Ships, Father (to be) & Wife: The Real Iron Triangle

I was hoping that this blog had not been deactivated. Things have been so hectic that the complete texture has changed. Southwest people actually took advantage of this disappearance and slowly munched away my Rapid Rewards points. I don't even know what other places I have incurred damages. In Pune, I pay rent for a place which I have stayed for 3 days in last 3 months. So it is good to know that my blog is here. Let me quickly update you all about where I have been and what things have happened.

The real change started 9th November when I got married. By the time I got back from honeymoon, it was work all over the place. One bid with a defence organization which didn't go anywhere followed with trying to get some other business. In between, I helped out some folks in sales in cold cold Toledo. Nothing worked. Then things rolled a little slowly and by the end of it, we were managing delivery of some ships out of Surat. So I landed in Surat and have been here since April. Shipbuilding is said to have 3D's...Difficult, Dangerous & Dirty and I am soaking in every bit of it.

So professionally, things have been somewhat peaceful though the work is extremely complicated. We have made some progress but it is still a long long way ahead. On the personal front, life has been a roller coaster...literally. Excessive travel has made it difficult for both I and Saumya. Last 1.5 months in Surat have been the most time we have spent together with only I being away for 5 days in between. The good news is I can look forward to a new member in the family in November. Both Saumya and I are super excited about this coming baby(though Saumya would say that I have been completely oblivious to everything!!!)

How I look...very different..I have lost quite a few hair and lost some weight too. Hopefully some of it is going to come back and some would become a trade off of what came in and what went away...as they say in some hindi song..
duniya main har kisi ko mukammal jahaan nahi milta
kisi ko jameen aur kisi ko aasmaan nahi milta

Hola San Diego

1st term is over and I squeezed in full 4 days to go and visit San Diego. Its a great place, very different from Los Angeles at least in size. You can grasp the city in just four days and get some impressions out of it.

So the highlights were: Meeting Suchit and Saurabh at UCSD, Rohit Kapoor, Vineet and Anand at Mira Mesa, visiting La Jolla Beach and traveling for a lot of time in a fast car. San Diego has a nice laid back feeling to it( or was it my post 1st term mindset!!). The Pacific ocean was as usual great. I guess this ocean is going to be part of my life for a long time to come.

It was also fun to see offices of some familiar companies like Texas Instruments, Intuit, Qualcomm, Synopsys etc. I have an interesting observation about these companies. All the offices in India look very similar to the parent offices in US. It might be because of some culture reason but my guess is that this architecture is suited best for maximum space and to communicate the image of a technology company( no frills, no form and only technology). I remember the first time I set in a lecture theatre at IIT. The walls had sharp stones coming out of them. As usual, my curiosity made me find out whether its deliberate or "As Usual Indian lethragy". To my surprise, I was told that since IIT was going to be a technology institute, architecture was designed to create a very utilitarian perspective with sharp designs. No wonder, it was so difficult to sleep in IIT if you were sitting on the corner seat.

Coming back to San Diego, it looks like a complete and self dependent city and not some kind of a satellite town. My friends in UCSD told me that it is amongst the biggest centers for Biotech activity along with Boston and Bay Area. They also have their own NFL team called Chargers.

And finally, I know that Mark Knopfler doesn't live on the beach in San Diego. He is in Los Angeles. So one less reason to go to San Diego again but I guess the city still has its high points.

The New New Things..

Remember the Emirates Punchline, "When was the last time you did a thing for the first time". I think the answer to this question in your recent past and the frequency of the answer defines the vitality of your life, at least in a snapshot. There have been at least two things in the last week which I did for the first time and both the experiences were pretty good.

Today, I played golf for the first time near the vineyards of Paso Robles near Santa Barbara and i think I have already fallen in love with the game. The different clubs, the ball, the driving range, the golf cart..everything was so cool. I am still a novice at the game but I am sure if I take a couple of lessons on the driving range, I'll be pretty decent.

The second thing was playing racquet ball. Compared to golf, I was on the money from the second game. Though I won only 2 out of 5 games,this game is fairly simple. Actually, if I play this game regularly i might end up screwing my squash. So I will play 5 games of squash first and then hit the racquet ball court.

The Cool Berkeley

This weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Berkeley and I met five people. Didi, Rohit, Chinki, Bingo and Chusi. The trip started with confirming my place in the Southwest bound to Oakland. It was good to experience the model of Southwest first hand because this company will consume a lot of our attention in the Strategy class.

Besides meeting all the great people I mentioned above and visiting the good laid back Berkeley campus, a few more things stood out. Bay area is definitely cooler than LA by at least 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Travelling over the Bay Bridge was an experience and specially the fact that mist from the bay keeps hitting in your face all day long.

Los Angeles: First Impressions

* The place is not very different from driving on NH8 starting from Vasant Vihar upto DLF Square. Its probably a little cleaner.

* The most surprising part I found here was the waiters in the restaurant. They speak such good English that its not funny. I am told that kids here also speak much better English than a lot of accomplished people in India.

* At this place, the quantity of everything is huge. I ordered something for dessert and after 30 minutes of non stop trial on both the ice cream as well as the apple crunch, a lot of apple was still left. So I had to leave it for some other day.

* I must also tell you about the guy who came to pick me up at the airport. The guy name is Daniel Corral( also called Danny, you can check him on my linkedin list). Danny changed all the impressions I had about US in 2 hours. I smoked in his car and threw the butt on the road...just like that...then just to prove to me that its no different in US, he jumped a red light....this guy was really cool......and he is still only 21...a real live wire....a lot like our own bhopla....but I won't claim that he has the same road scorching capabilities as Mr. Bhupesh.

* The weather here is good. 26 degrees in the day and around 15 at night...but I find it a little colder compared to my expectations...

* I met a guy called John on the flight and he knows Van Halen. So I took his number and will soon contact him. Also, Danny's uncle played drums with Jim Morrison when he was still an unknown young prodigy here in LA.

* This entry is definitely incomplete without any mention of my observations on American culture. Till the time I came here, one of things which I thought was great about America was the freedom which kids get here right from childhood. I had actually heard stories of parents throwing their, sometime, lazy kids into this freedom. No wonder, irrespective of what we think about America and the decay of American civilisation, one fact remains. There are still tons of talented people coming out of American society. Players, guitarists, software engineers...all of them are good at what they are doing. Not restricted to being just doctors and engineers. I like to call it "Institutionalising Innovation". I think I still require some time to find out whether my hypothesis is true but whenever I find this one out, I'll definitely give it space on this page in a seperate entry.

Too much English, Los Angeles style

One thing which is hitting me right now is the amount of English I have to hear everyday here in Los Angeles. Almost everyone except the few people I know speak non stop English. Having brought up on Hindi and having spent more than 20 years listening to Hindi all the time, this is quite disconcerting.

Its not as if English is alien, whatever I have read in the last eight years is more or less English but its as if something essential has been plugged out of a normal existence. I was never more convinced of the integral part a language plays to bridge you with your culture and the roots. I am pretty rootless right now with so
little Hindi around.

On "who is kapigup"

kapigup

I am getting old, will be soon unemployed, sometimes ambitious, lover of loud Sound and little Solvency, unecessarily Self-possessed sometimes. But none of these symptoms are ever pernicious, I am a pure survivor .....