First Year Experience

I started my professional career a little more than a year ago.(I started working for Tessolve on 1st August, 2007). Its been a mixed bag at this point of time. In the last one year, technically I guess I learnt more than what I had accumulated(mugged) in the whole of engineering but I cant compare the present life to the amount of fun I had in engineering.

During college I used to get less than 1000 bucks a month and that used to be enough for all the fun we used to have. Now although I get around 20000 every month , and I don't have the time to spend it but still I am not satisfied with my salary. I really don't know the reason why?? It could be because money was never an issue then and now it is.This is probably the first change after I started working. I wouldn't be an hypocrite and say "Salary doesn't matter".

There has been a transition from college to office, friends to colleagues, subjects to projects etc. Before this I never understood "Monday morning blues", as in college everyday used to be the same but in office its not so. In office it some how happens that no one waits for a Monday morning to get back to work and that for all of us the most awaited moment of the week is Friday evening. Actually speaking the Friday evening never repeated more than once or the Monday morning never disappeared in any week but still that feeling always stayed every week.May be this is what we call "Human tendency". Its not that the colleagues are not affable or the work place is clumsy but there is something about college and friends which is absent in office, I am yet to figure it out.

Highlights of the last one year :

1. Goa trip with the gang : For some reason we had to drop the plans of Goa as the college trip and had to settle to Gokarna (No regrets though). Last summer along with the bunch of college friends had been to Goa. We went around places and didn't even think of work even for a single moment. It was like the college Goa trip was fulfilled. I wish all companies make a rule where each employee should go out some where for a vacation for one week in a year where he doesn't have to receive any calls from office or check mails. I wholeheartedly believe this refreshes the employee and he can give better once he comes back.(It happened with me).

2. Current project: In the last one year I worked on a board design of a 40GHz multiplexer and then the other one is the broadband receiver from customer. I really enjoyed doing this project for two reasons a) I got to apply most of the concepts we learnt in engineering. I get a satisfaction that my four years of engineering is not completely a waste after all. Initially, I was skeptical if an engineering degree was required for me to do the work I am doing because we had the best instructor who taught us electronics, DSP etc used in our work in the simplest way but only later did I realise that I could understand what he spoke because of my engineering knowledge. Its really a great feeling to apply concepts like FFT in work which we just mugged equations without even knowing why its being used.

b) The chip for which we are developing test program is a low power broadband receiver which can receive AM,FM and VHF. The chip could go in to the next set of Nokia mobile phones and in navigation chips. So the next time some one is using a posh phone it could be that the chip in it was tested by the test program developed by me. Its a nice feeling to work on some of the latest technology.

Probably, this is what they call "Job Satisfaction".

3. Tessolve Annual day: On the 26th of July, Tessolve celebrated on entering the 5th year of operations in which it had grown from 10 to 370 people. Pande(engineering friend and present colleague), myself and couple of others were asked to handle the cultural programs on the annual day. The show was organised well and the program was a huge hit which had dances, singing, fashion show etc, in between these we played videos of interviews with our CEO,VPs and Directors but the highlight of the evening video compilation of photos of the Journey of Tessolve compiled by us. Be it the shooting of the interview or the preparing the video we really enjoyed working for this event. I read somewhere that "Journey to success is more enjoyable than the destination". We have always experienced it be it the annual day or Phase Shift - telecom fest or the freshers party we used to work for during college. I also agree with Steve Jobs that " One can only connect the dots backward". We definitely feel that we could easily organise the cultural functions of the annual day is such short span because of the experience we had from Phase Shift or the freshers.

We enjoyed engineering because we had fun and I mentioned the above were the highlights of the last year because these were some thing which I did in engineering, something which was fun for me. I believe having fun is the most important part of life.

Hopefully there are many more fun filled events like these which will keep life going.....

Luv,

Sri!!!

Derby Day!!

Well this is my first post on this blog. The first one was posted by a friend. Hopefully many more will follow this as well. I had been to races with a bunch of friends yesterday. So i thought i will start blogging about my experience at Race Course, Bangalore on 13th July 2008.

This year the Kingfisher Bangalore Derby, race for the best three year old horses, run over a distance of a mile and quarter was bigger and better than ever before. The race altogether carried a purse of 1.2 crore rupees with the winner bagging 72 lakhs plus a trophy worth a lakh.

Going into the race Mr.Vijay Mallya's filly Set Alight trained by the Mumbai pro Pesi Shroff was the on money favourite and it was to be piloted by Mallesh Narredu. While Set Alight was trained well and maintained in the pink of condition for this race by the trainer Pesi Shroff. Mallya's organising camp did their best to decorate the club completely in the Red and White the kingfisher colors before the start of the races, and decoration just got better with when the crowd started moving in the Red and white stand or as it is called the UB stand.

As the race began with 9 horses passing through the starting gates, Set Alight was the only filly travelling with a bunch of eight colts. Set Alight set the track on blaze and won the race comfortably by bettering course record time by a couple of seconds. The presentation was fully packed with Mallya camp both giving and receiving the honours. With the colourful atmosphere the presentation was as good as it could be but the icing on the cake was missed with absence of Mallya himself.

More than 80% of the race course wanted Set Alight to win because of its owner and his immense contribution to Horse racing in particular and sports in general. We started backing horses and lost enough money initially that one of them gave up and declared that he wouldn bet on any horse again, but ironically he was the first one standing in the queue for the next race as well. Thanks to Power Punch we not only recovered all our money but made enough money for the party tonight as well. Overall at the end of the day we had a good experience of betting and were satisfied for first timers. (Except Sheshu of course, who will for sure go back to get his lost money).

Well we were at the race course for a different reason and we weren't disappointed at all.While the Stands were decorated with Red and white colors, it was filled with a lot of colors sporting attires of various colors and designs. The quantity and quality of these colors was so good that we concentrated more on them than the horses. One thing that was common among all the colors was Goggles. One of the bunch of friends was so inspired by this factor that he went on to buy one pair of goggles in the evening itself. Along with this we have a huge list of what we aspire to posses, ranging upto a Bentley and a Derby contender some day.

All said and done, this year's Derby was a trend setter for a lot of events in years to come.

Sri!!