Job - a Journey...

This is one piece that P has been pestering me to write for about 3 years now. This is entirely about my experiences in interviews - both in India and here in US. Without much ado, lets get started.

My very first real world interview experience was during the so called campus interviews that happen in the colleges. I had already decided (and my dad had decided that he would not let me) that I wanted to complete my Masters in US. But I had to go for the campus selections because - well - my dad forced me to do it because it will give me a job security if my master's application or the visa approval falls through. I still think that he was secretly praying that it will indeed fall through.

Back to my interview, yes, the very first company was a software MNC (a giant in India). Everyone was dressed to impress and we sat in rows to take our written technical. It was a piece of cake, in part, due to the GRE training and exam I had already completed. And about 20 (of about 400)  students were short-listed for the face-to-face interview. Surprise, Surprise!! I was in that 20 and then began the ritual of hastily adjusting our hair, dress, more perfume, and what not.

After a nervous wait, it was time for the interview and I walked in, standing tall and confident, looking straight at my interviewer, and with a warm open smile. She smiled back and held out her hand. After a cool confident handshake (just don't crush their hand and insert the no-sweat-no-limp-open-handshake lecture here) I was pointed to my seat and the interview started (I was to later find out that I was half way through my interview at this point, we were graded since the moment we were selected in the theoretical test).

The questions were very typical. It started with the tell-me-about yourself. Since I wanted to play my strengths to my advantage, I let it slip that I have achieved the highest honor in Girl Guides (Rashtrapathi Award of Bharat Scouts and Guides). What followed next was a slew of curious questions of what I need to know or do to achieve that honor, what are camps like, yada yada yada. Well, I had colorful stories from my 5 years of being an active Guide and a year of teaching the budding Guides and she was impressed.

Next came the most dreaded question of what are your weakness. The usual answer here will be to tell an extreme strength as a weakness, say, you are a workaholic, or your uncanny attention to detail getting out of hand. Well, I had a curve-ball here. I told her that my weakness is fear in general, in particular, fear of failure. As expected, she asked me to elaborate. And as expected, I launched in to my (real-life) story of myself failing the Physics exam in my 9th grade by 0.5 points. I did not talk to anyone for a whole day as I tortured myself that I was worthless and was depressed. But at the end of that day, I started comparing my physics paper with the other papers i had completed in that exam (and scored in the top 1% of the class), I realized where I had gone wrong. I had simply wasted a lot of time in explaining a few questions in great detail that I ran out of time and had to turn in the paper without completing it. I now knew what was wrong and how to correct it and I made sure that I always got the first mark in physics in all the other exams (ofcourse I was in the top 1% in all the other subjects as well). A different answer for a difficult question scored me more brownie points.

With this have taken most of the time allotted for each candidate, I was expecting technical programming questions (I was particularly trying to avoid programming questions as I did not know C or Java, which were the sought after programming languages at that time, but had a good knowledge of SQL). My interviewer was looking through my CV, when the interests caught her eye. She looked at me and said,

Her: 'So, Poetry huh? What is your style?'.

Me: (Jackpot!) Almost all my writings are long romantic ballads. I do write some science fiction poetry but have not done so in recent months.

Her: Interesting. Engineers usually don't enjoy reading ballads, let alone write. Do you have a short and sweet one?

Me: Sure. This is an adaptation of a few versus I read somewhere but cannot remember the source. It goes like this, 'Long long ago, so long ago. Nobody can tell how long ago... There lived a King and Queen who loved one another to grave. And now, history is repeating itself- By creating you and me!'

Her: (was silent for a few seconds) And the guy?

Me: I am sorry?

Her: Who is that guy? If you write these versus, who is that guy?

Me: That is simple, it is Prince Williams.

Her: What? You don't even know him!

Me: Well, when I saw him walking behind his mother's coffin with a brave face, knowing that he needs to stay strong for his brother, my heart went out to him. Everyone will have an ambitious crush in their life-just like how the girls like the movie stars- only difference in my life is that I like someone real and who, in my view, is a hero.

Her: That is very true...

