Not Reading

For the last couple of decades I've read and read and read, with most of my free time being spent with books.  Typically I read 50-100 books a year.  I get up in the morning and read while I eat breakfast, read while I use the bathroom, read while I brush my teeth...  In the evenings I read while I eat dinner, read on the couch for a bit, read while I brush my teeth, and so on...

But since coming to New York City in September last year, I've hardly read any books at all.  It's very strange to me, but I've thought about it and I guess it's a couple of things.

I haven't bought any comfortable furniture to read in.  There's the less than comfortable, cheap Ikea dining chairs, or the floor.  From the floor, though, there's no good lighting that'll come from behind to read, only overhead.  The lighting can be solved by using the iPad for reading, instead of a dead tree book...

When I have free time on the weekends, I just want to get out of the apartment, walk around and explore the city.  After ten years in India where I found getting out and walking to be uncomfortable (traffic, lack of sidewalks, noise, pollution, heat, feral dogs, etc.) now that I'm in a city where I'm comfortable walking, I don't want to spend as much time inside.

In the evenings, I don't feel like I have much time, and what I do I spend writing to Leena and reading friends' things on Facebook, and maybe a bit of light stuff on the web, like Slashdot.  But it's very quickly bedtime.

About the only time I'm really reading any books is when I'm in the bathroom...  And that's the most comfortable furniture, too...

When will I read again?  Maybe when it gets too hot to be outside in the summer.  Or when the newness of New York City wears off a bit.  And when I get a nice comfy chair or couch...

Travel

I carry a journal with me whenever I travel and write things down...  Here's what I have for the flight...

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Well, here I am at the airport in Mumbai waiting for my 12:45am nonstop flight to New York City.  At times I can't actually believe I'm doing this, it seems too unreal.  But I'm so happy to be heading back to the United States again.

We had lunch with Leena's family, said the good byes and then finished my packing back at our flat, while I gave her some last minute computer instructions.

Kalesh and the driver came about 4pm, loaded the suitcases and I was off on my way.  Traffic in Mumbai was heavy, but we planned for that, and no problems until we got to the road leading up to the airport.  My itinerary from the travel agent said Air India was in Terminal 2, but after some construction, there were signs for gates A, B, C & D, rather than 1 & 2, but it was marked clear enough that Air India was in A (although once inside I had to walk from A past the B entrance to get to Air India's check-in counters, so 2 or B would've been more accurate...)

I got to the airport too early and couldn't check in right away, so I had to stand around for about an hour with my bags.  Once I did check in there was no problem with my overweight bags, about 50.1 kg, over the maximum of two bags of not more than 23 kg each.  The agent at the counter didn't mention it, and neither did I (though I saw the readout on their scale).

The Immigration desk was another story...

The agent noticed that I'd been in India a while, that my last entry was stamped from February 2009 (my last business trip to the U.K. to learn about the BPM).  He asked me to confirm that I was traveling on the 10 year business visa in my passport, which I did, and again, when the last date I entered India was, and how long I was there, which was about a year and a half.  He asked what I was doing in India that long and I told him I was working for a software company, and he asked what company, so I told him it was Tieto, but that I'd quit the job last week and was going back to the U.S.

He asked for my FRRO registration form, but I told him I didn't have that.  He then reconfirmed all the previous details, and I confirmed them, and that I didn't have an FRRO registration because my visa is stamped with a funny stamp:

With that stamp, the FRRO refused to register me when I tried.  Everything online says that with a Business or Tourist visa valid for more than 6 months, then any foreigner has to register at the FRRO within 14 days of arrival, unless the visa is for "long term" when registration is not required if the visit is less than 180 days.  But the FRRO simply said that whatever is on the visa overrides what's on the website, and the stamp simply says that registration is not required, without conditions.

So, the agent grabbed all my papers and said "follow me."  I've had other agents in the past question this also, and make phone calls, but this is the first time one led me away from the main area and into the duty officer's cabin with the huge window where the thousands of people in the room could see me being led away...

The instant the duty officer looked at it he told the agent that it was perfectly legitimate and there was no problem.  They had further discussion in Hindi that I couldn't quite follow, and told me to sit down on the couch in the office.  The duty officer sent the agent to xerox all my papers while I waited there.  In the meantime another agent brought some other chap in with visa problems and I heard the duty officer grill him pretty bad (in that case it sounded like the guy stayed in India longer than his visa was valid and had no good explanation) before letting him go.

After the agent returned with copies of my papers they talked more, then both of them left for a few more minutes, with my papers, before returning and the agent said "follow me" and took me back to his counter, where he stamped my passport with the exit and reminded me that my visa expires in a few months, so if I return next year I need a new one.

Once he let me go, there was the main security check to get into the terminal.  Nothing unusual there, just the normal chaos, confusion and inefficiency.  I put my laptop and sweatshirt in a tray, and then several other people's trays got between that one and my backpack while I waited in line for the metal detector and the hand scan...  I think this was the first time I've ever been felt up to that degree by security...  And I have no idea why the hand scanner was beeping heavily near my left pants pocket, it was my right one that had a key and a ring, the left one was empty!

I tried to get a quick pizza at Pizza Hut in there departure terminal, but everyone else kept cutting in front of me in line, so I gave up and got a chocolate chip cookie instead from another restaurant.

I was on the phone with Leena when I noticed some activity going on at Gate 3, where I knew my flight was being handled.  It seemed early, but when I looked the signs all pointed to my flight, AI 141...  So I said good bye and dashed off...

It was yet another slow, inefficient security check, this one with us removing our shoes, getting our bags x-rayed again, and yet another hand pat down.  The family with children before me added to the chaos as they tried to hand the sleeping baby back and forth, and their trays with shoes and bags and jackets got all scattered amongst the trays from the rest of us.

Then one more security check, comparing our faces to our passports and another quick pat down and we were onto the plane.  And another family with children had things all confused, with one parent standing there, while security told the other to go back out to the terminal and get whatever they were missing and "leave the trolly here...".

On the plane I quickly found my seat, 18A, with two people already in the aisle and middle seat.  Both of them had to get up so I could squeeze my way in, next to the window (I always ask for window seats so I can look out).

After a while the fellow next to me asked me about my visit to India.  Turns out he's a software developer also, working from Connecticut, but was in India just for the long weekend for his brother's engagement in Punjab...

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Getting everyone on board and everyone's luggage stowed was a long process for the flight attendants.  And then getting everybody to sit down was harder.  Once the plane left the gate the flight attendants started the safety demo, but one elderly woman wouldn't sit down, so after finishing it in both English and Hindi they started all over again after a more senior flight attendant got the woman to sit down.

