to a remote and scary hotel. I booed an AC room, watched TV for sometime and slept till 9. Morning I took a bus to my reporting office.
Right on my first day, I joined my first project called ‘Woolworths’. Its a retail chain supermarket in Australia. And I joined the team as a Mainframes developer.

Now all I needed was, an accomodation..As if like in a movie, I found my old schoolmate in the office canteen during lunch break, he had joined TCS-Chennai recently. We had a nice chat and I asked him whether I could stay with him. He agreed, but the only problem was the house was already overcrowded. Finally everyone agreed and let me stay . So we were 8 (all from Bangalore) of us stayed in a 2 BR house.

Gosh.. my tuff times had started, it was April then, the temperatures in Chennai would sore up till 45 degrees. Hot humid.. 5 of us in a small room which had an old fan throttling at full speed making hell lot of noise..
 

As days passed by, I gel’ed nicely with my new roomies. We used to have dinner together, we bought a new TV to our house, heheh and all of us used to dance to songs, pulling each others legs, fighting, shouting.I enjoyed my stay with my new pals. We used to go out on weekends to movies, visit places around.. 

——-Me and my friends, at Besant Nagar Beach Chennai——-
 

I almost forgot to mention, our house was right next to Besant Nagar beach..so close that we could hear water splashing all night. At mid-night, we used to go out on a beachside walk, trying to play with crabs on the beach hehheh.

And at my office, I had a nice team to work with. I worked on JCL-Datamining in my 1st project (Houston BR2-Bonus Stock). Since development projects wind up quickly, I completed 3 projects in 8 months. My other projects ‘PEL Finance’ and ‘SOM-Fresh Food’ were more interesting and challenging. I worked on CICS and complex COBOL batch programs in these projects. Work was not easy though, sometimes I ended up working almost 24 hours a day and worked on weekends as well.

About 5-6 of us used to stay awake coding the whole night,we used to take coffee breaks at 2 and 4 midnight; crack few PJs in between and get back to our PCs. In no time, it would be dawn and we would feel dead tired, we then used to book cabs and head back home..I would see COBOL codes dancing around in my dreams and they would’nt let me sleep…This tuff it was..But inspite of all these, I felt proud to be working with some of the great coding brains of our project (Prashanth, Dasarathan, Sanjivi, Praveen Bhat, Sudhir, EK..).

Well my days at Woolworths dindnt last long as the project team had a ramp down and I asked my PL to release me from the project and get me a transfer to Bangalore. After arguments with the MATC (remember? MATC?) and help from my PL, finally I got a transfer to Bangalore almost an year after I joined TCS.

ILP Days Contd..

Well, we were supposed to be studying nd attending trainings for the next 6 weeks , but  happening days for us were during these days.
Within a couple of days we formed groups; and this is what we used to do on weekdays-
while(1) {
      >>> Plan for a outing. >>> Book cabs from Suresh travels  >>> Go out on a road-trips (Weekend)
                                  }
We visited Kovalam, Kanyakumari, Meenmatti, Allippi, and a few famous temples in Trivandrum…We also used to have fun during regular birthday parties, badminton tournaments, new-year celebration.. We used to go out to our daily adda at the Punjabi dhaba, and have our dinner. (Cant forget those mouth watering parathas)

During the first 25 days; we had fun during these sessions: 
Life Skills,
Oral and Written Communication(Faculty- Minnet Mathews),
Professional Grooming and Etiquette(Faculty-Nisha Dev) – We had sessions from how to hold a wine glass , how to drink soup, eat cutlets, how to wear a tie, shake hands, postures, till dressing ettiquettes…

We were given an interesting assignment on ‘Book Review’. Minnet had asked us to borrow novels from library and give a presentation on it, which made us read novels during leisure. The actual presentation session was all bonkers hehehh..
Our 1st Phase of 25 day training concluded with an openbook exam (which was relatively easy and almost all scored well since it was an open book exam).

During the second phase of training, batches were allocated with specific streams. And the stream which our batch got allocated to was ‘Mainframes’.
The fun part continued in our second-phase of training though, majorly during our Foreign language classes. Our batch had ‘German’ as our foreingn language. Lecturer: Mr.Arun Kumar, he used to make us laugh all the while during his classes, he taught us the Deutsch language in a a nice way. He used to sing German songs for us, show videos, made us perform skits , and it was total-fun attending his classes. He had a unique way of punishing students like- Ones who come late to his class will have to buy Munch chocolates to the whole class. I had to buy chocs for the entire class once hehheh
I had performed a skit on Munna Bhai (German Version)..me being Cirkit..:)

One not-so-fine day for me, MATC asked us to enter our preferred location for allocation. Unluckily for me, eventhough I had opted for Bangalore as my 1st preferrence, I was allocated to Chennai branch. I felt shattered , since most of my friends had been allocated to Bangalore. Almost 70-80% of the allocation was done as requested, except for a few unlucky ones, including me.

—–My Project Teammates Himanshi, Huda, Me and Ashim——
Girl in Orange [Kanchana] was not a part of my team..shes just posing..:-)

During the last 2 weeks, we were divided into teams of 4. Each team had to work on different project assignments. We spent sleepless nights working on the project, chatting and laughing along sometimes almost whole night.

Finally we gave us our second exam, presented our project, had photo sessions, send off parties, and thats it..
We bid adeau to the most wonderful moments spent at ILP. Off we dispersed to different parts of India. Me to Chennai..

Im a slow starter, but an excellent finisher

 

Q: A very common interview question, tell me about yourself in a sentence.
Hmm..think think think…
We all know everyone bluffs to this question, and answers in such a way so as to pleases the interviewer…But honestly my answer would be I’m a slow starter, but an excellent finisher.
and hey this is very true about me, kinda inspirational and original too 🙂