Tamil teacher: Mr. Sampath Kumar. Short guy with a lot of interest in sports like Ball Badminton and other extra curricular activites.
I can never forget this part of my school life. The school was
located within the BHEL Campus in Ranipet. My house was just
a mile away from the school; so I used to ride my bicycle
giving lift to my sister, Karthika. VolleyBall was our main
sport in the school. I used to play cricket in the evening
with Kathikeyan, YSubramanian, etc.
College:
- Studied Bachelor of Engineering ( Computer Science ) in College of Engineering, Osmanabad in Maharashtra, India.
- Completed the degree in 1992.
- Roommates were Rajiv Badoni ( from Ghaziabad ), Chintamani Yadav, Sunil Tiwari, Rahul Sharma, Manish Mahajan ( all from Hardwar ) and PSR Krishna ( From Hyderabad ). But only the first three stayed with me all my college life in Qureshi Building.
Everything in my college life was new; New place, new language, new custom, new food and new friends. That was the first time I went to North India. I first checked-in into Qureshi Building. That is where I met all these North Indian friends. All of them are so nice people that I continued to stay with them all of my college life.
I used to visit Ranipet twice a year. I passed out in first class in the final year ( 962/1500 ). Finally I had to bid good-bye to O'bad and all of my friends. Then I had to make a trip to Aurangabad to file application to get my degree. Now I am also a degree-holder joining millions in India looking for job vacancies.
Life after College:
When I was studying in college, my mother, brother and my sister moved to Chennai ( formerly called Madras ), while my father continued to stay in Ranipet to complete his BHEL career. Then he also moved to Chennai. They stayed twice in Choolaimedu and once in St.Thomas Mount in Chennai. I graduated in July 1992. I was looking for an opening in all the software instituitions, but none was giving any oppurtunity. Finally, I managed to get into a small concern in T.Nagar. The name of the company was Systems and Solutions, which assigned me at a project at GEC in Pallavaram. My colleagues were:
- RaviShankar - working in Iowa, US.
- SivaKumar - working in L&T, Chennai.
- Bakkiaraj - working in Germany.
- Ramesh - working somewhere in west coast in US.
- Martin - working in Houston, US.
- Suren - working in Florida and his wife,
- Raji - working in Florida.
The company then merged with a little bigger size concern called QSoft Inc. That merger changed the lives of all my colleagues. That's where I started my sybase career. I will do unjustice if I
don't mention my guru's name. Her name was Bhuvana, who is now settled in Singapore with her husband.
The company was split and we, who came from S&S, formed a separate training division known as Intech Business Solutions in
T.nagar. This happened in 1993. We continued in this training division, taking classes for Sybase, PowerBuilder and Visual Basic. Few of my good students were Hema, Ramanathan, etc. In 1994, everyone started to quit the concern for better prospects in bigger companies. I was no exception. I was offered an oppurtunity at Total Business Solutions. So, I resigned from Intech to take a vacation at Courtrallam for a fortnight.
I enjoyed the vacation and came back to Chennai on July 94 to see an offer from Wipro Systems at Bangalore. They offered me a good package with a monthly salary of around 9K. I joined Wipro in Aug 94 and stayed with my roommate Ram. My Bangalore life was only for 3 months. I got a call from an employment agency called Search International ( managed by Latha Ramesh ) that they have an offer for me from US. The company name was Sahana EnterPrises Inc. ( Later known as Mcdowell Tucker Company ). No one will miss such a chance; so I went to Chennai the next day for getting my visa at the American Consulate. I resigned my Wipro job and flew to Dallas, TX via Singapore, Hong Kong and Los Angeles in Nov 12, 1994.
Life in US:
My life in US started with winter starting to grip most of US. We ( myself, Ravi Raj, Amar Badri, Moorthy, Vasuki, Babu, etc ) were put in HomeStead motel in FortWorth, TX. We made the maximum utilisation of our bench period by getting our driver's license and applying for social security card. When everyone was getting projects in different sites, I was the one left alone with no projects. It was on Dec 9, 1994 that I received the call informing of my selection for a project in Bell Atlantic, Philadelphia. When I flew to Phila on Dec 11, Ravi flew to New Orleans and Amar flew to St.Louis.