And then the plane started picking up speed, and then a senior flight attendant ran full speed up the aisle, and then we stopped.

The captain came on the intercom and apologized for the delay, but there was a technical problem with the airplane.  After some more waiting he brought the plane back to the gate where we started.

2am - Aw fuck!  We're still on the ground and they've just announced meal service.  That means there's no chance of leaving before that's all finished.

4am - We've just moved to another plane at the next gate.  Lots of police security to watch us walk through the terminal and keep everyone else out of our line.  Maybe this one will fly.

4:45am - The captain came on the intercom and said another twenty minutes or more, due to paperwork involved in changing planes and refiling everything with customs.

5:35am - We're finally about to leave.  Not bad for a 12:45am flight...

This plane isn't as comfortable as the previous one, the seat has a nasty, metal lump in it and the padding is worn out.  The entertainment console controller is all beat up and the arm of the chair that holds it is smashed, the vents near the floor look like they've been crushed and there's more stains all over.

I keep half expecting the captain to come on the intercom and say "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts," but hopefully not "I've made a lot of special modifications myself..."

2:20am New York Time (moved watch back 9.5 hours) - Oiy vey...  Not been a great flight so far.  Although the sun rose shortly after we took off, they structured the flight as "night" with the lights off and window shades closed.  Most slept, but kids screamed and yelled all "night."  Now it's "day" in the plane, and day outside.

And we ain't even halfway there!  Actually, we're in the neighborhood where most Tieto travelers are "almost there."

7:15am New York Time - Now we're at the point where we would have landed if everything had gone smoothly and we didn't have the five hour delay in Mumbai.

Some of the kids are sleeping, but at least one is in a super cranky mood.  Probably bored out of her skull, since we've been sitting in this plane (flying, or on the ground) for about 16 hours.  Can't they just give her a drink so she passes out and sleeps?

I've slept off and on for much of the flight.  But been woken up by screeching children.  Ashish Gupta, next to me, has slept a lot better than me, pulled the blanket over his head and seemed relatively oblivious.  I can't stay comfortable for more than a little while when I am awake, the seat's just miserable.

Exiting Tieto

Tuesday was my last day at work at Tieto.  The exit process was a real pain in the neck (this ties to my earlier post where I said my team is pretty insular, so I hadn't dealt heavily with other departments at Tieto for a while...).  There was a lot more paperwork involved than when I quit First Insight (my employer before that went out of business, and I got fired from the one before that...).  I had to get a half dozen signatures from various managers around the office in different departments.

Three of those managers were people I'd never met and didn't know on sight and didn't know where their desks were located.  Not one of them would be helpful enough to give me instructions on how to find them in the office.  One, the payroll guy, was nice enough to tell me that his desk was located "in the office" (uh, yeah, duh!), but cut off all communication when I asked for somewhat more precise directions.  Fortunately one of the women in HR, Vijaya, was assigned the task of following up on my exit paperwork and asked if I needed any help, so she gave me good instructions how to find them.

I had a couple of project related meetings in the afternoon, so I waited until after that to get the IT department's signature, in case they took my computer, which I needed.  Good thing, too, when I went to their office and said I needed to do the paperwork they cut off my network account before I ever made it back to my desk.  Fortunately I'd already copied the document I was working on and had to hand off to another teammate to the file server first, and I also emailed it to three people just as a backup.

Before that I also wrote a couple of farewell emails, one to my team specifically and one to all the people I've interacted with in the office, whether teammates or even just people I never talked to but always shared a smile with in the hallways...  That came out to over 50 people...

My department had a small party with cake to celebrate the department's birthdays and give me some flowers.  I made a lousy speech that I was unprepared for.

Then I went to the HR department for their signature, only to find their office empty.  Someone sitting nearby said they were all in a meeting.  That was about 5pm.  I went back around 5:10pm and they were still out.  At 5:15 they were still out and I started to worry that they might return, but being late in the day just pack up and leave without checking emails or things.

So, I sat patiently on a filing cabinet outside their office until their meeting finished at 6:35.  And even then the paperwork wasn't done.  There was some confusion about my missing a signature of a nonexistent manager.  The form had a space for a "configuration manager" but neither my solid-line manager nor my dotted-line manager knew what that was, let alone who that was.  By the time HR got back and explained that my solid-line manager needed to sign there with "not applicable" my solid-line manager had already left for the day for some follow-up medical tests (he was really sick earlier this year, with typhoid plus a serious kidney infection simultaneously that left him hospitalized for a few weeks) so it wasn't possible to get that.

The HR guy said he'd follow up with my solid-line manager the next day and get the forms, email me a PDF and courier the original to my address...  Of course, now Thursday is finished and I haven't received it yet...

After that I turned in my ID badge and key card, then the HR people escorted me out of the secure part of the office, into the reception area.  I guess they do that for all exiting employees.  They didn't make me feel like I was suspicious of anything and chatted cheerfully on the way out about my experiences in India and what my plans are for going home.

Then I waited there for a while for my teammates to finish work so we could all go to La Pizzeria for a team dinner and a farewell for me.  My original plan was to go home, shower and things, then get picked up at my apartment, since they have to drive right near it anyway.  But with HR's extended meeting I just waited for another fifteen minutes in the reception area instead, without taking a rickshaw home.

Dinner with my team was fun.  I guess since I joined Tieto after I was already getting homesick here in India I'd never really talked to my teammates before about the good memories I had of earlier in my stay in India, so a lot of that came out.  Someone even commented that they never imagined I'd eaten at as many restaurants as I talked about, since by the time I joined Tieto I was rarely ever eating out anymore.

Tuesday turned out to be a strange day to finish a work week.  It's left me quite confused as to what day is what since then...

Final Follow-up with the Neurophysician

A couple of weeks ago we followed up with the neurophysician about how the medication-based treatment of my headaches has been going. I quickly found on previous visits that when he'd ask me how things were going he wouldn't let me really talk and say what I felt I needed to say, before cutting me off and him talking. So, I got in the habit of writing the details.

This visit was the first one after we got the printer, so I was able to elaborate even more by typing instead of hand-writing, and include a picture, found using Google, to demonstrate what I was trying to say.

With the last visit you increased the dosage of Amitone from 10mg per day to 25mg per day. But we still had a strip of unused 10mg pills, so you said to take two a day, or 20mg, until they ran out, then get the 25mg pills.

The first week, using 20mg a day, I had no headaches whatsoever.

When switching to 25mg per day, I started with the same headaches I had on 10mg per day. After a week of that I went back to 20mg per day, but no change, still had the same headaches, and then after a couple of weeks went back to the prescribed 25mg per day.

