Those old pals...

Had my weekly 1-on-1 meeting with my manager last night. He usually does this once every two weeks. Normally that is strictly limited to the Outlook Calendar. At the time of the meeting he is usually not around so its not abnormal for us to have this once every month typically. He is a busy guy what to do. But he made this exception for me because he diagnosed me as suffering from "San Jose sickness". So we are doing one-on-one meetings weekly till I get over my sickness. I sent him an email a couple of weeks ago. Even as I was composing it, I could feel the vagueness and emptiness pouring forth and the sad undertone in it. Very confused. And very out of place in a new work environment.

So he took time to actually chat with me and said lets talk weekly. A very nice guy. I don't think I have ever admired another person professionally as much as I have admired my manager. Very brilliant guy. He has always been around telling me what to do, what not to do, what he did wrong, (actually its probably more appropriate to say, what didn't work for him, I don't think he is capable of doing anything wrong :D ) and how I should avoid all that so I can grow fast. Faster than it took him to be where he is today. And I owe whatever little popularity I enjoy in my entire team today to him and only him.

So anyway, after this 1-on-1 we usually have a learning channel meeting. My most accommodating team mates didn't mind moving a meeting from Wednesday evening to early morning on Thursday so I could continue attending it. And it makes me both very happy and very sad when Thursday night comes around. I get to talk to part of my team if not all of it, which is what I am usually excited about. At the same time, it does make me wish I was back in that room with them thrashing those fundamentals out, white-boarding, drawing topology diagrams, discussing entries and flags, technicalities, technicalities and more technicalities, and generally having a blast of a time.

I have slowly started getting into the run of things here in Bangalore. I have met new people, I now go out with the girls gang for lunch everyday, miss it when not everyone is around some days for lunch, I started giving presentations (aka gyan) to people here in what is now called my "expertise", and in general I am enjoying being wowed at and awed at ;) (You know that is a joke, don't you? ) I even have a scheduled slot for interviewing a person to recruit into the team already! I couldn't have dreamt of a faster or better absorption into the team here. But still, I miss my team back in San Jose. I miss joking around with people. I miss the corridor gossip, the pranks we played on our manager, giving a tough time to the 3 unmarried colleagues in the team etc. Whenever I think of it, it makes me terribly nostalgic. Every morning at least one person from that team is up late and we end up chatting for a while before they say good day and I say good night!

There was some possibility that I needed to go back to San Jose for a few days to wrap some formalities up. I was telling my manager I don't want to travel back to the US just yet as we are still settling in etc. He was saying the team would be really excited if I would make it. I was thinking, I would be extremely excited too! He said anytime I was ready to make a trip he would be most happy to arrange for it one way or the other. So maybe I will go back after all in 3-4 months, I will find a time when Subhash is really busy ;) And I am already thinking of how it would be to go back and meet those familiar faces. I am sure I would surprise them (see, it has to be done that way!), won't let them know ahead of time that I am coming (of course my manager would know, what can be done to help it, he is all pervasive ;) ) etc. We of course will have to have lunch at least once at Cheesecake Factory in Valley Fair (we went there as a team at least 100 times!). And naturally, I will insist on using my old cube while I am there, etc etc etc. The thoughts are endless :)

Till then I have to live in the here and now and somehow manage to alleviate my "San Jose Sickness".