I Can Almost See the Finish Line...

Today marks the day where I have only one more month left in India... if I knew for sure that the date of departure is January 5. Unfortunately, as is the rest of my experience in India, I'm not entirely sure if I'm leaving on the 5th, 7th or 9th due to three separate emails with conflicting dates. I'm sure I'll know on the day I'm leaving. I have to know...right?

I have 4 more weeks of India, but only 3 more weeks of live project because of some plans I made for Christmas. The plan so far is to fly to Singapore, then Phuket (which is in Thailand) for 3-4 days, and then return to Singapore for another 4 days. The grand total of the trip should cost around $1000 if I include all expenses, which is fine if I pay it all in rupees. I'd still have about $800-$1000 left to spend (bring home). Originally we oscillated between Taiwan and Hong Kong, but both are extremely expensive and out of the way since the route through Thailand is out of the question due to a recent government uprising.

Now that the long cycle has graduated training, it looks like the US batch will be further split apart. Several will be in Bangalore, others will be in Pune, and last but not least, some are going to Mangalore, a place that smaller than Mysore. Some people know their U.S. locations already and it seems like this time its for sure. One person got Fremont and is working with Apple. Lucky guy... except he's from Seattle. In a twist of irony, a person in the same practice is from Fremont and ended up getting Seattle instead. Clear proof that preferences seem not to matter in the decision making.

I do have an update on my own location. The uncertainty is still there, but after having a talk with my Department Manager, it sounds like he's trying to get me in a project for Underwriter Labs (the group I'm currently working with now). That would put me in Chicago. But apparently I have somewhat of a choice, and that choice is Dallas, Texas. I suppose I should find that appealing, but not really. The last choice is working with Warner Music Group in Los Angeles, but apparently that project is completed and there's only maintenance work to be done there. He also through this nugget in there. There are usually plenty of jobs in the Bay Area, however because I was lucky enough to get hired during one of the worst economic downturns of the century, there have been no clients there. In normal times, I would probably be headed back home. However, he's where the possibilities stand:

Chicago: 66%
Dallas: 20%
Fremont: 14% (if I were to be benched upon return to the U.S.)

I guess I should mentally prepare for Chicago...

The Last Month In A Nutshell

The last 4 weeks have been defined by my training, especially the Oracle stream training.

Here's the good news: I passed the comprehensive exam, the post project, and cleared all the requirements of the training at Infosys, as has everyone else that's in fast track. There isn't any bad news, but let's just say the road the today was choppy at best.

With training complete, we finally received additional information about our future, but just for the remainder of our stay. I am staying in Hyderabad for the remainder of my stay in India. As of today, one person got sent to Bangalore and another was sent to Pune. 4 people do not know their fate yet.

I will participate in a project with "Warner" (Warner Brothers, Time Warner?) for the next two months. Let's examine the company that I am working with and how it affects my possible U.S. location. The project I work on in India may not be the same company I am working with in the U.S. but for hypothetical conjecture, let's see what possible locations I can be assigned to. Time Warner's headquarters is in New York, while Warner Brothers is in Burbank, California. But Warner has many division within its company so it's unclear which division I am working work. Looking on their website, it appears they have locations in New York, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Washington D.C., all pretty big cities, so the possibility of being placed in a random place like Arkansas or Kansas is unlikely.

Why am I concerned about my U.S. location? With the deteriorating economic climate (It's a good thing I found a job before the recession was apparent), clients have been pulling back jobs which makes it harder for the company to honor our preferences. So far, two people have been placed in Arkansas, one in Topeka, Kansas and one will work in Dayton, Ohio. These were not the top choices for the respective trainees, which is why everyone has been "mentally preparing" for being banished to such boring states as Nebraska, Wyoming and Alaska. One thing I should note; none of the people above are in ES (which is my stream). The rest of the clients that people were assigned to are Cisco, Toshiba, PepsiCo and Emerson. I must note that Toshiba does have an office in Fremont.

ES Training

ES training for the Oracle stream has been a bit unorganized. Our instructors come straight off of project so they aren't always available, which means there have been many cancellations during the training. It didn't help that all 5 of the trainees in Oracle failed one of the module test 3 straight times. This led to a lot of discussion about the training material and the fairness of the test. We'll see how long cycle does because they have the same test on Monday.

Otherwise, the main problem with the stream training was the duration of the training. It felt rushed. Because of the rush, things got shuffled around and there was never a sense of structure. For example, I would frequently find myself studying 150+ slides on the night before a test. For the comprehension, we were basically given 1 day to go through about 500+ slides of material. Good Luck.

My remaining days in India

I am finally past the halfway mark of my stay in India. 3 months have passed and I have 2 more to go. I've spent more time in Hyderabad than I have in Mysore and I am glad to stay in Hyderabad because moving is such a hassle. I definitely would not have been able to fit all my clothes in my luggage this time around since I've gotten so many tailored shirts in Hyderabad. I basically don't try to think about my return to the U.S. because I know I'm gonna have to move somewhere and that's gonna be an even bigger hassle. It doesn't help that the company is going to tell me where I'm going in the first week of January. So far it's worked out so I'm hoping I will be placed in an acceptable location in the U.S. because as of now, there are so many different places I could end up. Here is the scope: I can be in any one of the 50 U.S. states or I could end up in London. That's right... London, it's already happened to one of us, so why not me?

My First Ever Basketball Tournament

It's hard to believe that my first experience playing in a real basketball game happened during my time in India. Yes, I've played pickup games at UC Davis and in junior high, but these games always lack something: Referees and Free Throws. Today, I played in the first game of a little mini-tournament setup by some of the workers at Infosys. The format is four 8-minute quarters. Our team was made up 8-9 U.S. batch members, so there are substitutions, which means I don't have to save my energy for the end of the games.

