A life reflection in twenties ... Part 6

I joined the new company ... It was relatively geographically closer to my house, than my earlier company ... So commuting time was reduced by 10 to 15 min ... The work was "support and enhancement" work ... The web application to which I was assigned to, was relatively stable. So less of a support work was there ... More of enhancements were there ... Having to do enhancements is very good ! ... There is an opportunity to do more of coding ... I could do the enhancements successfully without needing much help from my leader ... The reason was I had done a lot of coding and I had seen a lot of code in my previous company ... Here along with me, my leader was also a Maharashtrian ... In the beginning, the interactions were in English ... But one day, I was humming a Marathi song ... Due to that he realized that I am also a Maharashtrian... We then started speaking sometimes in Marathi and sometimes English ... Since it was a 24x7 support project, one day I got a call from my leader to come to the office at night 10-30 ... I was a bit worried ... The call was regarding a bug found in my assignment... It was quite night time ... So Hiren dropped me at the office ... I fixed the bug and came back home ... By this time at home, Hiren and I started discussing moving to Pune which was closer to our homes at Mumbai and Ahemdabad... I decided to move to Pune first ... So I requested my manager to transfer me to Pune ... Meanwhile one more development was happening parallelly... Hiren was trying if he can get an opportunity to work in the US for sometime in future ... His goals were very clear, which he kept discussing with me ... He wanted to earn some more money early in his life ... He wanted both of our parents to travel to the US and see how it is developed ... And third one was, to have a child ... In an environment which is away from relatives ... I was of the opinion that I don't want to go to the US without a job ... I did not want to lose my financial independence ... So Hiren asked at his office if they can place me in his office in the US... Hiren's company then arranged an interview ... The interview was all about the design patterns used in the Java coding language ... Hiren 's company then mentioned that I can be absorbed in his company in the US ... Whereas my company prepared to transfer me to Pune ... At the end of year 2004, I was transferred to Pune ... When I reached Pune, I lived at my sister's place for a month ... Both my sister and brother-in-law were working... I too joined the office in Pune ... I had a great time at my sister's place ... Then I decided to move to a place with three other bachelor girls ... Till this time, I was completely molded as a married woman... So it was hard to gel with the bachelors... Slowly I got adjusted with them ... I used to play good songs ... But with loud volume ... Fortunately no one complained ... I especially used to get along well with my roommate ... She was also a Maharashtrian... She was preparing for GRE to go abroad... My leader and my manager were good to me in Pune ... I used to commute by office bus ... This was the first time for me to use the office bus to commute ... Office was at one hour driving distance from home ...  Till the time I was in India before going to the US, I did not have a laptop facility ... I was put on a "support and enhancement" application project again ... I did my first enhancement... While doing it, I found a bug in the application... I remember that the developers/testers in the US carefully analysed the bug which I reported... And thanked me for finding it ... In my Pune office, I especially remember one of the colleagues who was always with big smile on his face ... I used to talk to him quite often ... One day I came to know that he was an orphan as a child ... I was shaken inside ... He must have put a lot of efforts to reach to this position... Later when I reached the US and joined the US office of Hiren's company, he messaged me saying "Swati, our leader was saying you were good. You should not have left" ...  I was happy ... Meanwhile one more incident happened at home ... I realized that one of the bachelor girl (who was not my roommate but my colleague), used to closely follow me ... To the office bus ... And in general... I generally do not like people who closely follow me ... I observed for a few days and one day I got into an argument with her ... Her excuse was "we are tolerating you along with your loud music for long ... Why you have a problem with us" ... I could not find an answer for this question...  Anyways ... But I left the bachelors house in three months and moved as a "paying guest" to an Aunty's house ... Aunty's husband was no more ... And her daughter was in the US ... She was alone at home with one more paying guest ... Aunty was quite good by her behavior towards both of us paying guests ... I spent the remaining 3 months at Aunty's place, till my time arrived to go to the US ... If I come early from the office, Aunty and I used to chat in the evening... She fondly used to talk about her daughter... My roommate here, was also quite good by behaviour ... Together we enjoyed... And soon three months passed and it was time to go to the US ... Hiren came to the airport in the US to receive me... He had already flew to the US ... His contract with the US office was for three years ... He had joined the office, rented an apartment and purchased a car ... The apartment complex was very good ... Since it is in the US, we do not have to worry about cleanliness... It's already very clean, when compared to India ... As usual, I used the toilet on the first day and it got blocked ... Hiren helped me out with unblocking this time ... But to certain extent... We had to call an apartment maintenance guy to clear the toilet ... On the same day, we purchased the toilet unblocking kit and then onwards, I could manage on my own till the time we were in the US ... Till the time, the company people decided to absorb me, I used to be alone at home ... I used to cook in the morning and in the evening, watch TV at noon after lunch and do some interview preparation in the middle ... I got to see some good English Serials like "Little House at the Prairie" ... I especially liked the old American culture where men used horse-cart to travel ... The little wooden houses ... The hardwork people had to put at the time of snow ... Their values like establishing equality ... Educating people ... Awesome ... Inspiring ... Meanwhile there was still uncertainty in my