From now on, the interview was a chatter and she thanked me for my time and that I should wait for the results. I thanked her back for her time and after another firm handshake, I walked out confidently and let out a huge sigh when I was out of earshot. Of the 30 minutes in the interview room, I was never once asked anything technical while other students were grilled crazy with the programming questions. After hours of waiting, I learnt that I was one of the 6 students who were selected for the job. Looking back at the interview, it was purely my confidence and the personal touch that scored me the job.

However, I eventually persuaded my dad to let me complete my Masters and came to US. My quest for a job here will be the next entry...

Third time is a charm?

I wanted to write more often, but the change of place and people made me hostile to reading, let alone write. I was more interested to just browse and watch lame video rather than get a good book to read or better yet, write something. All my  reading was limited to Science and Medical fiction.

The science fiction ended with the demise of Michael Crichton and his last (so called) two books - I still think that he did not write the Pirate Latitudes - it is a load of crap when compared to his master pieces like 'Andromeda Strain', and 'The Great Train Robbery' (well, ofcourse the Jurassic Park). Micro is more like Crichton than the Pirate Latitudes but that is for another day. Back to my genre, I started reading (as in getting audio books and listening to them while driving) Robin Cook's works - complete medical fiction. My change of work environment from a pure technological field to being a technical person in healthcare made me more adapt in medical terminologies and hence easy deciphering of the medical jargon Cook throws at us.

In between, if I can find an audio book or 2 by Jeffery Archer, that would join the bandwagon but I would invariably change to medical fiction. But that changed when my man (christening him as P) forced me to read 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho, and I was hooked. I then read, The Witch of Portobello and thought it could have been better. When I read The Winner Stands Alone, I understood why The Alchemist is called his masterpiece.

Back to the point, P had achieved what he intended, make me read again. And that reading had made me to write again and let me see if the third time back to blog proves to be a charm.

Pressure: the good and the bad...

Yep, you guessed it. It is a pressure cooker. Once you have stopped screaming, read on. I know that Boston bombing was a terrible terrible thing. It just crushed me when I heard about it. And myself currently working in the health care field with my employer based just out of Boston, it was a deeper cut. Even though I did not realize at that time, I now remember seeing a sudden rise in patient admission across the hospitals across Boston. It was terrible.

But I just saw another news, which made me sad and angry at the same time. A passenger was arrested as he was flying with a pressure cooker and he made it inside the US border (you can see the story here: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-man-traveling-pressure-cooker-arrested-180030697.html). May be he was an innocent guy who was bringing a pressure cooker for cooking purposes. Or he may be the dumbest terrorist yet. Hell, he may even be making a dry run.

But all I know is this. Even though I am part of an active, tax-paying workforce now, I came here as a student. And I remember all of us student diligently packing our pressure cooker on our very first trip across the oceans to the Land of Dreams. People from Asia use pressure cooker for everything, from something as simple as cooking rice to preparing elaborate meals. Well, I can hear many of you saying, 'Why do you have to travel with one? You can buy anything in USA. You get everything here..'. Yes, I can buy them here but I will not. You want to know why? It is because:
 1. We use the pressure cooker to cook most of the dishes we make (and rice being our staple food)
 2.  It is so damn costly here
 3. And the quality of the pressure cookers sold here are very bad (we will get a much better quality cooker in our country for less than half the price we pay here)

Ofcourse, we do not travel with it to every damn domestic destination once we bring it to our permanent residence. But we do have to bring it in in the first place. I personally own a pressure cooker and I use it every week to cook anything and everything I need for the week. I am not asking you to go out and buy a pressure cooker but remember, just because 2 dimwit haters used pressure cookers for cruel purposes, it does not mean that all the pressure cookers are used for cruel purposes. I will leave you with that.

The THIN line between Food and Poison...

Well, this post is not about me getting poisoned nor me poisoning someone. It is rather my antics after coming to America without knowing the 'English' translation for the grains, veggies and fruits we use almost everyday in India.