So there are 4 teams and each team plays each other once. The teams with the most wins move on to the finals, while the other 2 play in the 3rd place game. 4 of the members on our team are at least 6-feet tall, which is a bit of a mismatch for the other team. The other team had 1 player that like that.

So the game itself is scored on a a whiteboard and there's a person that keeps time and keeps track of our stats. Each game is officiated by 2 referees. Pretty good for an informal tournament. We jumped out to a 16-8 lead. I got tired near the end of the 2nd quarter and by then the other team was coming back. At halftime, I think the score was 18-12. I checked backed into the game halfway through the third quarter and by then the score was tied 18-18. While me and Barry were out, the offense got stagnant.

But we managed to pull away in the 4th quarter. I think I scored about 4 baskets, so it was a pretty good experience and it turned out to be a pretty good game. Next game is on Monday.

Long Cycle is Here

Long cycle is now here in Hyderabad and their initial review of the place is pretty positive. Many have expressed that there is a renewed sense of freedom here as I described when I first arrived here. Long cycle arrival has increased the amount of exercise I've gotten. The first thing they wanted to do was play frisbee on the cricket field which to my surprise, is allowed. No one had a problem with it. So today, I played frisbee to warm up and followed that up with the basketball game.

There is also talk about what we're going to do for the upcoming 4-day weekend, our only long weekend of the 6-month period. Some people are going to Thailand and others are going to Goa, which is in the west coast of India. Tickets are around 20,000 Rs. ($500) so it will be an expensive trip, which probably means it will be my only trip outside of Hyderabad (excluding the Taj Mahal). I have yet to make up my mind, but I'm leaning towards going to Goa. It should be fun.

Word on the Street: Someone/Something Revived Our Curfew

Another thing I failed to mention about the Hyderabad campus (or maybe I did and I forgot)... we have no curfew. Until now that is. Back in Mysore, we were required to return to campus at 9:30 PM on weekdays and 11:00 on weekends. Then we came to Hyderabad and we were free to roam around past these curfews because no curfews existed. This was true up until last night when I heard another so-called rumor from one of the fast track people here that our original curfew will be enforced as it was in Mysore starting Friday.

You can imagine how upset we got about that, and then we thought about how this came about. Is there a snitch in the Mysore crew? Or is this simply a misinterpretation of an email. Maybe it's not true at all. If I'm keeping count correctly, of all the rumors I've heard, less than 50% turn out to be true. But rumor or not, it's worth exploring potential causes:

1.) The Mysore batch: Here's how I see it. We as the first kids to leave Mysore were warned by HR not to share the "no curfew" information with the rest of the batch because it would only stir something up. We told them anyways because...seriously, they're our friends. How could we not? Fast forward 3 weeks later and the consequences reveal themselves. Did someone from Mysore find out about our curfew and start complaining about it the Infosys HR? Seems pretty likely to me, although I'm sure his/her intention was not to get our curfew re-instated, but simply to get the one in Mysore removed. But realistically, I'm not sure what the people in Mysore are thinking. The curfew is in place for all trainees including Indians, there's not possible way the curfew could get lifted.

I'm pretty sure we can eliminate one group from Mysore list and that's the long cycle ES group that's coming to Hyderabad in Mid-October. They must be really mad because I'm sure they were looking forward to no curfew and now that prospect's been taken away.

2.) The Mysore Email: Yesterday morning, we all got an email re-stating the rules on the Mysore campus like no walking on the grass. The email emphasized the curfew and the strict policy on it. What if the email was sent to the Hyderabad HR and what if they simply misinterpreted the email's intentions, that it was meant for Mysore and not Hyderabad? I really hope this is the reason and that someone from Mysore was not the problem.

The problem with the no curfew rule being enforced is that we really need it. We haven't been abusing it at all and everything in Hyderabad is so far away including shopping and restaurants. Trying to make it back by 9:30 for a simple meal outside of campus is almost impossible given the distance and how slow it takes for restaurant chefs to cook the food. Having a curfew reduces the opportunity to explore the city and more time pressure when it comes to eating out. Plus, we can't exactly use our vacation days, so when exactly are we supposed to explore India? Hopefully this is one rumor that isn't true.

Home Will Have to Wait

December 15 is not the date that I will return to the U.S. Instead it was made known to us that we will indeed have to participate in 3-4 weeks of project in addition to the training. That puts my return date somewhere in the beginning of January, probably on the week of January 4th. It isn't really that big a deal, except I'm gonna miss Christmas at home. But at least I can put off packing my bags to Plano, Texas for another 4 weeks... if Texas is where I'm actually going?

Update: Looks like the latest we can leave is January 9 because the terms in our contract state that we can't be in India for more than 5 months with the status "trainee." So... last week of December - first week of January is when I'll be coming home.

Observation #2: Hyderabad Is Not Mysore

First thing's first. The failed bailout plan. Who do I think of that? Frankly, I was shocked when I saw it unfold. Last night, I turned on my Slingbox and CNBC was broadcasting the House's vote on the bailout. I happened to tune during the last 10 minutes of the vote. By then the vote was deadlocked at 167. The Dow was already down 300 points and the Nasdaq down 100 points. Then 10 minutes later the bill was rejected. The Dow plunged an additional 450 points for a total of -750. Making it through the House was supposed to be the easy part. When it was all said and down, it was truly an historic day.

U.S. politicians let America down yesterday. Its true that the bailout would put a heavy burden on tax payers, but my view is that it's very necessary for economic recovery. Without the bill, Americans still lose money because many are invested in some type of long term account such as IRAs and 401Ks. Because the members of the house put their individual goals ahead of the country's needs is an example of how divided we are as a nation.

