Having brought the story till the point where I just entered the room that I was going to stay in for those 4-5 months in Phoenix, now I tell you in short about the guys with whom I shared the room. Then I give you a brief account of my first day in office and how I perceived the standard of living of Americans and my fellow onsite Indians was. Then I describe some routine stuff which we used to do as part of living there which was different for me as compared to India. I conclude the post by telling you about the work environment and the people out there.
When I joined in that room (the number was 3107, if I remember), I was the 7th guy to live in a 2 BHK apartment. Legally, only 5 people are allowed in US in a 2 BHK, but we are Indians who love to adjust for each other’s comfort. Well, being the additional guy didn’t help as there used to be a morning queue for the 2 washrooms (it had shower too, so once a guy went in, it was booked for him only). I decided to get up earlier than most of the guys so that I could get some leisure time for all the necessary stuff to be done in the morning, he he he…
Out of the 7 people, 3 belonged to a project team that worked next to our team in the Mumbai office and were also our upstream, 2 belonged to another team that worked at the same unit in the Mumbai office and the remaining 2 guys were SK and me from the same team yet working on different projects. SK and I had a great friendship developing in these initial days. However, bonding with the other 3 or 4 people out of the remaining 5 was going to be tough, considering their attitude and how they looked towards me as the 7th guy who was a burden on their living.
I believe that circumstances in your life bring out the best in you, no wonder they say Life is the greatest teacher of all. I learned how to cook food there out of necessity so that I do not starve. Cooking gradually became a passion for me as I felt like an artist preparing a recipe on a canvas. I loved to chop those vegetables, onions, etc fine and dice them, slice them fine so that they cook well and retain their flavor. Occasionally, we also prepared non-veg food in addition of veg food, this was yummy because the chicken was already cut into pieces, cleaned and kept packed, so preparing it took less time than all the veggies cutting and the end product was lip smacking. There was a washing machine, semi-automatic with a separate dryer unit attached – so, after the clothes had been washed and rinsed, we had to remove them from that unit and put them into the dryer. There was an ironing board kept by these guys, so in the mornings before leaving for office, we used to quickly iron the shirt and trouser.
After having taken the bath, the day began with a morning cereal breakfast – there was this POST brand Honey Crunchy Oats based cereal which I used to dip in hot milk and have as my breakfast – it was quite filling to keep your stomach till lunch and had minimum calories. We used to pack up the last night’s remaining dinner for lunch to take into office in plastic containers so that we could proper food, thereby avoiding the cafeteria in the American Express office. We used to hitch a ride to office with some team’s project lead or manager, sometimes with PK our project manager so that we could avoid taking the public transportation in the form of a bus (there were no trains in Phoenix). After coming back from office in the evening, we used to have some or the other snacks like pizza, sometimes from McDs, KFC or Taco Bell, some ready made stuff like baked items, etc, etc… Between 9 pm to midnight local time, we had our daily conference (offshore) calls, sometimes these stretched beyond midnight for some of us. Dinner was prepared depending on whose turn it was on that day in the kitchen – some of us started very late while I started early. So, our dinner times varied from anything between 10 pm till 1 am local time. Evenings were also filled with occasional movie watching on our laptops, going to the gym, swimming in temperature controlled pools, shopping in the nearby supermarket FRYs, playing volleyball, etc. We used to sleep in a comforter which was like a blanket for 1 guy which he can wrap around his body and sleep into it. We did not have any beds and so we slept in the comforter over the nicely laid out thick carpet.
SK and I used to walk in the morning towards PK’s house for hitching a ride to the office. That walk in the cold mornings used to be something, especially when you exhale icy breaths. The roads in Phoenix were quite impressive as was expected in most of the USA. But one thing that amazed me was the lack of traffic in Phoenix. Roads were clear and the windows of the car had to be kept closed as the normal speed on that road to the office was 45 mph which was roughly 70 kmph. But we already travelled +10 mph than this. I saw these huge American Express buildings which had a huge parking lot in front of them with such a large area. Our workplace was in building number 1. The architecture was impressive, well built areas within the buildings, nice, elegant conference rooms and the cubicles had ample space to keep your stuff. Really wonderful place to have for your work environment. There was no swipe card stuff as they never kept any track of how many hours you work like what we have in Syntel’s Mumbai office. Working at client site like American Express’ offices is a privilege, I would say.