Overall I'm still getting headaches a couple of times most weeks. Usually they're not as severe as they were before the month-long one that prompted us to go to you, and the Suminat 50 almost always halts them.

With the increase of Amitone from 10mg to 25mg, the unpleasant side effects are also noticeably worse:

• The confusion and disorientation when waking up after dawn in the mornings is much worse than when taking 10mg, and that was much worse than not taking anything. If I happen to see myself in a mirror at those times, I don't recognize myself and think there's a stranger in the room.
• The ringing sound in my ears is louder and more persistent. My ears were ringing pretty steadily for some months before we visited you the first time, but as the dosage has increased, so is the ringing.
• I've gotten very fat… Despite actually cutting down my meal portions and eating a lot less junk food (e.g. potato chips, Kur Kure, etc.) I'm gaining weight and getting fatter and fatter.
• When I'm tired and the lights are dim I'm getting more and more hallucinations. These include seeing insects and spiders crawling all over the bed and my arms, though I know they're not real so I don't panic, or seeing things, birds, bats, butterflies, some look real, some look like glass, floating up and into the ceiling.
• When I look at many things that are brightly colored, they sparkle at those times, too, shimmering like they were covered in glitter, looking a bit like this photo:

At first he started answering me about the hallucinations, that they were absolutely normal and everyone experiences them, and write the medical term on the sheet, something including the root "som" which I know has to do with sleep.

But then he said "this is really well written" and handed it to an assistant (or intern or whatever) and said "insert this into his file, I'd like to keep it on record".

After discussing with him I asked if we could work on eliminating the medications altogether and he put together a plan, one week on 20mg a day of Amitone, then down to 10mg a day for a month and then stop it. He recommended keeping on with the Betacap, which he'd actually forgotten he prescribed until we asked about it, as well as recommending I keep using the Suminat when I get a migraine.

He wrote down what he thought were some of the brand names for the same drugs in the U.S. but didn't know which were prescription-only and which might be over-the-counter. He also gave me an address to email him if I need any advice while I'm in the U.S.

The Job Choice

At the beginning of the past week I had two job offers in hand from New York and I had to pick one. The two were:

1. A mortgage lender in Long Island, Reliance First Capital.

2. Kashrus, a Brooklyn company providing software to help kosher food manufacturers

I was really interested in the Brooklyn one, Kashrus, for a few reasons:

1. Kashrus is a small company, and after some thought I've realized I like the working environment of a small company more than a big company.
2. It's in New York City.
   • Most of my career I've worked in the suburbs or the edges of cities, while wishing I was in the city proper. The mortgage lender is in Melville, NY, outside of New York City, while the kosher food company is in Brooklyn. It's not Manhattan, with its skyscrapers, but it's still within the city.
   • That reminds me of when I worked at Maynard Rigby, which was in Portland rather than Hillsboro or Beaverton and I liked the location better.
   • And in comparison with my business trips to the U.K. where the office and places I stayed were in Dunstable, which was just too inconvenient to ever go into London on the workdays due to the distance and expense of train tickets.
   • So, being in New York City itself will make it easier to get around, for instance if the Brain Surgeons have a show on a worknight, I could go.
3. Reliance has some of the team scattered around the world. And while that doesn't mean they're bad developers, but I've spent the last ten years doing distributed work, from the remote sites, and I think having the whole team in one place will be a pleasant change for me again, eliminating that particular challenge.
4. Reliance is doing the same thing I've been doing for the last three years, the exact same kind of software, mortgage origination. Kashrus is something completely new to me, and I found that appealing. Never before in my career have I had two jobs in the same business domain.
5. Doing a Google search for Reliance turned up mostly job ads, and about the only exceptions to that were blog and news articles about them being a "predatory lender" founded by some people who caused mortgage lending problems at their previous company, and I had to wonder how that would make me feel.
6. Last but definitely not least, the interviewers simply impressed me more. When it talked to a couple of guys at Reliance they asked me what things I worked with, what kind of software and what-not, but those interviews were easy to breeze through. When I interviewed with the Kashrus people they challenged me. I had to read online documentation while we shared my desktop in order to solve programming problems they gave me, live... By the end of the interview process I felt like I'd already put a lot of myself into this job application.

So, with all of those, I got the idea that on a day-to-day basis I'd be more satisfied working at Kashrus instead of Reliance.

The Kashrus offer came a little later and at first it was $15,000 less than Reliance's offer, and even including the $5,000 they'll pay towards insurance is still quite a lot lower. Money isn't my prime motivating factor, but that was just too large a difference, especially in New York City where things are really expensive and it might be a difference between living comfortably and struggling with monthly payments on things.

I wrote to the Kashrus fellow and told him that, and within about 20 minutes he came back with an offer that was $10,000 higher than the first one, so that was good and I wrote back to accept it.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

After all the work I put in to the recruitment stuff from Cyrus Innovation for a senior Java / Ruby developer job, I lost it.

A few weeks ago I had a really good interview with their technical recruiter, Glenn. Then he gave me a code test to do. He mentioned the Ruby one, but then corrected himself and gave me the URL to the Java one. Since I mentioned I like learning new things, I dug around and fiddled with the URL for the test to find the Ruby one and did both of them, with an email explaining it was my first ever Ruby code (it was). A while after sending them to him I got a response:

I just heard from our development team, and this is one of the best code tests we've seen at Cyrus! The Java submission was, by our standards, essentially perfect, and the Ruby test was also extremely strong.

So, it looked good. I spent some time on the weekend putting together the job application document, getting it printed and signed and scanned back in.

Then Glenn arranged for me to do a pair programming type session with Alfredo on Monday for a few hours. We used Skype and its desktop sharing and voice. It wouldn't let us do both desktop sharing and video, however. That session went okay, not fantastic, but not yet a disaster and afterwards Glenn gave me positive feedback.

For Tuesday night he arranged an even longer session for me with Matt there. I felt that went even better for the two of us. And Matt sounded really positive when we got off the Skype thing.

In both sessions we did some refactoring of the code I wrote for the initial Java test and added a little new functionality. I guess I should've guessed, since in neither session did we ever finish the functionality we were adding. A lot of discussion about how to do it and in both cases we began with test cases and some refactoring to move out what looked like would be good interfaces, but never quite completed.

It was fun both times working with Alfredo and Matt. We laughed, swapped some stories about coding and platforms and weird things in tools and all that. I described some of how my project structures things and what-not. Both guys were pretty cool to work with.

