Last Day at Citrix

15th July 2007: I landed in the US for the first time soon after my marriage with my high school sweetheart Priyendra.

Nov, 2007: I got my EAD (Employment Authorization Document) and I was free to work anywhere till the time Priyendra would be employed with Google :)

Nov mid- Dec end, 2007: I frantically looked for jobs. I posted my resume on all the job sites. I called up Consultants. I also got my Resume reviewed. In the meantime, I applied for Masters in Computer Science in Santa Clara University as I did not want to go anywhere away from home.
I came to the US after quitting my work with Infosys where I worked for about 1.5 years.

In the meantime Priyendra told me to start with Open university at SCU. I wanted to not leave hope and look for jobs too :)
So one day at one of the Indian stores I saw an ad for Silicon India Job Fair. I thought this is a good opportunity for me to go to one. Priyendra was not very optimistic about it as he thought I needed more work experience or a Masters degree in hand but as he is ....always supportive in all my decisions...we went. I submitted my resume and forgot about it.

Dec end 2007: Evan Miller (my exceptionally good manager) called me up. He told me he was looking for an intern. I thought I just needed one break. I jumped at the offer and took it.

Dec2007-Jan 2008: I was interviewed by Evan Miller, Lena, Venkat, Ivan, Andrei and Marat and finally I got the internship and I was a part of the Citrix Fraternity on 14th Jan.

When good things happen, they all happen at the same time :)
I got admission in SCU. I started both studies and work together.

Today when I look back, I feel so happy and satisfied with what all I did in the company. My manager gave me the visibility in the company and today I know so many people outside my group too. I have made a foundation for myself and I feel proud of it.

I hope to meet all my fellow Citrites soon and never leave touch with my dear friends I made for life here.

Lastly I would want to give a special thanks to Alena. Office life with her was great fun :)
Will always be in touch and never leave you!!

Diwali is over..

Last week was fun and extremely hectic.

It was fun and full of lights because of Diwali. We had a nice time playing cards at the Shankars.

On Sunday, two days before Diwali, I put Ganesh and lakshmi jee in the living room and would light the diya and offer prayers for the entire week. We put up the decorative lights on the Diwali itself after I got back from my Networks class :)

I wore my engagement lehanga. Now this is the fourth time I wore it so I believe it has been well utilised for now. Ahhhhhhhh what about my Wedding lehanga :( when can I wear that next :(

Well well...I have drifted from the main topic. So Diwali was good fun.

Now on the other hand I had two mid terms, two assignment submissions and one project submission in that same week!!!!!!!!!!!! Am I not a super woman :) I came out of that week victorious :)

This weekend we watched two movies too. Golmaal Returns and Fashion. Both were simply drags.

Sunday we visited Amit and Shilpa Singhal and Sriram and his wife to wish them Diwali. It was a nice Sunday spent. After a long time it was only me and Priyendra :)

Amit had a nice barbecue set up and he made corns for us. Nice!

This week started with a bang too with assignments and projects and a mid term on Friday.

Alena asked me some time back  on hwat my plans are for the weekend. I almost screeched and said...weekend is still faraway da!

Hopefully I will win over such heavy situations and be able to manage my work, studies and home well.

Gruesome Violence

Last night I heard about one of the most inhuman and gruesome case of violence done to a 3 year old girl in NZ. I am still wondering whether they were the girl's parents and if they were then how could they be so beastly and barbaric. Did they not even think once before churning her into a laundry dryer or hitting her hard on her forehead? Did the thought of hell not cross their minds once before letting her die with blood pouring out from her mouth? What did they want from the little girl.

To read the enitre story http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10538641

Well on my side...I have two midterms coming up next week. I was busy finishing the IDL calculator in CSP this weekend. I have been studying Networks too.

This weekend was fun...bachelor's party for Diwaker, Steve and Shreyas, Shradha and Ramesh's house warming party and movie. On the whole a good and satisfying weekend.

This week I should be done with most of my studies (hopefully) so that we can enjoy the weekend too. This Sunday is Priyendra's bday. I do not think we have much plans for it yet. Let us see how it turns out to be this year. Last year was a lot of fun though.

I am so used to this schedule of mine that I cannot think what my life would be after studies. It would be so plain and bland..haha...feels like I have been studying since eternity.

Just spoke to Neha Rastogi and she shares my opinion. I wish I could share my chat with her, with all of you but.....anyways..I think I better get back to work.

Bye!

Surprise gift on the 11th day..

Shutterfly zindabad!!!!

Asim helped me keep the gift in Google for him. He was thrilled to receive the gift.

There was a screensaver saying "11 days to go" too :)

I wish I had captured his reaction in my camera that day!!!!

Armaan growing up...

It is surprising to watch Armaan grow up. He has been looking different to us daily. His expressions and looks are so different in every picture that I see.

He looks so much like Ishaan now. Mummy tells me he smiles and tries to talk as well.

Both my little ones are in India right now. Hope they enjoy!

God Bless!!

A happy and satisfying weekend

I had a nice weekend after an insane and batty week. Friday was mostly with friends watching cricket at Priyanka's place. Saturday was great fun when all three of us went out shopping.

Today we mostly relaxed.

Now I am having a migraine ache and so just chilling again. Was reading a lot of stuff right now.

One phrase that I came across was "baby boomer" I did not know till some time back what it meant. It is a phrase used to describe people born post World war II. You could read the wiki  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer

Last night I also watched a video on Ted. This was about a parrot who has a vocabulary of about 200 words and can speak many things. It was christened Einstein :)

Einstein is an african grey parrot and can impersonate a spaceship and a monkey. Cool na!!!

I think I should sign off before my ache reaches limits!!!!

A Crazy week!

