Travelogue: An auspicious start!

Thursday (day 1 continued):

I was welcomed into the office and was happy at the sight of our work areas. They were large cubicles with ample personal space. I had heard that Americans liked having more personal space and office certainly seemed comfortable. We had breakfast in the office canteen within the same building and being the first day I just followed what my colleagues took – a couple of bread slices, butter and some milk. The cups in US were large (even the smallest cup was probably 300+ml or so). People were polite and courteous everywhere in office – irrespective of what position they were working in. Being my first day I was introduced to a few of the client team members and most of the day I spent in setting up my workplace.

Lunch we were forced to have in office itself since the Rain God was in delightful mood. Again I followed what my colleagues took for lunch – some chicken pieces, some rice and some vegetable. I hadn’t tasted chicken for the past three years or so. The fried pieces tasted good and out of the three items I had on my plate the chicken tasted the best. The vegetables were not completely raw but not cooked either – it was in some salad form and the rice was different from what we are used to having.

Evening we left office by around 5:30pm. Sini (the person I would replace during his vacation) was forced to come over to our place for the night because I had hardly learnt any of the work he was doing – he showed me the tasks he was doing but there was still a lot more to learn. At night we went to a restaurant called “Chillys” – five of us but I didn’t order anything. Didn’t feel like eating but still took a couple of chicken pieces from my colleague’s plate. Maybe my tummy wasn’t prepared for the chicken I had during lunch – it hadn’t processed chicken for a few years and suddenly having four/five pieces must have made it hard. It wasn’t really a stomach upset but I just didn’t feel normal either. Couldn’t really enjoy the meal with all of them.

Friday we all worked from home with the rains still pouring. Though I should’ve slept early on the first couple of days, I ended up losing a lot of sleep; I had to learn what all work Sini was doing for the past couple of years within a couple of days and substitute him for three weeks. I tried to upload as much data as I could but a lot of things I just couldn’t keep track of (it went like “overhead transmission” as they say!). Friday was hectic – it was like an internship period being exposed to the real world; Sini would pass on his work to me and I would try to solve the problems and answer queries. Fortunately or unfortunately there weren’t many things left in the day. The problem was that on both nights we had issues with our daily batch jobs – which meant that we ended up sleeping at around 2am. It was interesting in the sense that this system is generally stable and we don’t have issues on the night jobs usually – but now it seemed like every night could turn into a nightmare! I guess the moment I stepped into US soil was very auspicious – even the rains were a surprise because two days back the place was dry and ever since I came it was raining almost non-stop!