This incident happened when I was working in the University Library. The people I worked with were such a loving bunch (yep, still in touch with them) and when the in-house Librarian was retiring, we decided to give her a send-off party. It was decided that each of us will cook/buy a dish or two that comes from our country/culture. As myself being a broke-back student, I settled for cooking. Since my cooking skills had highly developed after I had come to the Land of Dreams, I set to work. My plan was to cook a sweet and a dish made of rice. I settled for Sooji Halwa and Lemon Rice as they were the easiest and will not have a huge issue with allergies (curd rice, even though easier than Lemon, I have to deal with it if people are Lactose Intolerant).

And I prepared the dishes with relative ease (having made them almost every other week) and they were ready to be taken in for the party. Now came the bigger task of explaining what is what to them. Lemon Rice is easy as they know what is rice, lemon, chilli (PEPPERS!) and lentils are. But Sooji..? Not so much. A quick Google search said that the name was Semolina, also known as Cream of Wheat, but hey, I googled this just before I left the house and I did not have these fancy data plans at that time, so Semolina it was. All went well with Lemon Rice. Everyone literally loved it and I was explaining the goodness of Turmeric for the 'n'th time (they were intrigued by the yellow color of the rice), when the time for dessert started. As they were all impressed by the Lemon Rice, everyone took a huge helping of the Halwa and were digging into it contentedly when one of them said, 'Gosh! It is so yummy, what is it?'. It was for this exact moment, I had looked up the English name for Sooji. I proudly stated, 'Salmonella'. Everyone just froze; with spoons full of halwa hanging mid-air and with a terrifying looks in their face. And i was like, 'Hey guys, chill. What happened..?'. My dear old pal, lets call him X, realized I might have gotten the name wrong (after my famous stunt where I told everyone that I was going to Newark (little did I know that it was pronounced 'New-erk') and everyone thought I was flying out of the country), and tried to lighten up the situation by saying, 'Well Shai, don't you think that it might be kind of late for this kind of information?'. I still did not understand why everyone around me was hastily putting their bowls and spoons down and started searching for water, when my Supervisor (lets call her Y) understood what might have happened and said, 'Shai, you just said that you served us Salmonella.. It is a deadly bacteria'. That is when it dawned on me and I hastily said, 'No no, it is Semolina. I got the name mixed up'.

I dont have to tell you that it was only X, Y and the regular staffs who finished my Halwa and it took a whole month until some of the seasonal staff of the library started to trust me food again. For what it is worth, I made Paal Khoa (a sweet dish made by condensing the milk until it becomes solid) for my colleagues and saw it disappearing in a jiffy to my satisfaction (it took me a whole week of cleaning to get the vessel in which I made the khoa clean is another story)...

My cravings of India

Having lived in Chennai for the first 21 years of my life, I crave for food.. Spicy, tasty food.  Then I came to USA and lived in places where Indian food was a rarity. Ofcourse, places like NYC, Silicon Valley (basically the places where there is a huge population of Indians who spend money without thinking) have extra-ordinary Indian hotels. But other places where Indians pinch their purses, not so many. There used to be a couple of Indian restaurants in the cities I lived but after a couple of visits, I realized that I cook better than them #facepalm.

Thus started my journey of cooking. I started making Gobi Manchurian (ofcourse, I needed the help of my friend for this particular dish), samosa, bonda, spring rolls and other food I always crave for at home and eat them as much as I can. Being from a family where these dishes were always bought from outside, this was a huge step for me. I was even so confident that I tried making Murukku (a south Indian delicacy) at home and terribly failed (used the dough to make teeny tiny Seedais though). After I started getting more and more confident, I tried my hand at baking by baking a Garlic Bread. Oh boy, was I mistaken. Having never used a convention oven before, my garlic bread burnt. I was lucky that I had removed the batteries from the smoke alarm before I opened the oven door.

Very soon, I moved to Silicon Valley, a place where you will feel as if you had gone back to India. You will get every single thing you need to eat, literally. From chaat to sweets to special delicacies, you could have it all. I am very fond of Chettinad and northern Kerala cuisine and I found Anjappar and Red Chillies. To feed my Chennai Vegetarian taste buds, I had Madras Cafe and I was in heaven. Whenever I wanted to eat something close to home, I can just go these restaurants and have my fill. I did not have to plan and cook. I was able to get everything I wanted and when I wanted.