On the first day in office, I carried the sweets that I brought from India. PK introduced me to some client directors, VPs, managers of Syntel, etc as we distributed the sweets. The EM of our Syntel portfolio liked the sugar-free kesar kaju katlis that I brought, so much that he asked me to give the address of the sweet shop from where I brought them so that he could tell his counterpart at offshore to tell other guys coming onsite to bring that sweet only from the same place. A moment of pride followed for me when PK introduced me to some senior people over there as the ‘Pillar of GMAPS’. It surely is a great feeling to hear such words from your boss, but it also gives you an idea of the kind of expectations that you have on your shoulders and the responsibility that you need to show. The day at work was short for me, PK and SK as PK took me to the bank in the afternoon to open my bank accounts. SK pointed out that he also wanted to open the same for me as he would get $25 free in his account for my referral, which would now of course go to PK. I got $50 in my account for opening a new one at the Bank of America (BOA). The BOA people were so pleasant and interacted quite politely with us, as compared to what I saw in India at that time – a world of difference it made to a customer like us.
I was bit surprised that day to leave the office as early as 3 pm but I learned that it was no big deal here, as long as the work is done. Americans worked for 8 hours as they were paid to do so for that much time and behaved professionally as much as possible. Whereas at offshore, we used to slog it out for 10, 12 or more hours regularly without ever thinking what impact it made on our non-work life. I was very happy to see a welcome change in lifestyle in US for me as we were in office regularly from 9 am to 5 pm. Very rarely did we wait beyond 6:30 pm local time. Since we left on the right time, we had things to do in the evenings and relax as much as we could.
The shopping experience in the adjacent supermarket was another sea change from what I had in India. It was a very well-built, spacious and ideal shopping experience in the FRYs supermarket. We did our weekly grocery and other supplies shopping from there. I was having this different experience of purchasing weekly grocery stuff from there of the amounts like around or over $100 (which amounted to around Rupees 4600 for 1 week of shopping). Although in those days, I was not a great fan of cheese, but I saw a cheese counter which had over 150 types of cheese spread out nicely over the huge tower like counter. Gosh, how much cheese Americans ate – same goes for the beef, pork, soft drinks, etc. People did not believe in drinking water, it seemed. There was a water vending machine just outside, on the main entrance on the supermarket – from where we used to buy drinking water, the rate being 25 cents for 1 gallon (3.78 liters) of water or $1.25 for 5 gallons.
The apartment complex that we stayed was named PILLARS, some of the Syntel onshore people stayed in this entire complex which had many short-storeyed buildings. There were other two such complexes nearby where the other Syntel onshore people stayed, namely SONTERRA and SADDLEBACK. The neighborhood had a Wal-Mart, a McD, a Taco Bell, FRYs, BOA, Chevron gas stations and Home Depot, to name a few.
At the workplace, people were so nice-natured, for example once when going into the elevator, a lady politely asked me and helped me reach the floor I was going to, I acknowledged her with a thanks. I was amazed to see such noble character among these people, and I wonder why some of us Indians don’t learn some things from them instead of criticizing their culture and pointing to them that they need to learn from us always.
Even when you cross any side-road walking, they are so polite that they stop the car at a safe distance in front of you and let you cross first instead of the Indian way where you honk a lot and even drag the car near the person walking so that he/she runs away as quick as they can from the road. Yes, there is absolutely rare honking there on the roads – in fact, honking is considered to be rude unless necessary on a freeway where you block the traffic behind you by going slow in a fast lane. I’m not claiming in any way that Americans are superior to us but there are always certain things in each culture that we need to appreciate and adopt. We are citizens of the world first, then of our respective countries.
Will take a break here and continue with some incidents during my stay there in the next post as life teaches me important lessons and the boy in me grows up on his own, then how SK and me develop our friendship and things turn around in January 2007.
If you feel that I’ve missed out on anything in this post, kindly provide your feedback and I’ll make sure I’ll write it in my next post.
Signing off now. See ya, friends!
