(Non-Technical) Biscuits and milk

Thanks to a nudge from Sriram I have started blogging again. The idea was also planted by a good friend of mine, Rajnish, several months back. There are a lot of things that have changed in the past year that I am not sure where to begin. The biggest and the most exciting change has been that I have moved back to India (for an extended visit :-)). After almost 7 years in Redmond and 10 years in US I wasn't sure what to expect. But thanks to a lot of support from Microsoft and newly found friends the transition has been amazingly smooth.

The big day arrived on 3rd of August. Originally I was supposed to fly out on the 31st of July but I had to reschedule the flight because of torrential rains in Mumbai. That gave me another 3 days with my wife and daughter (they join me here next month). On the way here my emotions were mixed. For one this just felt right. But leaving behind a lot of good friends and colleagues and most importantly, my wife and daughter, was tough. One of the main reasons to come back was to be with friends and family. And since arriving in Hyderabad I have gotten right down to this very task and have made many new friends, both at work and otherwise. So far so good.

Here in Hyderabad, I have joined the Visual Studio for Devices team in the India Development Center (part of Microsoft Indian (R&D) Private Limited). In my team we would be developing the next generation of Visual Studio features for device developement like the debugger, connectivity to devices and the device emulator. More on that in future posts.

Growing up I used to love "Glucose" biscuits and hot milk. The Indian grocery stores in Redmond have started stocking these and it was fun to eat them again after many many years. So I asked myself: why not enjoy them here in Desh itself? The small canteen in the campus cafeteria doesn't stock the Glucose brand that I used to enjoy (Parle) but does have a Brittanea variety. So one day I brought them (a large pack for Rs. 8, compare that to > $1 in Redmond ;-)) up to the shiproom meetings and now it might just become a tradition.

I hope to keep blogging on the amusing little anecdotes from Hyd... Stay tuned.