Seattle & Microsoft

Recently Microsoft and I mutually chose each other for employment, I moved to Seattle area and joined them exactly a month ago. I must say it has been a very different experience as compared to my other first months at work.

Seattle first,  I am not really a "city-boy", I love the calm and peace of suburbs and beyond, however I am also married now, hence bowing to the demands of my other half my humble abode shall be situated in the city for at least the next one year. On the positive side Seattle is possibly the only city in United States where I can possibly think about affording a decent apartment in the vicinity of downtown. Seriously if you have spare money then invest it in Seattle real-estate, it seems to be under-valued for a major city. The city does still has that white-hippy vibe to it, and from first impressions I am liking it (except the rain of course). It does rain a lot, but it doesn't pour, it's just something a little more than drizzling so life doesn't stop or get affected much for that matter.

As an experiment we are also trying a life without cable TV, it seems a lot of people across this country have cut cable cords so I figured why not. To be honest, it's more about Comcast's pricing, customer "focus" etc. that made me decide that I don't want cable TV. So for now I am going to depend on Internet and Xbox for entertainment.

More to come on Life in Seattle in future...

Hyderabad and the Future

WAS STUCK IN DRAFTS, POSTED LATE

    I moved to Hyderabad in November 2012 and the last one year has been very close to being a simple and satisfactory phase of life. However as they say the calm is only a prelude to the brewing storm, Hyderabad has just been that kind of calm for me, for I am getting married in May. Beginning tomorrow I have exactly ten days left in Hyderabad.

    I don't mean to call marriage a storm in a negative sense (just in case my fiancee read this I need a strong defense :D ), but it is definitely a big step in life and there is no denying life is going to change in a lot of big ways. For starters in the last four years I had never needed to think of monetary debts in any form, I had never needed to think twice about applying for a job opening in Antarctica and most importantly I had never needed to feel so loaded with responsibilities of the future. Soon though I will have to take into account another human being when thinking about any major life decision.

    In Hyderabad I am living at about 15 minutes (20 mins in traffic) driving distance from work, I was making good progress with my fitness, professional life was paying well monetarily and ambitions were becoming (albeit a little slowly) a reality. For those who have never seen Hyderabad, it's a slow city, people are (mostly) nice and is definitely not one of the expensive cities in India. It does get very hot from March to May but other than that for the remaining nine months it has very close to ideal weather. In last one year and four months I have come to realize for most part Hyderabad has all the benefits of a big Indian city and very few drawbacks. For instance Delhi is definitely livelier, I have friends and family in Delhi but the traffic, the pollution, the crime and the cost of living of the current Delhi does not make me want to go back to Delhi. I have come to realize I enjoyed my life in Hyderabad much more than my three years in Delhi for life is much more comfortable, calm and peaceful in Hyderabad.

Hitched !!

Apple

Lexus made this in 2003, well to be precise the company they hired to design the advertisement made it but nevertheless I am sure Lexus can claim the ownership of the slogan,

In 2010 Apple made this, or at least they will claim the ownership of the slogan because of the money they paid,

Anybody who knows even basic English will tell you that by far "changes" and "everything" are the two most important words in both those sentences. For my taste the similarities in those two slogans are way too striking specially for a company who is hell bent on using it's economic power to sue every form of major competition. They should probably first look into their own backyard before accusing everybody of stealing from them.