But fate was not so kind on me. I had to move to a small town on the coast of Florida where Indians were sparse.. There were indeed a couple of Indian restaurants in town but eating there made a red light glow in our mouth as well as next morning.. I was back to cooking the things I loved. Suddenly a few weeks ago, I started craving for vegetable puffs. Finding a samosa at the Indian stores in my place is a rarity, where am I supposed to go for puffs? Had it been Silicon Valley, I would have gone to one of the Indian Groceries and could stuffed myself with puffs. But I am not there anymore. Hence started my quest to make Puffs.

Having been introduced to baking by my very close friend in Silicon Valley, I found the Puff Pastries in one of the local shops here (after roaming around for 2 hours though) started on the process at 11 PM on a Saturday. After making the filling with carrots, peas, onions, and most importantly potatoes, I started making them by trial and error method (I had thawed the pastries for too long and they were sticking to one another). So my first batch was okay. But the second batch came out excellent, having figured out how to do it in the first batch:

Even though it looks like it is less, I had made more than 60 puffs (way more than what I can eat). Solution..? I took it to work and made my co-workers eat it. They have already fell in love with the dish. In the same way, I made gulab jamuns last week and have made my colleagues fall in love with the beautiful sweet. Yea, cooking and baking these things require a lot of work. But when you see others eating what you cook, that is bliss. Hell yea, I can cook for that. Just to see the smile in their faces when they eat something different and love it.

I am Back!

After a very long hiatus due to personal and professional reasons, I am finally BACK to trouble anyone and everyone who will stumble across my blog (just because they have nothing else to surf)...

 Kind of feel like Ajith in Billa :) (No Sighing, laughing, teasing allowed... )

One of those days!!

There are some days right? When you plan everything out.. Make reservations, clear up your schedule, wear your day-to-evening clothes and may be hide your high heels in the car with the hope that may be, just, may be after work, you can spice the attire up and rush for, i dont know, a dinner or a date? And after all those plans and the walking around whole day with formals over evening clothes, you have to watch helplessly as one thing after another crop up, peeling off your plans and ruin that day that was supposed to be perfect? 

Source: http://weheartit.com/entry/18678468

Well, that happened to me, Yesterday of all the days.. On Valentine's day! One difference is that I did not have a date with my guy (I have to blame it on the long distance thing we are going through right now) but with my best friend (let me call her X) and her angelic daughter (say, Y). After meticulous planning, ordering take-outs from the Y's favorite Chineese place well in advance, selecting the soft music and setting up the table for a candle-light dinner, what can go wrong in that one work-day right? Well, I found that out first hand.

The day started off like any other day, I can say that it was even better than most other days. But the blocks started tumbling around around noon. First I came to know that I need to stay in office till 7  PM or 7.30 PM. But decided to leave by 7 anyway. When one of my plan changed, all others started to dissipate. Starting to home at 5, taking a shower and playing Wii with Y before dinner started to look like a distant dream. But still I bravely started from office around 7.10 in the hopes of boarding the bus that is supposed to reach the stop at 7.30 PM. But thank my fate, as I emerged from the building, the bus crossed me at 7.15 PM. So I had to wait for the next one which was supposed to some at 7.45PM. With X and Y getting more hungry, I started getting frustrated with my inability to do something. So, I asked them to go ahead with the dinner.

By the time the bus came, it was already 8 and it would take atleast 20 minutes even if there were no traffic. I reached home at 8.30 and when I managed to unlock the door, Y was standing at the door with her beautiful beautiful smile. They had waited for me to come home so that we can have dinner together. And THAT, made my day. What progressed as a disappointing day ended as one of my good ones.  I even got to dance to a few songs on Wii with Y. And the dinner, well, let us just say, mind-blowing. I even got a special Valentine's day card from Y.

I never knew that 3 girls/women living together can have so much fun until I started to live with X and Y. Ofcourse, we all try to persuade each other with our own sad-puppy face (Y has already mastered the art) and have our share of fun while baking muffins/cakes or while doing something simple like washing the car. Living here, everyday has become more fun and memorable. They have made me break out of my mundane day-to-day routines and I am glad they did! Looking forward to more fun as I head home today..