More than 2 weeks - no post - a summary to catch-up

It has been more than 2 weeks and I haven't been able to update my blog. So, I will be quickly summarizing where past 2 and half weeks went.

On the long weekend of May 29th, we spent Saturday in watching movies mainly. Nothing much - just relaxing. On Sunday, we went to Thurmond lake with two other families in Augusta - one of Sunil Ji and another one of Sushanto. Sushanto has just moved to Augusta and he didn't had a car. So I helped him in some grocery shopping as well. Thurmond lake is a nice place to be and it is like beach. Since we didn't take our swim-ware so we spent most of the time on the shore. We enjoyed a lot by playing cards and chatting a lot. After returning to Augusta, I helped Sushanto in getting his electronic stuff hooked up properly.

May 28th
On May 29th, Monday I came to know that I need to go for a training to Dallas Texas. So Monday I spent in planning for the trip and purchasing some stuff. Being a holiday, most of the shops were closed. Anyways, I managed to get some stuff from Walmart - that's the advantage of it being 24x7 :)

May 29th

Cab ride to Augusta Airport
On Tuesday I left for Dallas. From my home to Augusta airport, I took a cab and driver was originally from Albania settled in USA since last 15 years or so. We had an interesting chat. He mentioned that he considers USA the country of GOD because USA has so many resources that people don't know how to utilize it. That's the reason why they don't care about utilizing so much of paper and water and other resources! I kind of agree with him. He was also impressed with the freedom and systems that are there in USA. It made my trip interesting. When I arrived at Augusta Airport, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the Airport is much better now.

Flight to Dallas via Atlanta
On my way to Dallas I read couple of books - "Pro VSTS" and "Framework Guidelines" for .NET. Both were a nice read and they gave me new ideas. I'm sure those will go a long way in further refining some of the stuff I'm doing.

Dallas Forthworth airport to Hotel
I took a cab and by chance the driver was a Pakistani guy. It was again a pleasant surprise. We talked a lot about stuff ranging from bollywood to politics etc. The whole ride was really enjoyable and the guy was really nice. It again reminded of the fact that differences exist between the politics but not in the heart of people.

After I reached hotel, I called my wife and immediately went to sleep! After all it was a long travel.

May 30th
My training was on Familiarization with Legacy Modernization and the trainer was Tim O'Brien from Fujitsu Computer Services. He was an amazing guy. Other people in training were Nicolas Legar from Borne group that Fujitsu had acquired earlier, Derrick Walsh from DMR Group and Siva from Rapidigm group. It was nice to meet people from different groups. It was an eye opener and I was amazed with the offering of Fujitsu for migrating Cobol Apps from mainframe to Windows platform.

May 31st
The training continued and it ended at about lunch time. Then we had lots of time so I asked Derrick to accompany me to downtown Dallas for a short trip. We took Dallas public transport to go to downtown and went to the place where John F. Kennedy was shot. We also went to Kennedy museum. It was a memorable trip with Derrick that I will remember forever. Once we were back Derrick left for his flight for journey back to Canada.

On 31st I also met Sunil Bansal - one of my collegues who recently moved to US on a project for Fujitsu. I told him about some of the things he should do and stuff like that. It was a nice meeting and a pleasant surprise.

Jun 1st
I took my flight back to Augusta. It was not a pleasant trip. I left hotel at 5:30am and reached home only at around 5:30pm. For a small flight time, the delay was much longer because of bad weather. Being a vegetarian I almost got starved because the food choices were limited. Anyways, I reached home and then just relaxed :)

Jun 2nd to Jun 6th
I spent these 5 days on catching up the work that piled up during my training. There were some issues in one of the application that we were supposed to deliver to a client. Ultimately we resolved those and after that we had long discussions on how to proceed further. So nothing much in those days except fire-fighting or writing some code. I also visited doctor and got a clean chit regarding my hand and ear and now both are okay :)

Jun 7th to Jun 9th
Client side lead was supposed to leave for a trip to Italy so I spent lot of time with him in understand where the team is and what we are supposed to achieve when he is gone for two weeks. I also had long meetings with client side project manager to discuss what offshore team did for the project and what are we supposed to do next. Again - hectic period. :) However, on 7th of June, I watched the movie "Life is Beutiful" and it was worth the watch!

Jun 10th
I spend most of the time watching movies - 5 to be exact -thanks to blockbuster. It was a relaxing day and did nothing. Just went to Vishal's place as he was supposed to attend a marriage. Arti helped his wife in getting ready for the function. I just relaxed as I wanted to give rest to my body :)

Jun 11th
We were invited by our friend Sunil Joshi to his place and we enjoyed lots of food stuff. It was an amazing get together for a foodie like me. We enjoyed "Bedai", "Dahi Wada", "Golgappas" and lots of other stuff. In the evening we returned and again - relaxed.

Jun 12th and 13th
It was normal day with work in office. After office hours I had very little time for myself as Sunil Ji caught serious viral infection "Strep throat" and later his daugter as well. We went to their place to help his wife and to play with his children so that he can relax.

Jun 14th
Again a normal day at office but I finally caught up with my learning ways. Restarted studying SQL Server 2005 and some new cool stuff with Google Maps API etc. Will be posting more on it as I go along. At the end of the day, I received an e-mail regarding a training on "Macroscope" that I was waiting for. Fortunately it is in Virginia close to my best friend Karan's house so it'll give me a chance to meet him after almost 1 and a half years. I am quite excited about it. I hope to catch up with

Jun 15th
Here I'm. Spent most of the time at work-place in meetings for one of the applications. In the evening, just got home and trying to catch up with blog. I hope that in future I'll be more regular.