Hyderabad is not Mysore

The city's bigger, the food's better, there's more shopping, and the campus is cooler. Life is different here in Hyderabad. It's probably because most of the Indians here are workers, not trainees. There seems to be far less people here and this is despite the campus being much smaller. There's a also a lot of events that go on here. Last week the Hyderabad DC hosted a Family Night where they allowed worker's families to visit the campus. They arranged for a singer to perform at the amphitheater. I had some cotton candy that night for 5 Rs. That's less than 20 cents. Try finding that in the U.S.

However, the day to day training is roughly the same as Mysore. We start at 9:30 AM and usually end around 5:30 PM. I'm not sure if it's just me, but it seems like the training is a little harder here. I think it's because of the extra hour that we have to stay everyday to finish our assignments or the fact that lectures always run into the afternoon.

In other news, I finally got paid in my U.S. bank account rather than my Indian bank account. Last Friday, we all signed new contracts which essentially brought a resolution to the salary problem which took about 2 months to fix. The new salary states that as trainees in Indian, we get paid a certain a small percentage of our salary in Indian as "Daily Allowance", which means money used to survive in India. The rest is paid in the U.S. bank account, and the only amount that is taxed is the U.S. portion. Just the way it was supposed to be. None of the exchange rate nonsense matters anymore.

Unfortunately some things never change, such as our cloudy future. Issue number 1: Am I really going home on December 15?

2 Week Absence

Why? Because I had no internet for the last two weeks, at least not real Internet. Infosys provided us with restricted Internet which blocked all ports except for 80, which meant no AIM and no Skype. They also blocked personal email, facebook, and some blogs including my own. So until last Wednesday, I've been pretty but off from the world outside of Infosys. The only solace was that Infosys didn't block SSL sites which meant I could still access my brokerage account which was good considering how volatile the markets were in the last couple weeks, but even that was stripped down. Also, the day (Sunday Sept 14) we arrived, we had no Internet at all for the next two and we all know what happened Monday: Lehman Brother bankruptcy and the Merrill Lynch buyout. I'd like to think both were pretty important market events... but nope I missed the action. Here's why.

The day we arrived, the reception told us the Internet would be activated on Monday (Sept 15) at 10 am. We finally got the restricted Internet on Tuesday, but not the real one that was promised. Then our batch owner Raghu told us that it would come in the next couple of days. One and a half weeks later, Airtel, our Internet provider, finally comes out to our hostel to install our Internet. We each got a DSL line, but it cuts in and out sometimes like now. I'm typing this entry on Notepad because my Interenet doesn't work at the moment. It's important to note that Infosys wasn't to blame here. We all agree that Airtel took forever to get out here and that they took Indian Standard Time to an extreme by arriving a week later than scheduled. It was a frustrating week and basically I was trying to wait it out before calling my parents, which ended up not working because they started getting worried. I guess I lean on the Internet for a lot of the stuff I do in my daily life.

In the absence of the Internet we still had to go to work for the last two weeks. I'll start off by saying that last week was a 6-day work week because we were required to report on Saturday September 21, which made this a long two weeks. Also, my first impressions of Infosys Hyderabad is that it's better than being in Mysore and the city looks pretty good too, but prices seem to be more expensive on average here. It doesn't really affect us much given the new resolution in our salary that was presented to us last Tuesday. I'll explain later how it made us all happy and how the exchange rate and Indian tax laws no longer apply to us. But first....

Hyderabad: First Impressions

The trip from Mysore to Hyderabad was long. On September 14, after a long goodbye with the long cycle group (made long because the bus arrived at 10:45 despite being scheduled for 10:00) the 10 of us endured a 4 hour bus ride to Bangalore on a bus that barely fit all of us and our huge luggage. After arriving in Bangalore, we took a 1 hour plane flight from Bangalore to Hyderabad on Kingfisher Airlines, apparently a premium airline company in India. They actually served us a meal on our 1+ airline flight and I was impressed with their service. It's definately better than the airline service on a United or Southwest Airlines flight. Then we landed in Hyderabad at the Rajiv Ganhdi Airport.

The first thing I noticed about Hyderabad: There was a McDonalds in the airport. Finally it looked like there would be access to a larger variety of foods because Mysore (the city) didn't offer much in terms of food. The bus that took us to the Infosys campus was also a nicer looking bus, a precursor of things to come.

We arrived at the campus at around 7 pm and went to our hostels. As I walked to reception on the first floor, I was surprised to see hallways and several common areas! The common areas seemed liek a huge upgrade because in Mysore we always complained about how there was no good meeting place to hang out and play cards or simply to talk. The Long Cycle ES batch will be pleased. After reception assigned my room, I walked there with my luggage and I opened my room door. I saw a bigger room with nearly the same setup as my room in Mysore... except that there's more deskspace, bigger mugs, better looking curtains, an Ironing board, laundary bags, and an air conditioner that looked more centralized.

We explored downstairs and to our delight we found that the computer labs were all on the first floor of our hostel. What a concept! Now we don't have to walk outside to the GEC to get to our training room. Our hostel building is basically a combination of rooms and work area. I believe the first floor is mad made up of HR and a bunch of training class rooms while floors 1 - 5 (they start at 0 here) are all rooms for trainees.

The setup of the campus is much smaller than Mysore, but the layout makes much more sense. The two food courts are located realtively close to each other and towards the middle. In Mysore, 3 food courts were dispersed along the outside of campus. The buildings here are awesome especially the new food court that is surrounded by two office buildings. We call it the spaceship building because of the rounded architecture. The food courts are both indoors and the new one has an escalator in it. The new food court has a fruit juice station, a place called "Bowl of China", Subway, Dominoes, and several other Indian vendors. Upstairs, there's a bakery and a Coffee Day. The bakery and Coffee Day are pretty disappointing because both lack good pastries. That could be a good thing I guess because now I'm not gonna have a doughnut or a muffin for break everyday. The ground floor of the food court contains a gym, pool tables, ping pong tables, a book store and some ATMs. The old food court has the ICICI bank, another gym, the grocery store (much better than Loyal World in Mysore IMO) and an Infosys store.

