yoohoo!

This http://offspaces.blogspot.com/ is my new blog. I am tired of clicking and waiting for things to load. spaces was much better b4 live. It was faster, looked better and everything worked well justtt betterr.. I think all the new UI and overloading of the new features has made it super slow!!. someone do something about it !!.

 

Wow!! this site has suddenly become so slow!!.. i bet this is the curse of the live!! i dont like live hotmail.. the ui sucks! the spaces ui is ok but only if it ever comes up. it takes half an hour to just write a blog. grrrrr. i am comtemplating moving to a different bloging site!

CEOs are also normal people like us:)

 

From the article about Facebook's acquisition talks (link provided below)

During one series of talks with Microsoft, Facebook executives told their Microsoft peers they couldn’t do an 8 a.m. conference call because the company’s 22-year-old founder and chief executive, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, wouldn’t be awake, says a person familiar with the talks. Microsoft executives were incredulous.

and

At one point in the Yahoo negotiations, the talks extended into the weekend, says a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg, this account continues, said he couldn’t take part because his girlfriend was in town. Others pointed out they were closing in on a billion-dollar deal. Mr. Zuckerberg said it didn’t matter: his cellphone would be off, this person says.

 

i like this guy!

hmm! back to the same old same old confusing question and decision.

Well atleast the final outcome is kind of agreed upon i.e to move back. but the question remains "WHEN"!!!

 

we discussed this again yesterday! and the time conflict was because of certain factors

- green card .. of course.. though i dont give too much  weight to that. not the same for hubby though:)

- kids... opportunity to dual citizenship... good point

 

both points bring up other discussions. for example, you can stay here till your first kid and it will be a couple of years and then u will want to go back for sure... but what about the next kid.., whu might be born in india., do u give different opportunities to them?

also as my hubby pointed out.., that its a big bad world out there in india .. which i havent really seen. hmm maybe true.. and i am sure i will be very distressed when i face it.. i will definitely get distressed with the discrimination problems, buereacrcy.. etcetc. and that does really scare me.

 

but do i want to change my mind coz of that?

do i want to continue living with a good income here.. good spending power.. drive expensive cars.. go on world tours once in 2 yrs.... etc etc( these are viveks words describing life here)

 

dont think so.. maybe i have to give up some good life.. but hey its not that bad in india even if its a couple of yrs of struggle and i guess u need that struggle to appreciate what u have...

 

maybe i might not be able to adjust so well.. maybe it will be more difficult to set up a friend circle and life at this point in life. maybe things might get really bad...

but somehow even if all these thoughts scare me a little , they dont change my mind about going back,.. of course vivek thinks that i am hurrying the decision based on my flight fears( india trip every year is too taxing for me).. but its not just that..  wont all the problems really magnify with every delay u add to the decision?

 

finally the confusion is coz 

- it is a choice between 2 good things  which is making the decision really difficult

- it is a midlife crisis which will probably happen irrespective of wherever we live if we have this kind of settled job life :) i still dont have an answer for exactly what i am looking for.. but i defintely am looking for something which is causing this crisis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the problem of settling.

Trying to figure out where to settle.. US or India.

Pros of being here:

- of course there is a lot more freedom and independence

- more money/spending power, confortable life

- drive good cars, go to scenic places, get more vacation, have a great looking house.

 

Cons:

- you are too far from immediate family except your spouse

- cultural deprivation

- you are at the mercy of the govt immigration laws and timelines.

- each step in life has restrictions about visa status etc

- too much freedom causes increased inflexibility which causes difficulty in adjusting to generation/cultural gap

 

Pros of being in India:

- of course you are closer to the family

- there no restrictions in terms of laws about what steps you want to take though there might be other limitations

- sometimes restricted freedom can probably help

- you have family to take care of your kids

- you dont have to make a month and 24 hour one way travel trips to visit family.

- these days you get a decent spending power in india too

- just because you have seen the higher comfortability here does not mean that life there will not be comfortable

 

Cons:

- you might not be working on cutting edge technology there

- maybe you will get stuck in the bureaucratic/unprofessional/service industry.

- you will lose some of the freedom and independence.

- you mgith not have great cars and as comfortable a house

 

Confusing isnt it. My preference is india just coz i want to be closer to family and i hate flying :).

I think it gets difficult tp decide coz people get settled in comfortable lives and jobs here and this move is a huge change which you usually cannot justify enough to cover the toll it might take on you. Hopefully this decision will be made soon. I will keep this blog updated about it.

 

 

It just so happened this weekend that we ended up watching 2 movies in theater. Not a good way to spend the weekend, but hey, its done now. We watched "Inside Man": Denzel washington and "V for Vendetta" : Natalie portman. And guess what are the common elements in both these movies,...... Hindi songs. Yes. Inside man has Chaiya Chaiya and Vendetta has some Raja hindustani song .. heh!!  We were so delirious with laughter that people aorund must have thought that theses guys have lost it. But you have too watch the movie to beleive me how out of place the songs were. Man, cant these people atleast jut put the music and not the words in there? Imagine sukhwinder singing in the background with Denzel in the pic .. hehe...

 

Someone tell them the meaning of the song and the situational need:)

 

Whats with me and this ~1.5 year job itch! In my last job too, the first year went really good, i learnt a lot, had a lot of fun and things passed coz i was too busy to notice my interests. Now the whole cycle is repeating, one year gone, learnt a lot about working in start-up kind of mode with customer and launch focus, dealing with stress etc, innovative solution under time pressure , management etc etc etc.

 

Now I have 3 ways to go from here (from my group),

1. switch to totally technical position and continue as an SDE,

2. switch to a tech position where i can be a tech-lead in some time and then progress in the mgmt scenario

3. switch to like a QA Lead position and switch to QA manager within an yr.

 

1. means switching to an SDE position in a completely different grp. highly unlikely given my growing dislike towards fully technical positions ( or well i dont know whether i will totally dislike it or not, since i havent been doing ultra-core coding recently :)

2. means again switching out of my grp and its even more unlikely unless my manager supports the move

3. is the only likely option which can be done by sticking to my current grp

 

This brings me to the very obvious question, whats better, sticking to your current obviously not so interesting job/group so that you can move up the ladder quickly, or switching every now and then which can either move you in either direction dpeending on the positions. The basic premise of the problem is also probably analogous to "Jack of all trades, Master of none".

 

For the time being, I am just going to shut down my questioning and itching mind and let life take me wherever.