A little while later I got an email from Glenn:

I just had a chance to sit down with Matt and talk about the second pairing session. As I've heard from everyone thus far, it was a real pleasure working with you, and in terms of personality, everyone here agrees that you would be a great fit at Cyrus and would get along well with the team. Matt and Alf both spoke highly of your instinct toward agile practices, and your deep knowledge of design patterns.

There were a couple of points of concern that came up in both of the pairing sessions over the past two days. Matt mentioned today that parts of your code test seemed like they were packed a bit too tightly to pull things out easily - a fact that was made apparent when adding a new parser to the project, and that your approach to refactoring the code could have been better. Alf noted yesterday that the flow between testing first, coding, and then following up with additional tests was not as smooth as it could have been. Because we'd be bringing you in at a senior level here at Cyrus, these became points of concern for the development team, and unfortunately we have decided that because of this, we have to pass at this time.

I think remote pairing is certainly a challenging prospect, and as discussed, it is largely uncharted territory for Cyrus. To that end, in the event that you relocate or travel to the NY area, I would love for you to come in and pick up the recruiting process again. We would could conduct a pairing session in person to ensure that any potential issues related to the remote connection are not to blame for the team's assessment.

It has been a real pleasure speaking with you, and the team wants to thank you for taking the time to go through our recruiting process. I wish you all the best, and please keep in touch.

So that's sort of that... I feel like I put in an awful lot of effort on this one.

I suppose part of the problem was me. When it comes to the job hunt, I do manage to mess things up that would normally be easy. If one of my teammates asked me to do the same things with the code that Alfredo and Matt did, I'd probably jump up to the board, or a notebook and start scribbling just what to do and get it done quickly. But when I'm being tested for a job interview I'm nervous and I screw up easy things. I don't handle that context very well.

Another problem is I'm sure I wasn't at my best in the evenings after full work days. Caffeine probably wasn't a good substitute for being well rested and fresh.

Maybe I also let the friendly chit-chat get away from us. Not that we shouldn't have been friendly, but discipline... Maybe I should've tried to focus a little more on the tasks at hand and solving the problems put to me. Then again, that gets harder to do after a full work day as well.

The remote stuff added to the difficulty. It's not trivially easy to pair that way even with teammates I've known for a few years and worked in-person with, so with someone I don't know, I think communication that way was a little tougher and maybe we didn't pass information back and forth very well. Without video we couldn't even use our hands for body language while talking.

So, at this point, now that I have a better idea of where they're going with the code, and given how much time and effort I've put in already, it's probably worth it to spend a few hours this weekend updating the test code I sent them and just emailing it to Glenn with "here, I've done some of what Alfredo and Matt had me doing..." and see.

Not much to lose, and lots to gain if I'm successful.

Job Hunt and a Coding Test in Java and Ruby

Thursday evening last week I had a Skype interview with the technical recruiter from a small New York City company, Cyrus Innovation.

One of the things we talked about was if I was interested in sticking with Java or if I'd be flexible about other technology, Ruby, in particular. I said I was open to other technology, but mainly focusing on Java because as it's what I'm doing day-to-day, it's what I'm most comfortable interviewing about.

At the end he said he would send me the Ruby coding test. I said something like "sure, I'll try that. Doing it in Ruby should give me a push to learn a little more Ruby". Then he apologized and said it was a slip of the tongue and he would send me the Java test.

Shortly after that I got an email from him with a link to their Java based coding test on their website. I read through it, and since he'd mentioned a Ruby test, thought I'd just tack on "_ruby" to the URL. That worked and I got a Ruby version...

So, Friday night I began work on the Java one, wrapped it up on Saturday evening and then decided to try it out in Ruby. It was essentially the same test, although the text on the website was formatted a little different and it gave the individual input files and output files instead of a zip containing them all, but really, the same test.

I worked from late Saturday night till nearly dawn on Sunday, searching Google for some Ruby help and digging in the index of The Ruby Programming Language by Flanagan & Matsumoto to find answers to my questions about getting it done in Ruby. I actually had a lot of fun doing that. With a dearth of ideas for what to program, rather than a lack of interest in learning, this gave me a specific project to do.

I continued it later Sunday morning and by early evening had the same output from the Ruby code as I did the Java code, and the same unit tests. I didn't copy and translate the code directly, I tried to use Ruby idioms where I understood them, but since it was my first real Ruby code, I doubt it's top quality.

I emailed both zip files to Cyrus Innovation with the explanation that he gave me the Java test and mentioned the Ruby one, so after finding I did it just so I could learn a little more Ruby. Hopefully that'll make some kind of good impression and back up what I said about being interested in learning (which is certainly true!).

So that's step 2 of 4 from their recruitment process done. Everything he told me about the company made it sound like a place I'd enjoy working. At this point I really want to get through the next steps and I hope they hire me, it sounds fantastic.

The only problem is step 4 of the process... I can't easily fly there to spend a day in their office and fly back. He said he'd talk to some people there about what might be done via the internet for that.

The Job Hunt Begins

So, on the weekend I was looking at Craigslist for software jobs in the New York City area and found an interesting looking one for Ruby on Rails developers. I've tinkered with Ruby on Rails, but am nowhere close to an expert (especially as the Head First Ruby on Rails book had so many blank pages, thanks to cheap Indian editions...).

But I figured I have enough experience with enough different technologies that it's no problem, if I can convince an interviewer that I can learn, I really can. It worked at Tieto... I hadn't done Java before I went for the interview, so I studied up for a week in advance. Then when I met with Jit and Binny, they wanted experience with JUnit and unit testing. I told them I hadn't used it before and asked for a week to learn before doing the 3-hour pair programming exercise with Jit, then went home and spent the week waking up early to write unit tests...

So, Sunday evening, and Monday I rushed to finally prepare my resume so I could send it before I was too late. I'm not entirely happy with all parts of it yet, but it was better than it was.

Tuesday evening I got an email from the job recruiter saying he was interested, but had to work out with his team how to do an interview, since he has to interview everyone first, which I certainly understand. He suggested Skype.

So, I signed up for a Skype account, as I've never used it before. I tested it out on my Mac and it worked. I called the test line, recorded a message and when Skype played it back I sounded like me. Unfortunately, some asshole already took the account kevinrubin so I had to settle for one with my middle initial kevinhrubin. I'll probably forget it and keep trying to log in as my usual account name.

Wednesday evening I got an email from the recruiter that the job was already filled, but he'd keep my resume on file.

So, my new job search is off to a start. This evening I was browsing around LinkedIn to see what sort of job search facilities it has. Looks like some possible ways. A cousin, Nitu, suggested Monster, but just going to their page is a bit overwhelming, and it knows I'm in India so all the searches I tried so far return Indian results, even if I specify New York, then it gives things like New York Met Life, but still jobs located in India.