To sum it up, the Hyderabad DC was everything I was expecting to get in Mysore. The dorms that looked like hotel rooms, the indoor food courts, the common area, convenient laundary and laundary service, as well as the nice weather. Mysore's campus in my opinion was too spread out and there were way too many rules there. Hyderabad is an actual development center while Mysore is a training center, which means everything at Hyderabad is more professional and the rules are not as tight here. There's no curfew, the rooms are coed, and I'm sure they don't care if we play cards out in the open, somethign that was impossible to do in Mysore. I'd be happy to stay here for the remainder of my time in India.

Hyderabad: The City

I haven't explored the city in great depth, but I did go out last week and this week. The city itself seems richer and it is filled with shopping malls and good restuarants. The shopping mall we went to was indoors and filled with American brand name stores, which also means expensive prices. The first restaurant we went to was a Five star hotel called Ista. It was a really nice hotel and the restaurant was expensive. I spent about 800 Rs. ($20) on my meal. We're only coming back to that place on a special occasion.

On the way back, we passed by the IT district of Hyderabad, so we saw a bunch of campuses for each company including: Microsoft, Nvidia, WiPro, and TCS. All of them looked impressive. This is definately a city with a large IT presence.

On the way back, there was a bunch of traffic so it took us about an hour to travel 20 kms. The city is crowded, but based on what I was told, I expected it to be more crowded. The number of people doesn't seem to be a big problem here. Some roads are in pretty good condition and the city center looks modern. I have yet to visit the rundown area of the city, which I believe could be crowded and could look like a third world region.

The city is pretty impressive and I like it better than Mysore. Hopefully I'll be able to explore it more this weekend.

Hyderabad... it's Coming

The move from Mysore to Hyderabad is gonna be painful to say the least. I have yet to pack, which is probably a bad thing because I have more stuff the pack up this time than when I left the U.S. I haven't really used anything up yet.

Beside the travel, the move also comes with mixed feelings. I'm excited to see someplace different in India, but I'm also sad about leaving my friends in Mysore behind. About 10 of them will join me in Hyderabad on Oct 22, so it gonna be a while before I see them again. Some I may never see again because of the difference in our U.S. and Indian locations. I just realized this...

For the past week, the 10 that are leaving for Hyderabad over the weekend participated in an ILI session that lasted for 4 days and it is to conclude on Friday with a 20 minute group presentation on the stuff that we learned in the session. The session included a lot of interesting stuff such as seeing the actual site that Software Engineers in India work in as well as some of the projects Infosys has been working on. Overall it was a useful experience.

Tough Weekend... for Everyone

Fast track... Long Cycle it doesn't matter. Anyone in one of U.S. trainees in these batches is in for a long weekend. Long Cycle has to complete the project that fast track completed a couple weeks ago and because many of the long cycle students don't have programming experience, many were struggling at the beginning of the project. Throughout the Programming Fundamental modules, me and a couple of other fellow fast trackers decided to help out my friends in the Long cycle. For a second there I almost felt like a lab TA.

I di learned a lot from helping my friends out, such as which topics are frequently misunderstood and the difficulty of debuggin other people's code. Arrays and strings seem to be the hardest concept to grasp and they are often confused about the usefulness of functions. Me explaining to other people about how these things works not only allows the trainee to understand the concept better, but it also lets me think about different concepts in the C programming language. I'm surprised to say this, but it's kinda fun helping other people out. I planned to leave at 4:30 on Friday and I ended up helping people until 7 pm. I now know that it's hard to leave when other people are working on tough assignments. I am not the only fast tracker that feels that way. What are friends for?

Anyways, fast track's weekend isn't so easy either. I have a module test on Monday and a module re-test on Tuesday. Monday is on RDBMS and Tuesday is on Software Engineering. I feel like I know RDBMS, especially the SQL queries, but I always struggle on concepts because concepts require memorization and that got me in trouble in the Software Engineering test. I have a grasp of RDBMS, so I will continue to work on Software Engineering in hopes of passing the test.

Some long cycle people decided to stay until midnight on Friday to finish their projects in anticipation of the upcoming weekend trip on Sunday. I'll be missing out on this to study, but it sounds fun. The trip is a safari into a National Park 90 KM south of Mysore. Oh well... there might be a next time. It depends on whether I stay in Hyderabad or if I'm required to move for a 3rd time in the next 6 weeks. I'm hoping to stay in Hyderabad because the long cycle students in the ES unit are coming to Hyderabad on Oct 22. But at Infosys, I have yet to get what I want, which means I'm betting on a move to Bangalore sometime in late October.

My Days as a Trainee

Life gets pretty routinue when you start the workforce. It's pretty weird not having to think about when school starts up again, but I guess I experienced the same feeling with the Infosys joining date which was August 6. Training started a week and a half ago each day is very similar in terms of structure. Here's an example of a day for me:

8:00 AM: Wake up and brush my teeth. I have two options after that: Go to the floating restaurant for the breakfast buffet (75 Rs.) or staying at home and eating some dry Corn Flakes (90 Rs. for one week). Lately I've been going with the second option because 1.) the training center is closer to my room than the restaurant is and 2.) I don't end up eating too much.

9:00 AM: Report to the training center in the JP Morgan classroom. All the rooms are named after famous people. The fast track is in the John P. Morgan room and the slow track is in the Steve Jobs room. From 9:00 to about 10-10:30, the professor begins with the day's material ususally in Powerpoint format.

