US wants social media details for visa applications!

This is the only thing that could draw me back to my blog I guess :)))

Boss has been on my case to go to the US for at least half a year now. In fact one of my ex-managers and I had a bet on how much longer I can put off that trip to the mother-ship when I told him that I had never returned to the US after I moved back home for good. I "tried" opening a DS-160 in April, that is to say, I made a half-hearted attempt, filled my name and date of birth and then saw all the details they needed and just closed the application after saving the number. They want to know all details from my F-1 visa to the Green Card I abandoned, all the countries I have been to in the last five years etc etc etc. And NOW they also want this? I feel maybe getting a diplomatic passport or even investing a million dollars and getting a green card instead is a much easier option than applying for a visa :D And worse, this is when I don't even want to go :( 






It has been 14 odd years since I stood in a US consulate line and I am so NOT looking forward to it...

Brown Deer, WI

I am sure I wrote very little about this place on this blog. Yes, such a place exists in the US! It is a suburb of the buzzing Milwaukee city. I happened to live here for a year. And it was undoubtedly the most turbulent time of my life!

I was with GE Healthcare then and what can I say - that one year in Brown Deer saw me go to the lowest point in my life back to the highest.

It was one place where I was truly lonely - and alone - in all senses of the words. I had no friends there with whom I could socialize so home-work-home was pretty much the standard routine. Thanks to this routine, my weight was at an all time low when I was in this place - lack of avenues to eat out - I hated eating out alone, then and now!

Work was turbulent too. I had my one and only experience of being handed the pink slip - and the six weeks that followed that - I can never forget. Thanks to this really awesome manager I had there who somehow struggled to find the budget to take me back in as a contracting employee - I was back in 6 weeks. But I was at my last cent and it was a step away from either debt or back to India if I had not got back in then, that very week.

Then the constant threat of another pink slip.

And the drama for a visa. My OPT was fast expiring and we needed an H-1. Neither the client nor the employer had a policy of sponsoring H1. So we had to do a sub-contracting arrangement to get the visa done. That was the worst nightmare in all of my USCIS turmoils. Thankfully it all went through fine.

Then the high - I interviewed and got into Cisco. Where I have been since then - 10 years now almost :) That was the inflection point from rock bottom and a true 180 degree turn. Never looked back since then. I remember when packing to move to California, I was stuffing some boxes into my Honda and by the time I was done, there was a neat 3 inches of snow on all of them. I muttered one final long curse on mid-west and its winters, all the while vengefully happy that I am getting out of Wisconsin,  and left to get some dinner, packed off the car to California the next morning and had lunch with a couple of close friends who came down from Chicago and just couldn't wait to get the cab to the airport and just get out of the place. I hated it so much.

And this one year saw Subhash and me transition from friends to more albeit at long distance :) For that - it will also be very close to my heart :) Enough said. :P

Today somehow I remembered it. What with my cousin moving to the US and Subhash and I discussing our long left behind US life, I remembered this very significant one year of my life and I looked it up in the maps. The apartment where I lived, the place where I worked, the freeways, the roads, the IHOP - I never ever imagined I would miss this place. And yet, today I did. And the significance of it hit me fully. This was a place that dealt me the biggest blow in life and also taught me how to fight it, get out of it and live it up!

And for that, it will always remain a very very special place.

If I go the US again - I definitely have the Chicago-Madison-Milwaukee triangle planned for a weekend. I really need to see those home-turfs once - just to remember the old life! I missed them all today! So much! I never thought this possible 10 years ago :)

8 years!

That's how many we've been married for as of today:) This week in Feb always makes me very weak-in-the-knees for more reasons that just the wedding :)

I am thinking about my mother-in-law all the more today. This is already the third anniversary since she has passed away. I will never forget how she smuggled food to me before the muhurtam so I would not stay hungry. She didn't do that for her own son, too!

This year is also extra special since it marks 10 years since the decision to marry was made. Which also means its been 10 years since I've known my mother and father-in-law and also my brother-in-law and co-sister and then the rest of the first circle of family on the in-laws side a little later. Maybe that's why I remember my mother-in-law so much. I just cannot believe I only knew her for 8 years of her life! It feels like a lot more for sure, with so many experiences to cherish forever. I still vividly remember that first visit to Subhash's place with my mom and sister - how she cut a watermelon for us and how they showed me my to-be co-sister's picture since we were from the same school to ask if I knew her, and how I was scared to bits about their dog! In later years she told me that she knew that very evening that I was not just another of his friends, I was the first girl he ever took home in so many years and so it had to definitely be more! Clearly she knew her son very well - more than I did at that point at any rate :)

It's been a happy journey so far, and I hope it will continue to get better and better.