My Christmas Dinner

I will keep this short and sweet...
25th December 2005. My first traditional Christmas dinner...

Nazarena Washburn had invited us (my PM and myself) to her house for dinner. She came to pick us up at abt 2 in the afternoon.. It was a long ride to her house.. Her house was beautiful. Awesome.. It was somewhat like my dream house.. The house was on a hill.. Very few houses around her's.. The house was huge... It had a nice cute pool outside.. They had setup a nice table next to the pool.. with comfortable chairs around it..

The view from her house was breathtaking.. Once we settled in her place, we went down with her to pluck oranges and tangerines from her orchard... She had a nice small orchad of oranges... nice bright orange trees...

Once back, her mom had prepared nice Indian pakodas for us.. It was good.. Her mom is actually a muslim having her roots in Kashmir. However, she was brought up in Guyana.. Naz was born and brought up in England... Naz's father was a Hindu... Then Naz married an American and settled in the US..

Then we had a nice dinner with drinks.. Dinner had the traditional turkey, meat, salads, puddings, mashed potatoes.. etc..etc...

Next, we had a round of poker.. America's favorite card game... We are now experts in the game.. and ready to explore Las Vegas.. :-))

Nothing more.. will write more later..

I Miss Home.

1. I miss my parents and sister. No matter how much I used to argue with them back home, I must admit I miss them now. I enjoyed the love-filled arguments we used to have almost every hour I was at home. I missed the way I used to shout and try to stay out of home many times. :-)
2. I miss my friends. I miss all the time we used to spend together. I miss the Bandra meet almost every Sunday. I miss getting back home late on Sundays from Bandra.
3. I miss my Dad shouting to wake me up every morning. I miss my sister getting up because of the loud shouts from Dad. I miss her hitting me to wake me up and then she going back to sleep again.
4. I miss my car. I miss riding my car on these beautiful roads. I miss using my car for every small odd job. Here, I got to walk to get to the supermarket. I hate this.
5. I miss the Indian gals. :-) There are many gals here, but none as good as what we have in India. Indian gals are the best.
6. I miss the long bus drive to office every morning. I miss pulling Pratichi's leg every morning in the bus wih Denzil. I know, even when I get back, I will have to pull her leg all alone. Denzil will not be there any more. Am very happy for Denzil. He's got his dream job, finally.
7. I miss my weekends back in India. I miss getting up late. I miss having breakfast at 11am on weekends. Here, I need to get up by 8:30am. The hotel stops serving breakfast at 9:30am even on weekends.
8. I miss Bollywood. I miss going out to movies with friends and family. I wanted to watch many movies back home. I wanted to watch "Home Delivery", "Ek Ajnabee", "Bluffmaster", "Kalyug", "Neal 'n' Nikki", and the list can go on and on... Dare any of you guys watch a movie without me. And if you already have, please don't tell me that it was a good movie.
9. I miss the great indian soaps. I used to crib a lot when my folks used to watch it all night without fail. But I guess I have got used to it. I miss Indian television. American Channels are not that interesting.
10. I miss cricket. I miss playing my favourite sport. I miss playing cricket almost every weekend morning.

I can surely write more. I will write more as and when I miss something.

My First Day @ HP

Am in office now. Today is my second day. I do not have much work to do. Think this is a good time to pen down a few lines about my first day in office at HP.

Monday, the 12th of December, was my first day at HP. My project manager, Marilyn Allison, picked me up from my hotel at 9. We drove to the HP campus. She showed me various stores and markets on the way that I could find useful. The drive was not long. It took us about 20 minutes to reach HP. She drove me around the HP campus which is quite huge.

Marilyn then had my access card done. (I don’t like the card. My photo has come out bad in it, as usual). She had some work to complete so we went up to her cubicle. What a place it was. A long area with plenty of huge cubicles in it. One could easily get lost. It whole place was decorated a bit for Christmas. There were blue colored balloons hanging from each cubicle making it all the more confusing to find your way. There was big flamingo hanging from the ceiling over Marilyn’s desk. The next time I want to look for Marilyn, I know what to look for. The flamingo is now the only way I can find my way to Marilyn’s desk.

While Marilyn was completing her work, Kimberly talked to me about the project. She gave me important links that could help me and yes, She gave me an egg-shaped chocolate with a little toy inside it. :-) Kimberly then took me around the entire floor.

It was lunch time at 11:30. Marilyn had planned to take me out for lunch. Tonya Stefan, Alecia Hunter, and Nazerena Washburn were to meet us at the restaurant. Marilyn said that they have decided to go out to their favorite restaurant for lunch. We drove up to the restaurant and guess what the restaurant was called – “Passage To India”. It was an Indian restaurant!! Marilyn told me that they really loved Indian food.

The 5 of us thoroughly enjoyed the nice Indian buffet. The food was wonderful. We had rice, dal makhani, nan, butter chicken, tandoori, gulab jamun and much more. It was hard to believe that we could get real good Indian food in the US. And even more to believe that the Americans love the Indian food.

After lunch, I accompanied Tonya to my cubicle. The cubicle is huge. I have a big cubicle just to myself. I have the toy from inside the egg-shaped chocolate (the one Kimberly gave me) to decorate my cubicle. I had no work yesterday. I was just reading through some material till about 4:30. Then I called the hotel and had a car to take me back home. It looks so good. You just need to come out of the building and a nice car awaits you to take you back home.

So that was my first day. I enjoyed it to the fullest. The best part was the Indian hotel and the Indian food. I loved it. :-) And not the mention the people here are great. :-)