10:15 AM: Coffee/Tea Break #1 for 15 mins

10:30 AM: The professor continues lecturing. This part can get boring if the teacher isn't that exciting.

12:00 PM: Lunch Break. We usually head off to either Food Court 1 or 2 because they are the closest. Food Court 2 has meat selections, but the food at Food Court 1 is better overall such as the Fried Rice and Vegetable Noodles as well as the bakery. The bakery is probably the best part about Food court 1 because of the doughnuts they offer. Usually after I finish lunch I return to my hostel.

2:00 PM: Report to the training center for the afternoon session. If the current module is theoretical, we go on with more lectures. Otherwise, there is a lab where we complete programming assignments. The slow track (it's actually known as "Long Cycle") averages about 6 assignments per day and the fast track gets about 12 because we have experience. The first assignments consisted of copying code to learn the Infosys coding standards, but later assignments were more about debugging and writing your own functions. It's all in preparation for the end of the module which is the gorup project and the module test, both of which I will explain some other time.

5:00 PM: If we finish our assignments, we are free to go starting at 4:30. Some people stay later to finish up because C isn't their first programming language. I usually return to my room to change out of my work clothes.

5:30-6 PM: Frisbee or something else sports related? I could also be doing laundry at this time because the lines is short on weekdays. Basically, this is a period of free time that I have.

7:30 - 9:30 PM: Dinner - Indians start serving dinner at 7:30 because they usually eat later. I guess I know why Anand eats at 8 PM now... After dinner, I usually just hang out with my friends somewhere.

10:00 PM - 12:30 PM: Return to my room to shower, check up on the stock market (opens at 7:00PM closes at 1:30 AM) and usually that ends the day for me.

Weekends are a different story usually...

Have a nice Labor Day. I'll be at work wishing I was observing the U.S. Holiday.

Location and Salary Wrapup

The location situation gets cloudier while the salary situation is nearing a conclusion...finally after one big question and answer session today. First, I want to clarify the notion of my base location being Plano, Texas. The locations as far as I know are permanent, but there is a chance that I can still change it if I give the proper reason to my Integrated Business Unit Department manager. It is also possible that I may never set foot in the Texas office, even with my location being Plano, Texas. Even with the location being permanent, managment still has no idea where we will be going. Here's my understanding of the U.S. location.

Plano, Texas is simply my "base loaction," therefore I will report back to the people in Plano and they will handle all employment details that pertain to me. As a technical consultant, I will be working in different offices belonging to the client on a multi-month project. So the place I'm going to depends stictly on the business projects available in different locations and my willingness to take the opportunity. The opportunities are not limited to the Texas area. So theorectially, if a project opens up in the Bay Area, I will not be required to move anywhere. This is why the IBU representative told me that he had no idea where we will be in six months because the business projects available in December are not clear as of this moment. So, all this talk about location is stictly about base location and not necessarily the actual work location. I will refrain from posting about my location until more information works its way out, meaning the only thing I can do is stay patient and wait. I am still attempting to change my base location from Texas to Seattle and I will definitely post an update if something happens.

The U.S./U.K. Batch is Very Demanding

The U.S. batch had an interesting discussion today with the Infosys team that handles our taxes. As I mentioned in previous posts, we are getting paid exclusively in rupees. The 3 basic questions we had for Infosys was:

1.) Why are we deviating from the original contract?

2.) Are we gonna have to pay taxes in both India and the U.S.?

3.) Is Infosys compensating us for the possible loss in salary due to the exchange rate?

Here are the answers as I understood them to mean:
1. and 2.) We are getting paid exclusively in rupees to avoid being taxed in the United States and India. Getting paid only in rupees means we are taxed only in India. When we file taxes in the U.S. we will be credited with the amount of taxes we paid in India off our U.S. taxes, and the credit is available for deduction for up to 10 years. We cannot be paid exclusively in U.S. dollars because since we're working in India, at least some of our money needs to be paid in rupees, which is why the original contract called for a split in our pay. The problem with splitting up the pay in rupees and U.S. dollars is that we'll be taxed in both countries, so the full salary will be taxed in India and the U.S. dollar portion would be taxed in the U.S., meaning the U.S. portion is double taxed.

3.) No, this is essentially going to be a gamble. We have to hope the Indian government tries to strengthen the rupee in the next 6 months because if the dollar keeps climbing, we're gonna lose. The exchange rate used in the first month will be 41.6 and the subsequent months will be 43.5. The first month's salary is pro-rated, meaning my salary is retroactive to August 11.

So hopefully, I'm not gonna write about my salary again because during the session today, I noticed that the salary situation had gotten out of hand. Someone asked a question about dual taxation and the Infosys representative gave his answer. But because as a group, we were all so cynical due to past experiences, we didn't believe him and basically most of the people were requesting that a U.S. third party tax expert answer our questions in order to make sure the facts were correct. I feel the salary situation is important too, but I was satisfied with the answers and was ready to move on, but some people continued demanding more answers and I felt like the salary situation was getting out of hand. I almost felt sorry for the Infosys HR people because if the number of demands we were making. I'm sure they are not used to that since they are used to different cultural norms. At least we got some answers and for now, it looks like the salary thing is winding up. I hope this is the last time I post about this.

So... How is this Possible? Did I do Something?

Let me get this straight because it's so unbelievably stupid.

20+ people are going to Seattle. Seattle was my first choice. Boston my second and Chicago my third. Statement from Infosys: "We will try to honor everyone's preferences." I'm going to Seattle!!!