mind about getting a job ... A couple of times when Hiren came back from the office, I was into tears ... I told Hiren that if I do not get a job, we will move back to India in one year ... I remember Hiren then reminded his boss if they have any plans to absorb me in their office... They then arranged a couple of interviews for a couple of different posts ... The first interview was about "Devops" post ... And the second was for "Java Developer" ... In the first interview they asked me about my positives and negatives, my work experience... In the second interview, I was asked about the usage of Application Server, EJBs, JNDI Lookup and about my earlier design pattern interview (which was remotely conducted) ... I was quite nervous at the interview... The Devops interview was conducted on phone ... But the "Developer" interview was the first face-to-face interview ... The "then developer interviewer" later became my manager ... A few days later, I got an email saying I got the job and the salary distribution... Let me confess here that even though I got the job, I always had in mind that the job was "reserved" for me because of Hiren ... "Ideally" I did not like the situation I am in ... But since it was a matter for three years, I accepted it ... After joining the company, it was a norm to go around the floor and get introduced to the team by one's manager... When my manager was introducing me to the team, two of the senior ladies were also in the cubicle ... They were in the middle of discussion ... My manager interacted with them and a few minutes later, they interacted with me ... Must be a casual interaction with the new joinee ... I did not understand a single word they spoke ... Most probably because of the accent ... I just said "Thank you" ... Put my head down and stood there ... I realized my manager burst into little laughter ... He also realized the problem with different language and different accent ... The introduction got over on a completely confused note ... For all the ladies ... Me, who did not understand a word ... And the other two ladies, who did not understand why I said "Thank you" and did not converse ... The development cycles began ... There were two groups at work ... Employees and Consultants ... I was an employee... My leader pronounced My complete name ... He pronounced it reasonably well ... However, the local people pronounced the "T" in my name as "hard T" ... Later after few months, I told them it should not be pronounced  as a "hard T" ... But it is "soft T" ... My first assignment got reviewed by a consultant lady ... (She was not an Indian) ... When she was reviewing, we both got into an argument ... She apologized later ... I was not expecting an apology ... Work could have simply moved further ... I never had any hard feelings about her ... I had faced much tougher conversations ... Which could make me weep ... She did not make me weep ... But her way of apologizing was clearly saying "It's hard for me to apologise to you, but I still apologise. To make the manager feel better" ... I least wanted such apology... It all felt very "childish" to me ... In next meeting, my manager asked for my feedback about the assignment and my work with her ... I said "It was childish" ... Next, I was working with a male colleague (he was not an Indian) ... He made an initial framework for the code and I then plugged in my code inside the framework for details ... While working on the assignment, I asked him, if he would like to come for coffee ... He denied saying, "I already have my coffee with me ..." ... When I completed my part of code, I asked him if he would like to review my code ... He denied ... He did "Mind your own business" sign ... I was hurt that time ... Meanwhile, I was really angry with one consultant (who was an Indian) ... He was behaving really strangely with me and in general with everyone... I found it very unprofessional behaviour... I literally raised my voice against his behaviour in the team ... Next, I worked with two senior colleagues ... With one of the senior colleagues had an excellent sense of humor ... By this time it has been almost 6 months ... And I started understanding the accent and the humor of the local people... He was also an experienced coder in Java language ... He used to understand Java code very fast ... And I gave the feedback to my manager that "He understands code at a glance" ... I had fun working with both the seniors ... The other senior colleague was of the opinion that Indians get into a really competitive mindset while working ... I did not realize what he was saying then ... But today I realize the consequences of it ... Because of excessively working on multiple different tasks at one time, Indians tend to lose their focus ... It becomes hard for them to get to the depth of the problem ... And a certain amount of greed develops ... I realized it ... There was a concept of "one-on-one" in the US, where the manager interacts with the team members every week or every alternate week ... It's a great concept to know each team member and the issues which he/she is facing with the professional life ... Sometime during that period, I got a volunteering opportunity to take care of the team during my scrum-master's absense for a week or so ... My responsibility was to help the team members finish the tasks on time ... I could do the scrum-master task successfully... But it was not much appreciated, probably because the management thought, my "expectations will be raised" if they appreciate it ... Generally in the western countries, it is a professional etiquette to appreciate if any help is provided on time ... But it did not happen in my case ... It was explicitly made clear that it is a "volunteering" task ... There might be a reason for them to do so ... It must be because, my manager asked me to work with one of my colleagues... However the colleague kept denying for various reasons... One day in the daily meeting, I lost my temper even though he was a senior to me ... His constant rejection for working with me, made me lose my temper ... Till that time, I never used to present what I have done ... And "presentation" was mandatory for the project... I never could understand till that time, "what to present as a developer?" ... But as and when I attended the presentations and time progressed, I realized that what people are more interested in, are the "successes", "failures" and the "challenges" ... As a software developer, the successes can be "how many features are developed for user to access?" ... "Is that application