Delhi, A Trip and a New Job

So, here I find myself finally, back in the hometown of Delhi ... Delhi NCR to be more correct as the office is located in Noida.

Moving to Delhi was a different experience. I usually associated Delhi with pollution and bad traffic. It still has that, but the pollution seems to be lesser than what would be there in Pune in peak hours. The amount of vehicles on the road is mind boggling !

My first impression of Delhi was ... "hmm.. pleasant weather" , especially coming from the sweltering heat of Pune. The second one was "mmm. Good Food ! " !!

Trip to Dehradun

I still had a few days left in hand before joining the Job, so I decided on a quick journey home to Dehradun. This time I decided to go in the car, rather than in the train as everyone was suggested.

The route is not enjoyable for a drive. I think that the next time onwards I will be going by Train. Most of the road is a single land with mad truck drivers. Many times I had to slow down and almost get off to the road shoulder to avoid trucker/busses overtaking other vehicles.

A stop on the way.

But once you reach roorkie, the road becomes good. It is fun to drive through ! Then , once you get to UttaraKhand , the roads become even better ! The last few kms are through the Shivalik ranges and skirt the outside of the Rajaji National Park - absolutely fun !

Lapwings in the field behind our house

Mom and Dad with the Car

Roads just out of Dehradun - Paradise !

I just stayed a day in Dehradun, and then headed back. This time I took the canal route. This is a seldom used road, so the traffic is quite less, and it runs alogside the ganga canal from Haridwar to MuradNagar so you basically cut out all the Heavy Vehicle traffic. However, when I was doing the drive, many parts of the road were in bad condition, and at many places, the construction of the brick railings were in progress. Furthermore, at many points this road crosses other roads - basically bridges across the canal, and just before and after these junctions, there are unmarked bumps - which you have to be careful about. Apart from these irritations, this is quite a cool route.

The Canal Road

One97

On 6th I joined a new company. The company is in the mobile VAS ( Value Added Services) space. I was surprised to see around 15 people joining with me ! In the days of economic slowdown, the VAS industry is doing quite good ! I also had this feeling that we Indians don't have a Product mentatlity , as most of the software we use is from companies from elsewhere around the world - but this company proved me wrong. Many of the VAS products are being used by the big operators in India ( Airtel, Idea , etc ). The work seems to be quite exciting ! !

The office space is also designed in a very open manner. The managers share the same space as all the developers , and the cube (if it can be called that) height is half - so you can see from one end of the floor to the other. Advantages and Disadvantages abound - as you can easily see the length and breadth of the floor, but at the same time, it becomes noisy. Now, it is quite the same as what Wipro was, but I have been spoilt in the last few years of working in individual cubes - so that it feels quite noisy to me ! However, its a thing about getting used to , and I think that in a few weeks, i will not even be realising the noise ( the body is an amazing machine!)

What I really liked in the first few days of work is that there is a lot of Enery and Enthusiasm in the people here. There are hardly any whiteboards here, so the glass walls that are the walls for the few discussion rooms are used for writing. Pretty cool usage if you ask me . Also, there is no hard and fast rule of what to use and what not to use - e.g. I am using Linux as my standard OS on my laptop and a few other people are using Macs etc. Nice.

Now, for the new few weeks my concentration is going to be on work and finding a house. So forgive me if I do not update here more often !