WRONG

Instead I now face living the next 1-2 years of my life in... Plano, Texas. It has to be the most random assignment ever. It's gotta be one of my 3 least favorite places to be deployed to. So how am I in Texas? I don't know. I felt sucker punched as the everyone else's assignments were announced. Most of the west coast residents got Seattle, except at least 3 of us. We got screwed by the company and it makes no sense at all. I detect only one pattern. All 3 of us went to school in Davis and all of us live in the Bay Area. This killed the entire day. Hard to be positive about this one. On to other details...

ES stands for Enterprise solutions and people in the unit will be using either SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft (something) technologies and we will be specializing in one of 6 different categories, none of which I remember (Sorry, I was still making shaking off the Texas thing). Starting September 12, we will end our training in Mysore and resume training in Hyderabad, India So I won't be in Mysore anymore for those interested in visiting. I will be in Hyderabad from now on. I should be there for up to 6 weeks until I get my first project. From then on, I will either stay in Hyderabad or move to Bangalore. 10 Fast track people leave September 15, about 15-20 slow track people will go on October 22.

Let's revisit my predictions. Check on Hyderabad, but big miss on Seattle. One thing about the U.S. location - they're projections, but I'm not sure how accurate the projections are. The ES people who assign us to clients were saying that they had no idea where we'd be in 6 months. He also said there might be a lot of travel around the base location area. To get my location changed, I'm supposed to work it out with my department manager whom I'll meet in a month or two I suppose.

Until then, I'm gonna go back to thinking about how my life's gonna suck for the next 2 years.

Tomorrow 4:00 PM, I Will Know Everything

All the questions I've been asking earlier... will be answered Tuesday at 4 PM.

Scary.

It's scary because the information passed to me tomorrow will likely determine my future for the next 2-3 years. Will I get my first choice (Seattle)? Or will I experience a miracle and stay in Fremont for the forseeable future? Here's what's at stake: my integrated business unit, U.S. location, Duration of the India Stay, and location of training from Sept 12 and on.

For the training portion, here's the scary proposition: half of the slow track and 10 out of 30 of the fast track kids will receive the IBU known as ES (Enterprise Solutions) and that requires a move to Hyderabad on Sept. 12. So those kids will fly out to Hyderabad and continue training there, essentially splitting the U.S. batch in two. The decision will be made based on our assigned U.S. location. Speculation is that the West coast kids will receive the ES unit, which would be me.

Rumor has it that most people have received at least one of their top 3 preferences which means I will likely end up in Seattle, Boston, or Chicago. I woould welcome Seattle but moving to Boston or Chicago is going to be a pain.

We will also receive a rough timeframe of how long we will be in India. Our batch manager mentioned December or January as likely targets. We also should be receiving more information on the salary situation, so tomorrow is going to be an action-packed day, and did I mention that I still have to finish a 2-day group programming project by 2 PM on Wednesday? It's gonna be hectic...

My Prediction: IBU: ES meaning I will go to Hyderabad. U.S. location: Seattle Mood: Mixed

Stay tuned tomorrow...

I Struck it Rich!

At least in India I have. It's Saturday morning and I have nothing to do, so I decide to search for all the ATM locations on the Infosys campus. I may have mentioned this before, but I've been low on cash for the past week because all the ATMs here accept only Visa cards and I have a debit card and a credit card, both with Mastercard. I have been trying to live off 1000 Rs. for the past 6-7 days (that's $20). As of this morning I was down to 30 Rs. with 3 USD left and the prospect of not being paid until at least Wednesday when either my parent's package arrives in India, or the ACH transfer completes. So that would be 3 days without money. I was feeling pretty desperate.

I go to Mastercard's ATM locator and I find that there is an ATM on the Infosys campus that accepts Mastercard, but where? All the one's I've seen are Visa. I knew there was one by the food court that I hadn't tested out yet, but that one also said Visa. Plus, the address listed was different from the one on my badge, so it was in someplace specific that no one knew about. I asked the reception desk and they had no idea either. Then I went to the ICICI bank branch near the ECC and asked if there were any ATMs on campus that accept Mastercard. The teller said no, and pointed me to one outside of campus. That would cost at least 80 Rs. for the ride in a rickshaw. I wasn't sure about spending the last of my money on a risky rickshaw adventure. So, feeling a little defeated, I decided to exchange the last of my $3 into 122 Rs. So I head up to the food court to get some pastries from the bakery when. I pass by the ATM and I decide, What the heck, just give it a try. I shove my debit card in and... weird, there was no sad face! It asked me to enter my PIN. The stupid thing actually accepted my card! But still feeling suspicious, I withdrew only 1000 Rs. ($23) and I got my receipt which showed me my balance. By that time I was a little stunned because I just went from being broke to feeling rich in the span of seconds.

But there was still $300 missing. Later I found out that the ACH transfer was deducted from my bank account already. But if the debit card works, I shouldn't need the ACH transfer anymore. Well, tough luck, I couldn't cancel it and now I have money moving into my Indian bank account. The only problem with this is the exchange rate mentioned earlier and the difficulty with moving money from India to the United States. That's a different story and a different problem which will be addressed at the end of the year. I just gotta hope the Rupee strengthens to make the ACH transfer justifiable.

I did the conversion on the ATM transfer and it turned out to be 43.35 Rs. per Dollar. Looking at Yahoo Finance, the current rate is 43.475 Rs/dollar, so the conversion was really good. The Rupee has weakened from 42.25 to 43.475 against the dollar in August alone. That's good for transfers from the US to India, but bad the other way around. But whatever, it's great to have money again!

Solar Stocks

Solar stocks have shown signs of recovery lately and I have been fortunate enough to hold two stocks that have benefited from this rise. I will probably hold until the middle of next week up until Solar Fun's earnings announcement. Hopefully the share prices continue the rally.