Anyway, here's a draft of my resume... I'm, of course, still working on it and only recently realised I should work in something about continuous integration...

And it also dawned on me that the two other developers at my first job mentioned, way back then, that they went to high school with one of my readers now, as they knew of the OIT connection at the time...

Kevin H. Rubin

Telephone: +91 98903-66613

Email: kevinrubin@gmail.com

Skype: kevinhrubin

Areas of Accomplishment:

Design	Excellent knowledge of computers with a “big-picture” focus. Can successfully analyze a project and deduce necessary steps for project completion.
Adaptation	Readily able to learn new material and troubleshoot problems. Quickly absorb new programming topics and easily achieve senior-level ability with some documentation and a few examples.
Software Development	Expertise in Java, C/C++, SQL, Adobe Flex, C#, Visual Basic.NET and Assembly Language. Developed web applications using Java Servlets, JSP, ASP, Spring and Hibernate. Experienced at domain modeling, easily able to structure data to match “real world” needs and queries within a program. Exposure to Ruby, Python, Groovy, Perl, Objective-C and other languages.
Team Building	Skilled at working with groups, formalizing design problems and understanding parts to complete the whole. Great communication skills with co-workers, supervisors and customers.
Systems	Many years of experience managing and developing software on computers and networks using Windows XP, 2000, NT and 98, Linux, Mac OS X, MS-DOS, OS/2 and Novell Netware.

Work History:

TietoEnator Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Pune, India June 2007 - Present	Software Development – Working on an Agile / Extreme Programming team developing an SOA Java Mortgage Origination System for U.K. lenders using Java with Spring and Hibernate, built using Maven and Ant. Integrated with IBM ILOG JRules, Oracle AquaLogic BPM, Windward AutoTag document production, Atlassian Crowd. Front-ends developed with Adobe Flex and Tieto's proprietary MCP platform. All development is done with pair programming and test driven design using TestNG. As the most senior developer on the team in India, I develop code as well as guide the younger developers and troubleshoot any issues with the development environment.
First Insight Pune, India Beaverton, Oregon September 1997-May 2007	Software Development – Worked on nearly all of First Insight’s products on a variety of platforms: Java, Java Servlets, JSPs, ASP, C, Visual Basic.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and FileMaker Pro. Developed software for medical billing, accounting, financial reporting, electronic medical records, and patient scheduling as well as system tools to allow other programs access to that data. Software Testing –Involved with testing nearly all of First Insight’s products, including modules I’ve written as well as those developed by others. Technical Support – Provided technical phone support for the maximEyes product for hundreds of customers. Performed troubleshooting, training and custom programming directly on customers’ systems. Network Administration – Administered First Insight’s Windows NT network. Assist other network administrators as needed, especially in developing UNIX shell scripts to perform specific tasks for our few UNIX servers.
PC-Kwik Beaverton, Oregon September 1993-January 1997	Technical Support – Supported a wide range of performance enhancement utilities under DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Worked closely with customers and coworkers of all skill and experience levels, from complete beginners to advanced system designers, by phone, fax and email. Software Testing – Worked with engineers, marketers and customers to test PC-Kwik’s utility and development tools in four categories: bugs, compatibility, usability and performance. Coordinated external beta testing for the CD-ROM Express product. Software Development – Wrote and maintained PC-Kwik’s 16-bit DOS and Windows Installation, Setup, Uninstall and Configuration software in a combination of C and Assembly Language. Network Administration – Kept a small Novell Netware LAN running reliably. Technical Documentation – Edited and wrote parts of PC-Kwik’s user manuals. Sales and Marketing – Talked to potential customers who had technical questions about PC-Kwik software and helped the Marketing department sell the software. Maintained the PC-Kwik Web page.
Maynard Rigby and Associates Portland, Oregon June 1992-March 1993	Developed, maintained and supported custom C and BASIC applications to expand and enhance Platinum and Macola accounting software, using Btrieve Record Manager on DOS/Novell networks.
Linn-Benton Community College Waldport, Oregon 1984-1987	Classroom assistant for Linn-Benton Community College adult education courses. Assisted beginning BASIC programming students with computers.
Waldport, Oregon Area 1983-1987	Helped local residents, schools and small businesses assemble and install personal computer systems, developed small custom applications and tutored users on software use.

Education:

Oregon Institute of Technology 1987-1992	Coursework in software engineering.
Waldport High School 1982-1987 Other	US Citizen

Wait! Hold The Door!

One of the things at the office here in India that's been really bugging me for a while now is how people don't hold the doors for others outside their own small group.

In many situations where I'd expect an American to hold the door it just doesn't happen in India, and in many cases when I hold the door, I don't get a nod or quick smile as I'd expect in an American.

Even if I'm right behind someone going out the office door, if I'm not part of their group they just let the door fly shut behind them, making me try to catch it.  I know sometimes they see me, they look right behind, and I'm not wearing good "office camouflage" to make it hard to see me, but then they just let go of the door anyway, whether I'm right behind them or even just a little distance away.

And once in the hallways people in India don't have the same manners I'm used to when sharing the space.  What I miss from the U.S. is people yielding and moving aside to let others pass, while usually nodding or smiling or saying "excuse me" to acknowledge the others.  Mostly in the Indian office it doesn't happen so much, groups of people going the opposite direction are less likely to group closer to make a little room for a single person, and if they're people I don't know, far, far less likely to give any indication they saw me.

Somewhat related is here in the office so many people just walk up and down the hallway talking on their cell phones.  Usually when they're on their phones they don't seem to pay any attention to others in the hall, don't move if they're blocking doors and slowly walk in a direction they're not even looking.  Once in a while I say "excuse me" and if I get any response it's "I'm on my mobile".  Which, yes, I can see, but to me that's not a good excuse for not paying attention in a public location.

I also realized why it's only recently started bothering me. At my last company, First Insight, here in India, in our first office we only had two rooms with doors, and only six people in a room, so it was rare that people were coming and going, unless the whole group was going off for a break. Then when we moved to our second office, it was one huge room, except for the conference rooms and washrooms, and for most of the time I worked there the front door was open with the watchmen facing it.

It was when I first began at Tieto, that I started noticing, and being annoyed with people simply not holding the door open for people not far behind or people coming.

Oh well, it's not nearly as intense as when I tried to buy some malai barfi last year at the sweet shop in Kalyani Nagar...  There I completely failed to return to the car with the sweets altogether...  Instead of the American way of standing in an orderly queue, or taking a number and waiting your turn, it was a total scrum up at the counter.  I had the name of what I was supposed to get written on a slip of paper and kept flashing it or saying whenever one of the people behind the counter made even a little eye contact.  But other guys just kept jostling and forcing their way to the front and yelling their order, over and over at the tops of their lungs and the clerks just kept serving them, while I kept waiting to make eye contact and say my order...  I gave up after about ten minutes of watching other people get their orders even if they showed up after me.  I couldn't make myself yell.