secure?" ... "How many concurrent users can access the application?" ... "Are the test cases robust?" ... The failures can be, "Delivering features on time" ... "Number of bugs in the software" ... Similarly, the challenges can be "A required tool or software is not available on time" ... "Schedule conflicts" ... However, I was not prepared for these questions, I just knew "how to do my work"! ... And that is coding ... till then  ... Meanwhile, my manager appreciated my articulation ... I stated "Yes, that is why make me a scrum master" ... He said "No, become a leader" ... Then I said "Put me in a place where maximum integration is required ... While doing the integration assignments, I get to meet people ... I can talk to them " ... Manager said "ok. We can put you in Patient Record" ... In the next meeting I thought my manager was happy with the idea of "integration assignments" ... Then I did one such integration assignment in the present team ... Today I think these assignments really give people a lot of cross-team-exposure ... It expands their horizon ... On technical as well as soft-skill aspects ... People get trained on team interactions as well as to use the technologies for integration... Which during my time used to be "Do the JNDI Lookup for the deployed EJBs" ... It exposes the soft and hard part of "remote connectivity" ... It is challenging... It allows people to think "how to isolate the problem and solve locally first" ... Meanwhile at home front, I learnt to drive a car ... That was a big accomplishment for me ... Hiren taught me how to drive it ... I used to sing and Humm in this office too ... One of my colleagues told me, it is really bothering them ... So I stopped it ... I also heard the statement "My mother-in-law is PhD" in the team ... In official environment ... I interpreted that statement was for me ... It means "Swati thinks herself too much ... When actually she is a dumb person" ... It's a way of mocking in India ... As everyone knows mother-in-laws from both sides are viewed very negatively in India from both the sides ... The girl's side as well as guy's side ... Meanwhile I was quite friendly with Hiren's colleagues and Hiren's team members from India ... A couple of Hiren's friends used to visit us at home ... We used to travel together at nearby places with them ... We used to cook and eat together ... We had a lot of fun ... It's a personal thing, but I used to smell bad during my monthly cycle ... Even after taking bath or so ... I remember one day, my female colleague just walked out over that smell ... On the office front, I was put in a different team ... My leader told me to inform the team about your team change in the daily meeting... And the daily meeting was cancelled that day ... We also had to do some Visa work for us, so we visited Canada ... Hiren used to take care of everything on behalf of me ... I used to take care of home front... "Cooking and Cleaning" ... And in the office "Coding" ... I was free to listen to songs and roam around with Hiren and friends... Hiren made all the travel arrangements ... He never made me realize how much of extra work he is doing for our stay in the US ... As I always say "Hiren is a person who strives to make life comfortable" ... In Canada, we saw Naygara falls and CN Tower glass door walk ... I did not walk on the glass floor ... I found it scary ... Naygara falls was awesome site to watch ... Hiren drove all around the places ... In the office, I was in a new team ... Except our leader and scrum master, most of them were Indians ... I was comfortable... My first assignment started ... I had to work on a monolithic Java code, by putting test cases around it ... I also had to decouple the code from its actual integration points, by writing "stubs" ... Locally test it first ... It took 15 days or so, for me to complete this assignment ... I refactored the code too ... Now the code looked different... From a monolithic block to small chunks in different Java files ... Now, it was the time for presentation at the end of a development cycle ... I asked one of my colleagues to present ...who was working with me for the entire assignment... He presented all the coding logic ... The seniors appreciated it, but they were not much interested in the logic ... I realized it much later ... After around 5 to 6 years ... I really thought through it when I was teaching robotics to the kids and their parents used to come to watch them playing robots ... I used to wonder whether the kids could explain the "code" to parents ? ... And will every parent understand the "coding" ? ... So I made the kids explain "what is the robot doing?" In "layman" terms ... Ok Anyways... I digressed ... When the next development cycle started, two new team members joined ... Both were not Indians ... One was a lady and the other was a guy ... Both were very nice people ... The guy was from "scotland" ... I remember telling him, "we just know about 'scotland yard', british police" ... I started working on the user interface part of the assignment and told my colleague to take care of Integration test cases ... He said "Ok" ... The development began and I took help from a guy from Hiren's team, to know a certain part of the user interface code ... I did that on "friendly terms" ... Not on "official terms" ... I completed the user interface assignments ... One of the consultants gave me the feedback about "Code initializations not tested properly" ... In the next few months I realized, that people have strong objections against taking help from another team ... "On friendly or unofficial terms" ... Anyways ... But one day in my one-on-one my manager kept looking at me ... I never faced such a moment in my married life ... After my marriage, it was the first time when someone made me realize that I am beautiful... I am special ... It was a monotonous life otherwise ... I shied away and looked away from my manager ... I still can not forget that moment... It was so special for me ... It is such a distinct characteristic to make someone feel special... Believe me, such distinct people give meaning to life ... Which is otherwise meaningless ... I am saying this today ... After living 50 years of life ... And 20 years later that incidence ... I wish I could have conveyed this earlier... But sometimes, excessive happy moments, just steal all the words from our mouth ... What remains is still-ness ... tranquility ... I never asked why my manager did that ... May be an ice-breaker ... Sometimes silence is the answer ... Sometimes silence has the answer ...