Dinner Out in Mysore

After clocking out of training today, 15 of us decided to eat out in Mysore tonight. It started during our lunch break when we complained about the food in the food courts and how hard it would be to survive 6 months off of it. So Amjat and Alex come up with the idea of eating out in Mysore. I was short on money, but still willing to go and so were the rest of the guys at our table (4 of us were eating Dominos btw) and pretty soon it evolved into a 15-person adventure.

At about 7:00 pm, we each split up into groups of three to ride in these 3-wheel cars called "Ricshaws," basically a very small vehicle (probably smaller than a Volkswagon Beetle) that seats 2 in the back (although 3 can squeeze in most of the time) that runs on 3 wheels. If you haven't ridden in one before, it's hard to describe the feeling you get when you're inside. First of all, I felt cramped and the top of the car was really low, so I basically had to lean forward the whole time. And the driving is crazy in India, not only to you have to watch out for oncoming traffic swerving into your lane, but the road is littered with speed bumps that are really hard to see. That made for a roller coaster like ride and a lot of the time, I felt like I was in a really cheap race car because we frequently would swerve out of our lane to pass buses and trucks.

We ate at a nice hotel. The menu had a variety of dishes from Indian to Continental. Most people ordered two dishes each, other decided to split dishes together and get 3 dishes. I shared chicken pan-fried noodles, lamb with green peppers and some naan. Alex and Jackson got some Tiger Naan which looked really good. I would recommend the Tiger Naan with the lamb as dipping sauce. The noodles were okay too.

The Infosys curfew time is about 9:30 pm. We all got back at 9:30, barely making the curfew time. I'm not sure what would have happened had we not made it. The meal was about 250 Rsm for me and the ricshaw was 200 Rs. roundtrip for 3 people. Not bad considering where I come from.

Contract update

During the night, more details came out about how we're gonna get paid and let's just say it's so different from the contract I signed that HR is gonna make us sign a different contract in class tomorrow. The dispute: whether we get paid in U.S. dollars or in Rupees. The conflict: the exchange rate and the high Indian taxes. We'd be paying more tax if we were paid in Rupees. HR wants to pay us our entire salary in Rupees for the duration of training which is in direct violation of the contract I signed which states that we get paid about 60% of our salary in U.S. dollars. Infosys plans to use 41.9 Rs./Dollar as the exchange rate. Checking the currency markets now, the exchange rate is 43.415 Rs./Dollar. So we're missing out on about 2 Rs. per dollar and if you know my salary you can do the math. The Rupee continues to weaken against the dollar which doesn't bode well for the exchange from Rupees to U.S. Dollars when we get back to the U.S. It could go up to 45 which means we could lose about 3-4 Rs./dollar in our salary. Of course there's also a chance the Rupee could fall to March 2008 levels which was around 40 Rs/dollar, but the point is, I'm not interested in playing the currency market with my salary. I want something static. So I'm extremely unsure of how things are going to work out with the location and the money situation. Morale is low here amongst the U.S. batch and it continues to deteriorate as the frustration grows towards the Infosys's system in India. Could it be culture shock?

So far, 80% of the promises they made have not come to fruition. I'm low on money, the location situation is weighing on me, and the salary situation isn't looking up either. But I should look on the bright side. At least I'm in fast track. Short term that's a great thing because we are actually working on relevant material. It could be bad in the long run because the fast track path may influence the IBU and U.S. location for the bad.

Word on the Street: No Jobs in California Due to Previous Batches

The story gets even more interesting with the prospect of landing in California at the end of my 6 months. Apparently, jobs aren't being offered in California because of a... lackadasical effort by previous U.S. batches that almost resulted in Infosys losing an important client. The rumored client happens to be Goldman Sachs. The previous batch felt like they were treated as less than employees by the company during their training in India, so as a result, they never attached any loyalty to the company, which resulted in a lazy effort on the parts of new employees specifically in the California locations. This of course is just a rumor, but I do have to admit that I am very suspicious of why jobs in California are so inaccessible.

Also, I have to agree that the HR department in India is pretty disorganized and the way they conduct their business shows that there is little order in what they do. The process of filling out forms during Orientation was painful at best and I frequently find myself having to verify my passport on a number of redundant situations.

Another thing that may impact our final U.S. postings is the stream we get (banking, energy, manufacturing, etc.). Some people have been assigned energy already and will be relocting to Hydrabad, India after training. The most likely place for energy is Houston, Texas and that may take precedence over our preferences. I don't want energy and I don't want Houston. But we don't get to choose... another thing I find suspicious. Why don't we get to choose what we do? No choices make disgruntled employees (especially the U.S. batch) and disgruntled employees is not a recipe for building loyalty towards a company.

U.S. posting update:
Seattle 30%
Other Location: 40%
Fremont: 10%
Boston: 10%
Chicago: 10%

Observation #1: Time Moves Slow in India

The United States is predominately made up of people who like to move fast. Americans are always late for something and it shows in the way they walk. We like to hustle to our destinations... at least in most big cities. Here on the other hand, people like to take their time. Take the Infosys trip to the Police commissioner's office on 8/14 for example; we leave the campus at around 2 pm and return at about 5 pm. Here's what we did in the 3 hours: rode the bus (towards), sat outside the commissioner's office, sit in the conference hall, returned to the bus and rode back to campus.

We were in the conference hall waiting for the commissioner to show up (he never did) and the Infosys HR decides to collect our passports to put with the forms we signed the day before. 30 minutes later, he passes the forms back to us to carry into the conference hall. Another 30 minutes pass and HR (or it might have been the police commissioner's assistant) takes a look at our passport, returns it, and re-collects our folders. That's what I call "efficiency."