On the other hand, some years ago in Florida I ran into that sort of thing.  It was my cousin, Elise's Bat Mitzvah, and after the ceremony, dressed in a suit and tie, clean shaven and looking oddly respectable (as that was back in my scruffier days), my mother sent me to the grocery store's bakery counter to pick up the cake.  Despite having taken a number, a couple of older, retired people (southern Florida being full of elderly, retired New Yorkers and New Jersyites, possibly the rudest people in America) tried to get their orders first.  One woman, an old lady in her 80's or 90's, wouldn't stand for it, she yelled "fuck you!  I'm old and fuck you if I'm going to wait in line behind a young man!"  Fortunately the bakery clerk wasn't having any of that and told her to wait her turn while she was getting my cake...  Ah well, that's Florida grocery stores for you...

Foods I Miss from America

I recently offered some American candies, Good & Plenty, (sent by a close buddy who's now in Chicago but remembered they're one of my favorite candies) to a friend at work who asked what food I miss the most from the U.S. Well, there's quite a lot, and "the most" can depend on my mood...

A list like this will probably barely scratch the surface, since it's hard to just sit down and think of everything... But I'm imagining all the great things I've eaten at various times...

• Cereals - There are a few cereals here in India (although certainly not the mile long aisles of them like in American grocery stores!), but they're not the same, they're harder, more abrasive and hurt the inside of my mouth when I eat them.
• Cheerios - Cheerios rank up there pretty high, actually. One of my favorite breakfast and snack foods. I just love shoveling it in my mouth when I'm reading or watching movies or any time. Sure, I had Cheerios in the U.K. on my trips, but they're highly sweetened and not as soft and light as plain American Cheerios. I might have to eat four bowls of Cheerios to equal the nutrition in one bowl of Total, but you know what, I can eat four bowls with breakfast without a problem, except maybe stopping at four...
• Lucky Charms - Sometimes I just get the urge for some kind of cereal with those marshmallows and this ranks up there pretty high. I don't mind the generic ones...
• Bagels - Bagels, bagels, bagels.... India seems to be a bagel-free country.
• Beef - It's not that there isn't beef in India, but I've been told over and over again not to buy any to cook at home, only trust the quality from a few select restaurants, mostly Parsi or Muslim owned, that are tied in with a farm. Any retail beef is supposedly not necessarily fresh and not good quality.
• Roast Beef - I just love roasting a nice chunk of beef. I'm not adventurous in trying it different ways, I just like to rub some butter on it, toss it in the oven for a couple of hours, take it out and eat slices while it's still hot and steaming...
• Hamburgers - I don't even need the buns (which are available in India!) since usually I only use that as a handle to hold the meat when I'm in public. Sometimes I eat some of it, sometimes not, rarely all of the bun...
• Steak
• Fresh salad - While lots of vegetables are available here in India, generally in the market place they're a lot less consistently fresh and good than in the U.S. The variance is probably because vegetables are rarely eaten raw in India, the way they are in the U.S., they're almost always cooked with a lot of spices that really cover up the flavor, so bad ones are less noticeable.
• Spinach - It's very, very rare that the spinach I've eaten in India has tasted good raw. In the U.S. I just like to take fresh spinach out of the fridge, run them under warm water in the sink to clean them and shove them in my mouth.
• Chocolate Silk soy milk - Actually we get single serving cartons here in India, but I miss half gallon jugs that I can just pour glass after glass without worrying about "oops, only one left". And the single serving ones just don't seem right for adding in a ground up Oreo cookie...
• Chips - While there's no doubt the fresh Budhani potato chips here in Pune are absolutely fantastic, and Kur-Kure is delicious, there's ones I miss a lot from the U.S. that I'd like to eat:
• Doritos - Yeah, we can get small packs of imported ones, but the prices are so high Leena refuses to entertain my requests for them.
• Fritos
• Funyuns
• Diane's Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chips - Let's face it, they're the official chip of the Waldport High School Games Club!
• Cheetos - I like the puffed ones, not the crispy ones.
• Oat bread - Being allergic to whole wheat, oat bread is my favorite kind of packaged bread, much better than white bread. But here in India I've only seen white and whole wheat.
• Pretzels - Only once did I find a bag of pretzels here in India, and after eating a few they turned out to be terrible, and whole wheat. Pretzel rods, pretzel sticks, soft, hot pretzels, those pretzel rolls with peanut butter... Mmm.....
• Pepperoni Pizza - Yeah, I know it's on the menus of several restaurants, Smokin' Joe's and Pizza Hut, for instance, but often they don't actually have it. But the Smokin' Joe's menu says flat out that it's pork and not fresh, and the few times we've ordered it at their restaurants the waiters have tried to dissuade us from getting it.
• Persimmons - Not a common fruit, but I like 'em when they're good and ripe, super sweet!
• Soda Pops
• Dr. Pepper - My favorite of the big sodas.
• Root Beer
• Ginger Ale
• Cream Soda
• Lactose intolerant milk - Since I have a lactose intolerance problem, but I like chocolate milk, I miss being able to buy milk that won't cause such a problem...
• Twinkies - Okay, these may not be good foods, and I didn't eat them often in America, but now that I can't get one, I sure miss them. Even more when I read or see something about deep fried Twinkies, which I'd like to try.
• Ice Cream Sandwiches - Good quality? Bad quality? I really like all kinds of ice cream sandwiches, from the cheap grocery store branded ones with plain vanilla ice cream between the cookie pieces to fancy Dove ones and all the ones in between...
• Pocky - Mmm.... Pocky!
• Flavored Oatmeals - I like all those various flavored oatmeals that just need hot water added. I've tried with plain, unflavored oatmeal but I have no idea how to add flavors so it doesn't just taste like boring, sticky oatmeal, and most of my attempts to make it end up inedible.
• Smoked salmon - Ah, I really miss those plastic packages of smoked salmon from the grocery store. They go with spinach as a great breakfast, just open the package and rip chunks off to eat...
• Fake Crab - Yeah, I know it's cheap, garbage fish with some added flavor, not real crab, but I like it anyway, especially the flakes, more than the sticks...
• Yogurt - I don't like plain yogurt, I only like fruity flavored, sweetened yogurts. They're starting to turn up in India now, but the variety and quality aren't up there with the U.S. yet, and about 25% of the packages are definitely sour, with the package puffed almost to the bursting point, before the expiration date...
• Tea - As funny as it sounds, living in the world's largest tea producing country, but American grocery stores simply have a wider variety of teas available to consumers, and a wider variety of qualities of black tea and a wider variety of flavored teas.
• Beer - I'm not much of a beer drinker (in fact, I had more fun brewing my own than drinking it...), but I like a half-pint glass of a nice, rich stout, porter or a fruity ale every now and then. Unfortunately, the beer in India is all pretty lousy lagers.

