Hyderabad blues!

An year back, the lure of better opportunities (and money) made me pack my nice quiet life in 12 boxes and move to this city of pearls. Interestingly, the first signboard that I saw on road meant Bangalore is left. I slept with joyful pictures of Spain lifting the world cup in my mind that night. Next day, I joined Microsoft.

Well the good vibes faded away in couple of months. And a lot went wrong than right after that. But as Captain Mal from Firefly will say: "There is trouble. But we are still flying. It's enough". So the eternal optimist in me has decided to ditch the "blues" and make this post a recollection of the good stuff that happened over the past year.
 1. Lawn Tennis -- My initial attempt at lawn tennis ended in a game when I could not even get the ball to the other side of net in VNIT. I have managed to do a lot better on Microsoft tennis court :). The midnight 3 hour lawn tennis marathon followed by breakfast at 3:30 AM was totally awesome!
2. Adobe standard-time Lunch -- Our gang had this tradition in Adobe of inaugurating the lunch at 12:30 PM. The talk/gossip/leg-pulling/fun over lunch always proved enough to make us neglect the average food. A bunch of Adobe expats managed to keep that tradition going here for 6 months.To top it up, there was Table Tennis post-lunch!(along with some victory dances :P)
3. Home trips -- Being closer to hometown meant a significant number of trips to Nagpur. After 6 years, I managed to be at home for birthday and most of the major festivals.
4. Bhongir -- Though most of the weekends were wasted in multiplexes, restaurants or home, one weekend stood out. We woke up early morning, drove 100 kms to Bhongir fort, challenged the mighty wind on top of the fort and yet lived to tell the tale.
5. Flashbacks! -- A wise man has said: "The sweet is never as sweet without the sour". Perhaps I understand the statement now in a more profound manner. How blessed one is to be working on something interesting which pays well enough too. Or to be surrounded by many smart and fun-loving colleagues who make work feel like play in spite of the stringent corporate software requirements. Or to be living in a city where nature is 100kms drive away in either direction.

Now, let me end the post here with the hope that the sequel (if any) is better than this one! :)