To Bangalore and Back to Pune

May 2003 - Training is finished and everyone is asked to fill their 3 top choice of location where they want to relocate for Job. Many of us wanted to stay in Pune (I forgot to mention in my previous post that location was Pune), reason - belongs to a nearby city, have relatives in city or just don't want a hassle to go to a new city and settle again. I was also in one of these category and requested Pune as a location. Didn't get it for my choice so tried to take the matter with HR. It sometime just seem unfair how these matters are handles but at same time we don't have any idea about why it is done so. Reasons gives are always so tangible that it always seems not right to not change it. Anyway after few attempts I gave up and accepted my given location - Bangalore.

Many of us were together in our 18 hour journey by bus to Bangalore. We were give a hotel accommodation near Majestic for one week. In that time period, we need to search for our own accommodation. It seemed like a hell of a job to find accommodation where 10 month of rent to be given as deposit. For a north Indian, it was a totally different culture and turf. With 4-5 people, we might be able to get a flat and collect deposit money. Ultimately one of my friend and myself found one arrangement to settle with few other people (in same company) in their rooms. It was a breather. At least it gave us time to make a good choice. Later we shifted to a different place with two other friends where we stayed till we left Bangalore. Most of the time eating will happen in company or outside in a hotel or any tiffin place. It is quite an interesting name given to a place where one could get idli, dosa and other south Indian dishes with self service option.

Being in first production software project was exciting. I joined a project where people were selected by taking interview. 8 of us got selected out of 18. It was even more exciting thinking that project might be good if they need to conduct another round of interview after company training. Then came the shock of another training (Induction) for project. As there was not enough seating space and plan was to shift project to new building, we were given a cubical (seats 4 people) with 2 PC in it. As we were not going to work on project soon, we were attending classes half of the time and later spending time reading mails and studying project documentation. It felt like Greek and Latin to go through those documents at that time. Even whatever classes, we were attending to see production screens, were not making any sense at all and everything was out of mind as soon as the day end. There I learn my another lesson of software life. Whenever starting new, just give it a shot. You might not understand even a bit, but that would make a base for you and when you get a starting point which you can understand properly, you would be able to link other details to it. It is enough if you are able to do that in your starting time. This works even now after my 8 year of job experience.

Did I tell you that my stream was mainframe? Sorry missed that as well. Anyway being mainframe it was hard in project to get us access when we are not working on project. So we just get to see it while getting training classes. After some time I and one of my colleague decided to do something. We came to know about few VB (visual basic) application which can be developed to help project processes. Why not to give it a shot. We might learn a language with more familiar name than COBOL (for mainframe). We expresses our interest for it. And soon we were given seat in project for work. No, No, No... it was not VB work. We were given project (mainframe) work. It might be our interest to work or our luck that we didn't get to learn VB. Whatever is the case, we were happy that we would be given our own seat and PC.

For rest of people who joined project with us, there was some talk about temporary relocation to Pune for QA work. What Pune? I was cursing my luck that why did I get a PC as I could have been one of them to get this chance. But I was not that unlucky either. Nobody was agreeing to it and so I get to show my keen interest on going to Pune. Manager agreed for it and we were packing our bags to go back to Pune. So another lesson that you never know if things are turning right for you or can actually stop you from being exposed to other opportunities. You just need to be optimistic and satisfied with what you got. It happened multiple times with me in my years to come which will prove this again and again.
In End I was happy that I am going back to Pune. I was optimistic that my short trip, could possibly turn into a permanent location for me and I would get what I was desiring 2 month ago. Happy for time being :)...