Undoubtedly I'm missing something from my mental trip down the grocery store aisles...

While a few other long-term expatriates I've known all say when they return to America McDonald's is the first place they go for a "taste of home" I don't see myself doing that. I'd rather start with something good rather than fast food. Admittedly, on my last vacation back I did hit A & W in the terminal at Newark Airport during my layover, and I was extremely disappointed with the burger and fries, but the root beer was heavenly after a few years without...

Plus shopping for groceries in the U.S. is just a lot easier. There's always more variety in one place, better inventory control so what you want is more likely to be there, and far, far more helpful staff at the grocery stores. Here in India any question like "do you have X?" almost always results in a negative answer, even the worker is standing in front of a shelf with several feet of the item, compared with an American grocer who will usually do what they can to help find things in the store.

In an American grocery store if I need help picking a ripe cantaloup, I can almost always count on the produce person to help make a good choice, but my experiences in India buying fruits the seller usually seems to try to offload the worst on me and quote a higher price, or I'm just not argumentative enough to bargain for both quality and price or something... Buying fruits has generally not been a pleasant experience for me in India, though fortunately Leena's the one who's been doing it for the last few years.

And I'm more accustomed to the behavior of other customers in American grocery stores, the neat, orderly queues where most people wait patiently for their turn, or impatiently, but still wait, and give some breathing room. Compared with Indian grocery stores where the checkers are usually incompetent and going slow, many more items ring up at wrong prices (and unlike American stores, the Indian ones don't let you get away with a lower price when it's their own mistake, so you have to wait while they fix it) and lots of people try to jump ahead in line. I have to be defensive, stand closer to the person in front of me than I'm comfortable and try to maintain my place or if I leave enough space for someone to fit in front of me, someone will try it. It's worst when people send their servants to pick something up, they have the least respect for the line.

Related to food, I miss baking tremendously (I'm not much of a cook, just a baker). In India, before getting married I had an oven, a cheap German one that scared the hell out of me whenever I had to turn on the gas and then lean deep inside it to light it with a match to the hole near the back of it...

But after we moved into our own apartment, there's no space in the kitchen for it. We've been on the waiting list for a second gas cylinder for a few years, but the gas company never has spares to give us a second one. If we do get one, maybe I can set the oven up in the servant's bathroom (since we have no servants). Then I can try baking bagels or pretzels.

On the other hand, with any luck we'll be moving to America faster than the gas company...

Coincidence?

Last night, after I went to bed I was woken up around 11:30pm by Leena yelling...  I opened my eyes and saw she had the front door open and was yelling out into the stairwell at someone.  After she closed the door I groaned "HUH?" and she told me Mrs. R's servants were out there drilling and hammering something, so she yelled at them to not make noise like that so late at night when people are trying to sleep.

Then this morning when she went to go out running errands, one of her car tyres was completely flat.  One that was completely full yesterday evening when she and the watchman cleaned the car, after which the car didn't move an inch.

She got the car to her family's house, after lots and lots of people stopped her on the road to tell her not to drive it that way, and had one of her family's servants take the tyre to be repaired.  He came back with it fixed and a broken key that had been stuck into the tyre to its full length!

And this isn't the first such coincidence.  Most of the times if Leena asks any of the neighors' servants and workers to make less noise, at hours reasonable enough to ask them to make less noise, usually late at night or very early in the mornings, then there's usually new scratches on the car.

It's just one more reason I want to get away from here, someplace where this sort of thing doesn't happen, where neighbors, even if they don't like each other, at least have a bit more respect for one another.  And there aren't a bunch of uncouth assholes who take petty revenge against reasonable requests.

The Maharashtra State Electric Board Sucks

That's another thing that's been increasingly frustrating, all the power failures here. The first year or so I thought it was kind of neat, a reminder I was living somewhere exotic and tropical, but over the last few years it's just gotten annoying. Maybe that's because the adventure has worn off, and maybe because I have Leena's frustration added to mine with it. It's worse for her because she really likes to watch TV and mostly likes food heated in the microwave.

And side effects of all the power failures fall on her... The MSEB is simply bloody incompetent. Last year was really bad, with the power out for seven scheduled hours a day for a good bit of the year, and this year was okay till a couple of months ago when the summer just wore on and on, when it's gotten unreliable with a lot of random outages.

I got upset when I found out that a portion of the power bill is fixed, so they continue to charge us that even when they don't provide service.

And we have other problems, unrelated to the power failures they rarely ever deliver a bill to us, the courier usually returns them because they can't find our address. Leena goes to the MSEB office almost monthly to get them to print a bill, but when the power's out they can't use their own branch office computers to look up our bill or print one.

But don't worry, their system that calculates late fees and interest has full UPS or generator backup!

Even if we get a bill one way or another, it's usually wrong. It turns out that if the power is out when the meter reader comes by to read the meter, then they give us an estimated bill, because they supplied us with a new, modern, fancy LCD digital meter, that doesn't display anything when the power's out...

And frequently the bill is wrong because somehow we keep shifting between residential and commercial status, which costs a lot more and a few times a year Leena has to make a few trips to their office (even more if the power's out) in order to get them to rectify that and recalculate it at residential rates.

Two years ago we got a gigantic bill, way out of proportion for the power we were using, like 30 times the normal bill. When Leena went to their office to inquire about it they said it was all late fees and interest because we hadn't been paying the full bills every month for several years, which of course surprised us mightily as we always paid the amount they billed us... With several trips there and hours and hours waiting, they figured out that the problem wasn't that we paid less than the bill, but that they were billing us less than they should've, but at least one computer was keeping track of the full amount the whole time. At first they told us we'd just have to pay it because we were late but Leena managed to fight it out with the managers and supervisors and point out that it was their fault we didn't get correct bills, we paid the amount they charged us in good faith.

And this is the power company supplying power to a major high-tech city in India?

And I come from a place where electricity has been more reliable than this for, oh, not long, maybe just a century. I miss the reliability, and the assumption that a bill is probably right, instead of probably wrong.

