San Francisco Chronicle - Weekdays at office!
Weekdays were boring, I should admit, for most of it I spent in office. I was there for a KT, Knowledge Transfer - when stretched, but it soon became clear to me that there was no one available with whom I could talk let alone somebody with a bagful of knowledge to transfer. I spent my days reading through some of those documents on the product and by the end of the week I was frustrated to the core.
I would start to the office at around 8.30 in the morning and walk down the beautiful twin-dolphin drive. Everything en route was beautiful and had a freshness about it, as you can see from the snaps I took. My hotel, Sofitel, stood on the bank of an extension of the bay and everyday I was greeted by the geese which lived in the waterbody.
I had to walk till the Oracle parkway and cross the road to get to the campus. After a trip around the artifical lake in front of the six office buildings, numbered 100 to 600 skipping a hundred each time (that's an algorithm/logic I could think of). Oracle campus was beautiful, with 6 cylindrical buildings each reflecting the sky above and the buildings around them.
When my first snaps of the buildings turned out great I congratulated myself for the skill. But the pride only lasted till I saw the snaps my friends took as well. They all looked great - thanks to the ambient lighting in the bay area :-). The lake was a good foreground, except for the fountain in the center that looked more like a leaky water pipe.
I would go the top floor on 300 where the Service team worked. I was given a cabin with a window that overlooked the lake and the bay.
At office, I did things that I could have done at Bangalore - research on some customer issues, bugs - and I started missing my team towards the end of the first week. I remember having to walk down to office one day, late in the night to attend a meeting, and I was confronted with the chillest of the weather I have ever been in. As I walked cold wind blew right on my face and my nose began to go numb. It was a never-before experience. To break the monotony of the days, I would take a walk to Belmont and roam around. When I was tired I would call up Aswani - my Panjabi taxiwala - and head towards Annapoorna, where they served Masala Dosa or Tacobells from where I picked up a liking for Mexican food. Aswani was nice to talk to and most of the time he wanted to talk about India. Like most other Panjabi taxiwalas around the world, he had been around for about a decade and wanted dearly to go back to his hometown, where his family lived. His family back in India led a good life and he had helped a bunch of others to get to the US.
It was Christmas time and the festival was in the air. Christmas trees and christmas sales were prominent at the Hillsdale mall. Everyone who entered Sofitel was greeted with one of Santa's beautiful sledges. Most of the elderly people whom I talked to were in town to be with their grand children for christmas. Everything was colorful.
I was gearing up for my first weekend and I decided to visit SFO downtown again. This time to take a closer look.
posted by ദീപക് -:-Deepak @ 8:30 PM
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