It has been hard to find and squeeze out time to even sit and sip a cup of coffee for 10 minutes.

Loads of Assignments and Li's Architecture Exam. I am trying to be efficient at work and in my studies. Trying doubly hard to manage time and devote good share to all subjects and also balance my personal and social life. Diwaker is here with us. He is here for his interviews. Priyendra and I hope for the best for him and wish that he gets placed here in the bay area itself....another enthusiastic memeber of the stanfordyaars family. Also yesterday we went to Sharadha's place for her surprise bday party organized by Ramesh. It was a good break for me and Priyendra. After a long time we got to be together and talk during our way up to SFO and down to Mtn. View. We have been hardly getting time to talk as I am so busy with work and studies. This weekend we plan to do some good family activity...may be go for a hike..and a small shopping session :)

I feel I am lagging in the other courses like CSP and Networks due to the Architecture load. Hope to get some work done in CSP and Networks by next week.

On the work front, I am busy with Cyprus testing. Have to prepare my test plan for app Template testing. I have again started automating the test cases. Hope to see more work done in 9.0 features. 

I am also getting trained to do WanScaler builds. Hopefully everything goes well.

Keep posting comments!!

After a while...

Woww...it seems like I started blogging and completely forgot that once I became interested in blogging.

Well last month in India was great and fanatastic. It was my maiden trip to India post wedding and we were really pampered and looked after so well. 

Gauri joined us on our way abck and she is happily settled with us. 

We both start with our classes next week. I will be taking three classes this quarter and I bet it is going to be tough with work and studies. Although Evan ahs been really nice for getting me from 40 hr/week to 25 hrs/week.

My classes this quarter are 

• Computer Architecture
• Computer Networks
• Client Server Programming

Wish me luck folks.

Another reason for my excitement is Mom's trip to Mtn. View tomorrow. We plan on doing lots of things this week when she is here. 

Well abhi I will sign off as Alena wants to go for a walk outside.

Ciao!

I phone excitement and fenzy all around...

...after reading so much about the iphone which has just released, I wish we could make it at 8 a.m. in the morning to valley fair and purchase it then.
We will go in the evening and hopefully should become proud owners of black and white today itself.
Will write more about it after we get one...

Sunset at Half Moon Bay

Today Priyendra and I randomly decided to go to Half Moon Bay to see the sunset. When we left from Mountain View it was sunny but by the time we reached highway 92, it became so cloudy, although it was fun, especially now that Shanno is back and we had the top down and were listening Mauja hi Mauja:)

The water was really cold by the sea. We also played a game for 5 minutes on the beach. Priyendra hid his pair of Old Navy under the sand and I had to look for them. Kiddish..yeah!!! But it was fun.
We were hungry by the time we left HMB so hogged on Salad at Fresh Choice and then rushed for Iron Man on Shoreline.
Iron Man was good fun. It was a fun thriller and kept us glued to our seats for ~2 hours.
In short. today the entire day was very relaxing!

Iearnt a new thing in the Release process

Today I went early to work thinking that I will return home early and go for the spinning class at the gym. I was fairly excited about leaving the office early till 4 when suddenly I was bombarded with work. I was really apprehensive starting that new work without Tom or Ken. Evan asked me to start the entire thing. Also I needed to create the branches int he new build today as tomorrow there might be a build execution.
Alas!!!as opposed to my wishes I came back at 8:40p.m. I had no intentions of cooking so we rushed to Fresh Choice and grabbed a lot of salad and ate to my heart's contention.
Right now I am at Google. Priyendra still has some work to complete so I thought of jotting down my day's experience.
My bug has not yet returned from the auto shop. It was supposed to be here last Friday. Since the time summers started, I would pull down the top of Shanno and drive back home on Fridays. As it is everybody is colorful on a Friday. How I miss Shanno right now.
The auto parts person said he has not received a few parts form the dealer. He is waiting for them to come and we are waiting for Shanno to come home. All the more since we are both tied to one another these days as there is only one car. either he drops me or I drop him at Google.

Anyways I think he is almost done with his work. Will get back to my page tomorrow.
Gudnite:)

Randy Pausch still alive!!

I am so glad that Randy Pausch is still alive. He wrote his blog yesterday. As per his blog he seems to be fine. Good I am happy. I wish God just keeps procrastinating his death.
Anyways....I am happy.

Is Randy Pausch dead?....

I am not sure if Randy Pausch is still alive. Yesterday my professor told us that the man behind the "Last Lecture" breathed his last breath. I did an extensive search on the internet for him but did not find any such news. May be the extremely optimistic man did not want to let the world know when he leaves us and goes to the Almighty.
I have been following his blog from the time I saw his "Last Lecture". It is so nerve wracking to see a person who knows how to live life to the fullest. In fact I would say there are mixed emotions. You want to learn from the person to live life and also when you look at him, you feel he is such jabber box, what will happen if he is turned mute by God all at once.
His life has been an open book now and he writes daily about his health in column in his blog which he calls as "Box Score".
He is a dying hero. I call him a hero because with his humor and optimism and Jim Carey ways he has captivated the attention of millions of us.

If any one of you wants to follow his blog, here is the link: http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html

Beginning it today...

I have been wanting to start blogging since so long but always wanted to start with a dhinchak blog.
It is high time and I don't think I can delay it further as I am almost getting close to my First Anniversary celebrations yaar. I am growing old. And today I think that as I grow and evolve, someday I might have a dhinchak blog.
When kids grow up, they want to become either a doctor or an engineer. When one grows up in the blogging world, one has idols too. I have never been close to the blogging world but have always read great bong's blogs. I really appreciate him for his sense of humor and being so close to the Desi within him. May be gradually I will start having more blogger gurus.

I will get back to work now and keep writing as and when I feel like:)