A lot the people at work have loud phone calls and then miss days or half days for similar work, with the MSEB, BSNL or their banks, all of which give them incorrect bills or statements, almost always to the institution's advantage. I guess part of what I'm tired of is that here in India, problems and failures like that are the norm, rather than the exception. And I miss a life where most things go smooth with only the occasional screw-up, and bills are probably right, instead of probably wrong.

Quality of Life

The other day a coworker sent me an article about lots of educated Indian and Chinese workers leaving the U.S. to return to India and China. In it they gave reasons like earning more money at home and a better quality of life in India and China.

That got me thinking, how does one define quality of life?

Certainly I feel my quality of life in India is far, far lower than in America. But maybe I just miss America, where I grew up.

Comparing cultures, Indians are raised to take care of their parents when they get older, and the article mentioned some of the Indians interviewed considered that a major factor to return to India, because their parents needed them. Along with raising their kids to be Indian, instead of American.

Of course, as an American, I can't really imagine that. My parents are far better off than I am, and probably more capable of taking care of themselves than I am. If they relied on me for care, it'd be a disaster because I don't have the faintest clue how to handle anything like that (unless it involves reading on the couch all day...).

And there must be some differences in values. The returning Indians may feel quality of life involves having household servants to cook, clean and run errands, which to me, having observed my wife and mother-in-law at this for some years, seems a lot more stressful than simply doing it myself.

But to me, quality of life involves things like reliable running water, reliable electricity, not walking on a street covered with cow shit just to get to work.

Kalyani Nagar Sucks

I've come to the conclusion that the neighborhood where I live, Kalyani Nagar, is the worst place, the noisiest, the dirtiest and the place where the neighbors have the utter most disregard for each other than any other place I'e ever lived.

The noise is virtually nonstop... Ever since we moved here, into our own flat, in 2004, there's been virtually nonstop construction of nearby buildings, and nonstop renovation of flats near ours. There's been a few days, very few, when there isn't the sound of jackhammers, diggers, grinders, saws, drills, hammers and workers yelling.

And vehicles, vehicles, vehicles... So much noise, all the time, any time, day and night... Almost every individual vehicle here makes more noise than a freeway full of them in the U.S. and on our narrow, little street they just go up and down. Just describing the vehicular noise is plenty for another post...

And workers yelling up and down the street to each other, the watchmen yelling across the street to each other instead of just meeting up somewhere and having a normal conversation. The loudest of the door-to-door vendors are the broom salesman and the knife sharpener, just yelling, yelling, yelling as they go up and down.

This street is filthy... Litter everywhere. The worst is probably the yard with the swimming pool, directly across the street from us. It's a small pool and pool house, using less than half the yard. Before it fell into disuse all the construction workers nearby tossed their debris, concrete chunks, bricks, etc. into the yard, so it looks like a quarry or something. But since they stopped cleaning and filling the pool, maids from nearby apartment have been throwing bags of household garbage over the wall into the yard, the workers from the nearby auto garage have been throwing their garbage, used tired, old parts, food wrappers, etc. into the yard by the entrance.

And to top it all off, if it wasn't ugly enough, the workers from new construction on the street have been using the yard as their toilet. I'm sure it's not their fault their employer doesn't give them proper facilities to use, but still, it's what we see all day when we look out from our balcony, people using the yard for a toilet. When I walk to the rickshaws in the mornings, I have to hold my breath from when I get near our apartment building's gate till I get past that yard on my way down the street. It stinks of sewage, it's sickening.

And, to add to it, between the feral dogs and the few herders who bring their cattle, goats and sheep up and down the street to graze wherever there's grass, the street is often covered in animal waste. Ick!

I often see elegant ladies walking on the street with dainty sandals and wonder how they can do that? Aren't they disgusted?

Never have I lived in a place where the neighbors were so inconsiderate of each other. Not just the lack of thinking about things, like honking the horn to wake the watchmen at 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am or whenever. But more willful inconsideration...

We live on the 1st floor, right above the parking, and regularly our 4th floor neighbors come down to their vehicles but forget the key and yell up to whoever's in their apartment to bring the key down. We asked them if they could avoid doing that, especially in the middle of the night, but they said they can't stop, they must do that. We asked, them, too, if they could possibly not honk their horn in the middle of the night when coming or going but they simply said "that's the only way we can wake the watchman".

Of course, those are some of the nicer of the bad neighbors... And more is another story for another rant...

Early Preparations for U.S. Move - Taxes

Ok, so now that I'm serious about leaving India sometime next year, it's time to begin preparing how to get out of here...

1. Job search. I need to find a job in the U.S. of course. Easiest would be if Tieto US was hiring in Seattle, but at the moment they're not.

2. Green card application for Leena...

That's the tough one.

Some parts I've made tougher on myself through my own irresponsibility. Since First Insight made me an employee here in India late in 2005, I haven't really filed any taxes with the IRS because it looks hard. To do that I have to report to the IRS how much I earned in rupees, converted to dollars, how much tax I've paid in rupees, converted to dollars and figure out if I still owe the IRS any above and beyond what I paid in India. The paperwork looks very confusing so I've sort of, well, not done it.

But according to the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai, one of the common mistakes made when applying for a green card for an immediate relative (e.g. a spouse) is:

ALL I-864 AND I-864A forms MUST include the income tax returns (form 1040 and W-2) from the last three years along with an employment verification letter for each person sponsoring the applicant. The petitioner and/or any financial co-sponsor may also wish to submit recent pay slips and a bank statement

So, I know I can do the 1040 forms from here in India if I just study up on the IRS's documentation and send it in. Maybe I'll have to pay late fees or interest, too, I don't know.

But the W-2 forms, that's an interesting thing, since I haven't worked for an American company for a while... At least I have bank statements, but they'd probably look pretty boring, just the two annual gift deposits from my mother (birthday and Chanukah) and some withdrawals for online shopping (Amazon, Victoria's Secret, etc.).

There's more than that, I have to prove a domicile and they say:

If you are not currently living in the United States, you must show that your trip abroad is temporary and that you have maintained ties to the United States. You can show this by providing proof of your voting record in the United States, proof of payment of State and Federal taxes in the United States, proof of property ownership in the United States, proof of current bank or investment accounts in the United States., or evidence of a permanent mailing address in the United States.

But my trip has been over eight years now, which might not exactly be temporary and I don't own any property in the U.S. I have voted, but isn't that anonymous, how would I give them my voting record (at least, in this previous election I voted for the winner, so maybe the gov't would be more friendly that way...)

Anyway, I think the tax thing should come first.

But maybe I'll read the Iron Maiden article on Wikipedia, then I can start. Not that I'm procrastinating or anything, it's really a great article, yeah, that's it...