Word on the Street: No Jobs in California

I've been finding a common theme with this company. They like to keep us waiting. Naturally, the waiting allows many opportunities for rumors to form. One I have heard recently is that no one is allowed a job in any of the California locations (Fremont, Lake Forest). This rumor again contradicts what my recruiter and what Myra said about the California locations: that there should be job openings in those locations because they get a lot of business there. That's another theme I've been seeing here: there are a lot of contradictory statements which leads to many questions. Is that a good sign?

Location Chances:
Seattle 50%
Fremont 25%
Boston 20%
Chicago 5%

And by the way, Fremont's not listed as my top choice anymore. I'm trying to get this fixed if possible.

India: The 2-Day Journey - Part 2

Night out in Atlanta

During the check in process, each Infosys trainee received a $25 gift card to be used at any time in the United States. The card only being valid in the U.S. comes into play later on.

After the dinner at the Hilton, I was feeling a bit tired. There was one final activity for the night and that was a night out in the Virginia Highlands. It a place with some restaurants and a bunch of bars. Most of us ended up at an Irish pub, where I ordered a Guinness. Later, a couple of us went to the Darkhorse Tavern where we ordered a sandwich and some cheese tater tots. The portions were pretty big, unlike some restaurants I know. The Atlanta trip concluded with a breakfast buffet the next morning. it would turn out to be the beginning of a grueling 30+ hour journey to India.

Atlanta to Mysore, India

The next day turned out to be the first of a long time of waiting, flying, and sitting to India. We arrived at the Atlanta airport at 1:30 P.M. Once we cleared customs we had about 3+ hours to waste until our 6:00 flight. Me and a couple of guys decided to buy 2 large pizzas with our leftover American Express cards for a total of $31.00 The pizza was New York style and one of the best I've ever tasted. The cheese, crust, and sauce were in perfect proportion and it was a good start to the upcoming flight.

The trip to Bangalore consisted of two-nine hour plane rides in Lufthansa Airlines, a German company. From reading their webpage, it sounded like a pretty good airline especially with the new "thin seat" technology that they touted would give economy class passengers more leg room. At the very least I expected that... and I didn't get it. At 6:00 pm I boarded flight 445 to Frankfurt, Germany, found my seat and sadly, I saw no TV monitor in front of me and no way to sit in my seat without my knees touching the seat in front of me. Another bad break was the passenger in front of me (a fellow Infoscian) that insisted on reclining even though my knee really had no where to go. O well, I let it go. It's only for 9 hours right?

Looking down at Frankfurt from the plane, I notice that the city has a lot of forest land with patches of houses carved into the trees. Some houses look very similar in shape and are packed closely toegther much like in California. When the plane landed, we basically had 3-4 hours to kill. Most of the time was spent shopping along the shops in the airport and marveling at how expensive everything was and realizing how far the dollar has fallen in the past several years. A MacBook Air cost 1699 Euros in Germany.... that's 2888 U.S. dollars!

The flight left Gernany at about 12:00 pm Germany time and touched down in Bangalore at about 12:00 AM Indian Time. The flight was also abotu 9 hours long. I spent a lot of the time on the plane sleeping surprisingly, but by that time I could have slept anywhere. I had been up for about 29 hours and I still had a shuttle ride to take to Mysore. The shuttle seemed to go pretty slow partly because the roads were a bit weird. It seems like the road is littered with random speed bumps, which would cause the bus to slow down alot. Near the middle, we made a stop at a random coffee shop for what was supposed to be 15 mins. 45 mins later, we started back on the road. Suring the shuttle ride, we saw some stray dogs running around the road. Along side the road would be some rundown buildings, some looked like stores, but of course since it was 2 in the morning, there were no people on the streets and none of the stores were open. Finally, at about 6:00 am, we made it to the gates of Mysore. We tried two times, but we finally made it! (The first gate we went to was not the main gate and we were rejected). At this time, I was awake for about 34 straight hours with a spotty 3-4 hours of sleep mixed in at various points. That's 34 hours without a shower, without brushing my teeth, and most concerning was without changing out my contacts. So instead of taking us to our rooms, Infosys treated us with a little breakfast after we all checked in. This would be the beginning of a day that I can only describe as crazy... but crazy fun too! Yea, the weekend would be like this: playing sports, meeting people, and getting used to Indian food. More to come later.

India: The 2-Day Journey - Part 1

I didn't expect much from the Delta Airlines flight from San Francisco to Atlanta since the airline has been flirting with bankrupcy the past couple of years, but the onboard experience was pretty good. Each seat was equipped with a TV monitor showing programming from Dish Network, which was a nice distraction from some of the other things I could have been thinking about. Sleep as usual was hard to come by despite the flight being really smooth. I haven't been on a flight so smooth in the last couple of years.

After arriving in Atlanta, I went straight to baggage claim and met a group of people also traveling to India for the Infosys training. All four were from the UC system. We waited for the hotel shuttle to come pick us up and in the process, the hot and humid Georgia weather was causing us to sweat. When the shuttle finally arrived, we joined a second Infosys group and we headed towards the hotel.

At the Hilton hotel, I checked in and went up to my room to change. I lugged my two bags into my room and found my roommate already inside. He's from Dallas so he didn't have as far to travel. After changing into business casual attire, I met all the future Infosys trainees near one of the Hilton's meeting rooms. The group consisted of 55 total people, approximately 10 girls and 45 guys and interestingly enough, there weren't too many Computer Science majors. I would guess probably 10-15 of us are CS majors. The rest are either Electrical or some other form of engineer or economics/math majors.

The meeting started at about 3:00 p.m. ET, about 30 minutes late due to some late arrivals. The meeting consisted of a team activity involving half pipes, a marble, and a cup that I could only describe as a fun way to meet some other members of the group. Once all the teams went, an HR respresentive introduced us to the company while another person did a presentation on the cultural aspects of India that we should look out for. We followed that up with a nice dinner courtesy of Infosys.