Philadelphia, PA:
I started my project on Dec 12, 1994 and stayed for one week in Ramada Inn, which is just a mile from my company. I met Mary Bell at my project and she was nice enough to allocate one of her rooms to me. I moved in after a week and commuted with her. That was the first time in my life that I started cooking. Food was not that tasty but I did not have any other option. I visited all the museums, zoo and the Omniverse theatre. As far as project is concerned, Derek Pelham was my manager and my teammates were Kathie Revak, Harold Schuringa and Liz Kane. The Director of Market Development Systems wanted me to work from Silver Spring, Maryland. So I rented a car and drove to Silver Spring on March 1995, bidding good-bye to Mary and Philadelphia.
Silver Spring, MD:
Mar 27, 95 was the first day at my work.Though I was still reporting to Derek, I worked from Silver Spring. I contacted Ken Venkatesh and he allowed me to stay in his basement. Though the company was more than a mile away, I preferred not to buy a car so early. I walked daily for about 3 miles. The project got completed in March 1996 and I have to look for a new assignment. My next stop in my tour to USA was San Jose, CA.
San Jose, CA:
Apr 1, 1996. That was my first day in the project in ReadRite, Fremont, CA. A room at Courtyard was booked for me and I rented a car for 2 weeks to look for an apartment. There were many, but none was worth moving in. My project mate, Shrinivas, saw an ad in an Indian newspaper for sharing houses. I drove to San Jose to look for the house and met Prakash Kanakia and his wife, Kokila Kanakia. They were nice people and I saw no reason not to move in. Since the house was about 15 miles from the company, buying a car was no longer an option. 1992 grey Toyota Corolla with 55K mileage - that was the one I bought. Jackie Lim and Sanjay were my managers at ReadRite. Since the assignment was short, Sahana started looking for a new project and at Aug 96, I was on a flight heading towards East Coast.
Burtonsville, MD:
Fannie Mae was my next client site. I moved right into Ken's house and everything was fine. No latter than 4 months, there were small sparkles of differences of opinion between me and some people staying there. I decided that before those sparkles changes into fire, I had to move out. That's when GatiKrishna told about Pankaj's house, which he was renting in Adelphi. I moved into his house and stayed only for a couple of months. Meanwhile, I was talking with my project manager, Ellan Doyle, for going to India. On Jan 10, 1997, I was on my way to Chennai for a month vacation. But on my return on Feb 8th, I found that there was no spot for me on the project. So, Sahana started looking for a new assignment again, which they found at ParsiPanny, NJ.
Elmwook Park, NJ:
I drove from DC to New Jersey on Feb 16, 1997. I reported at Indus Consultancy Services on 17th and started at the client site on 18th Feb. My client name was Innovex Inc. which is about 15 miles from my apartment. I shared the apartment with RaviShankar Venkatarajalu, who was working in my project. He was working in Square-D before coming to US. Due to personal reasons, he had to go back to India for good, which left me alone in the apartment. I will do unjustice if I don't mention my close friend's name, Koushby Majagah. He is a native of Russia, but stayed some years in Germany. He is now the President and CEO of a company called Turnkey Consultancy Services Inc. As the working conditions at my client site started to deteriorate, I called Sahana for a change and they got me a project in downtown New York. Aug 29th was my last day at Innovex.
Fortunately, I don't have to move out from my apartment. I commuted by train to Chase Manhattan Bank at Park Ave. and 44th street. But that happened to be the shortest project that I have worked on, lasting for only 5 weeks from Sep 2 to Oct 3, 1997. Again, we were on the look-out for another project. But this time we got two projects, not one. One was at the same old Fannie Mae and other was at Resource Phoenix, San Rafael, CA.
I went for more than a week from 10/7 to 10/16 to study the project. The plan was to bring back the project design and continue working in DC. My project manager was Devlon Clouser.
Adelphi, MD:
Same city, same house and same project in Fannie Mae. But, my old roommate Gati has moved out as he got married. I started on Oct 20 and, this time, my project manager was Aukse Kaufmann. Also, there was a break from cooking as I had my dinner at Pankaj's parents ( Maganlal and Vajia Mistry ) home. In the evenings, I worked on the Phoenix project and to help me out, Sahana lendered the help of Rama nav to me. Since that didn't work out, he was pulled out of the project. Then, I had to head back to San Rafael on Dec 1 to install the project and come back on Dec 8 1997.
Montgomery Village, MD:
As I was about to get married, I deceided to rent an apartment in this city. I moved in on July 1st, 1999 just one month after my India trip.
