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?