4 and 1

Yesterday I finished four years in Cisco :) Its been a good ride. So far. Lets see how it goes moving forward. New roles, new challenges. Will I be able to spend 16 hours a day when needed at a stretch going forward too? Not sure at all. Will I need to? Most certainly yes, given the recession and what not. Well, I don't want to speculate too much. So I'll take it as it comes.

This weekend last year, was our last in the United States, we were done being "resident aliens" to move back to being normal citizens again. Lot of things inspired the move. More than anything, it was the desire to be back in the homeland. Back where we can hope to make some difference to whats going on around us instead of being mute spectators at the mercy of some alien land who thought us "aliens" :)

Its been an extremely eventful one year. We've seen it all. Parents being hospitalized one after another, looking to buy a house in Bangalore, getting extremely frustrated at the sky-rocketing prices, finally settling on one, then re-vamping it completely, a house-warming that went like a charm just like I had imagined it to be all those 7 pining years in the US, parents being able to regularly visit, being able to eat chat at just about every nook and corner, without having to make that trip to the "Indian" grocery store, a role change at work that I've been looking forward to for quite sometime, another milestone in our marriage and so on and so forth, the list is endless. Some of our Bay Area friends rightly said, we did things in such a hurry in just one year! Some of it was in our control, most of it completely took us by surprise, we got swamped over, we just got taken in by the flow :)

Well, anyways, just as well, I think I can say, I am "jittery" right now. How things will work out in the near future. Hoping that everything falls into place well enough. Hoping the recession will not kill us. Hoping we can vote and make a difference this time. Hoping all the plumbing problems in the house are fixed. Hoping we won't have a serious water crisis in summer. Lots of things I am praying for to fall neatly in place.

PS: We finally registered to vote. The process was not at all as painful as I thought. I filled in and printed forms at Jaagore and we took it and submitted them in person. In fact except for that officer at the ARO office in Jeevan Bima Nagar suddenly creating his own rule and asking for two copies of Form 6 instead of one and we having to scout for a Xerox shop trying to get an extra copy, everything was smooth. But is the ride over yet? I am afraid not. We have to show up next week at the office to get us our EPICs (Electoral Photo Identity Cards) and that will tell us if we are finally through in that list! Keeping fingers crossed. I don't know who I will vote for yet. But at least I want to vote. I haven't voted even once in my lifetime and I feel ashamed about it. Totally! As soon as I got eligible to vote, right before the elections, I flew out to the US and after that I've never been able to :(

PS: I have an EPIC in Hyd now. If our registration here goes through fine, that will/can be safely cancelled, else at least I can vote from some place, if not Bangalore, ha!

PS: The one regret I have from this one year is not being able to visit Hyd as frequently as I would have wished to. We've just gone about 4 times I think :( Most of them in a hurry because of one emergency or another. Then the house happened and we got completely clamped to Bangalore, then Subhash started having 6-day-weeks at work and that totally killed it. Now we are planning a Hyd trip, finally planning, I am actually thinking of taking time off and visiting during the week, not just the weekend, to compensate for at least some part of the pining for that mystic hometown of mine :) :) Lets see!