Day 20 : Another company interview set

Yesterday’s resume sent to my friend helped me. In the morning, got a call from the HR of the company asking me if I can come to the company HQ on 27th morning for face to face discussions. 

Discussions. Somehow changing the term from an ‘interview’ to ‘discussion’ seems to take away half the tensions regarding the job search ! 

Sure ! Said I. Checked out the location using google maps, and oh boy, it’s right across the other side of the city. Since I have to go there in the morning, I expect to be stuck in the morning rush. Need to start atleast 2 hours before the interview time to be sure that I reach on time. 

Nothing much to do the entire day. Relax.

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Day 19 : The Interview

Well, today was my interview with a company in Pune. 1 hr about what I have done as well as what I was expected to do. I think that it went on fine. Do I dare hope ? No, I just expect the worse to happen. Wherever I have thought that the good will happen, it usually does not. 

As such I suddenly got nervous one hour before the interview was to start. Butterflies in my stomach. I thought I would read some on the net and brush up some principles of Project Manager. But half an hour went by and I was not able to concentrate on it. 

Gave it up in the end. 

Recited the Hanuman Chalisa. That helped calm me a bit. 

There after spent some time doing deep breathing ( Pranayama Yoga) . That calmed me down a lot further. So, when the phone rang, I was absolutely calm. 

It started of with the person introducing himself and asking me to give him a dump on what all I have done. That took around 1/2 an hour. Thereafter, we went over with the nitty grities of the work that is to be done and both of us kept asking questions as to exactly whats to be done. Its not the best of dream jobs, but pretty good. Having to handle a big team, with multiple projects going on. Good hai! 

3 hours after the interview concluded, got a call from the recruitment person in the company asking for next round – a face to face – on monday 2nd March. I am only too happy to oblige ! 🙂

In the evening , got a response from one of my friends who now is the CEO of a company. I had sent him a mail using LinkedIn about my predicament, and also that I saw there were jobs open in his company. He asked me to pass on my resume.  

🙂

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Day 18 : Oscars and Shivratri !

Since I am mostly blogging this at the end of the day, from today, I am putting in a caption along with the day no. Just a day no is boring, isn’t it ? 🙂

Got up at 7am. Go Slumdog Go ! Oscar awards ceremony was on Star Movies. 

What a surprise win ! 8 bloody oscars for Slumdog Millionaire ! Awesome hai ! Jai Ho ! Just goes to show that if everyone in the team does their job with passion, what looks like a mediocre no-star team, can pull off wonders ! 

Very Inspiring ! For me personally it shows that if you follow your dreams with passion – the fruits are all the more sweeter ! Hats off to Danny, AR Rehman , Resul, Gulzarji and others. You guys rock ! Clap ! Clap ! Clap ! Even Amitabh Bachhan has congratulated them on his blog. There was a big furore about AB saying deregatory things about SDM, but that was all hoopla with these sensational journalism that the sites fall down to doing for their circulation – the credibility of a man be damned ! 

There are a lot of views shown by various critics and friends which talk about that the film shows India in a bad light. Ha ! Take a look at our parliament proceedings – don’t they also show us in a bad light ? Yet no one protests that ! And there is no point in trying to keep the slums under wraps. Its there. Its right in our face. Its just your elitism and psedo arroagance which wants to ignore it. The crime and poverty of India does not go away by your ignoring the existance of it ! 

Today is also shivratri . One of the major festivals of india – the day Lord Shiva danced his Tandav. (source http://www.mahashivratri.org/ ) . 

Now, preparing for an interview with the firm tomorrow. Wish me best of luck !

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Day 17

Today evening was spent in the company of friends – dinner ! Though most of them are my wife’s friends, I got on well with them and had a great time !

Also , got a call from the company in Pune ( check day 15 ) and seems like I am onto the next round. Ok. Cool. Lets see how that works out.

Slept quite late – like 2am or something, and have to get up at 6:30am for the Oscars !

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Day 16

Oh man ! I hope my good luck also comes in such huge packets.

Today, my cell phone stopped working.

‘No Service’ it says on the Airtel networks. sigh !

Called up the service center guys, 121 , and they told me that I have to call up the service center guys in the city that I have taken the SIM in, as the 121 number connects me to the Delhi service center. So, called up the home city number, and they tell me it has been cut due to ‘non payment’… and then he says .. hang on. There is something wrong. The billed amount is low and it should not have been cut. After putting me on hold for some more time, he says that there is some issue, and he will raise the ticket on priority basis.

Resolution time given as 1/2 an hour.

I wait for 1 hour. still ‘no service’.

Call back again, this time some other guy came on the call. He said that it usually takes 3-4 hrs for it to get working, and to check in that time. Sigh.

4 hrs from the 1st call. 3hrs from the 2nd call. And my phone is still not working.

Feeling quite down. This thing about goodluck and badluck coming in bunches – it should not. Gimme some Good News God !

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Day 15

hmm.. 

Well, i got a twitter account now 🙂

Follow me I command ye ! 

• WAJ : https://twitter.com/withoutajob

Now to figure out how to add twitter feed to the blog front page.

Steps : 

1.  go to your twitter page. on the lower right side you have the ‘rss feed for xyz’ link. Right click and copy URL. 
2. In your wordpress dashboard go to Appearance -> Widgets
3. Click on ‘add’ beside the RSS widget. It goes on the right side. 
4. Click ‘edit’ on the RSS widget. Add the URL you copied on step 1, and put in a feed name. E.g. Mine is ‘Twitter WAJ’
5. Click Update so that it shows up on the main page. 
6. Drag drop the widgets in the sequence you like !

Done!

I am also using a very good pic from Student’s Art. I urge you to buy the art if you have the money ! 

 

Tiger Artwork from Student Art Work

Finally ! Got a 1st round Telephonic call from a company in Pune in the evening ! Phew ! Lets hope I get more calls in the coming days.  Good to know that there are a few openings available. 

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Day 14

Would you believe it. 2 weeks gone by. No job. Heck, not even an interview call has been scheduled ! 

At home, I have been watching a lot of CartoonNetwork with my sis-in-laws kid. 

In the evening, got a computer guy to come and update the system. For 7k, the following was updated : 

• Processor to 2.2 Core 2 Duo from a PIV
• Motherboard to ASUS with 1333MHZ FSB. This has an inbuilt Nvidia card 7900. Not too good, but can run World of Warcraft in low resolution. 
• Memory up to 2GB DDR2 from 256MB DDR1.

Man. This upgrade was so cheap ! 

As usual the first things I install are : 

• Free Download Manager 
• WinAMP
• Google Pack
• Acrobat Reader
• Adobe Flash

The graphics drivers which came in the CD were quite outdated, and so downloaded the new drivers. 

Evening, was talking to wife before sleeping. She was feeling quite deperessed that I had not got even a single interview call scheduled :(. In these times, I doubt I will be getting a call anytime soon. I am doubtful about a call till the start of the next quarter.

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Day 13

For some reason the display of posts in this blog is screwed up. I have no idea why. The dates etc are ok, but some posts are out of chronological order ! 

Today finally the broadband got connected, and I am writing from it. Have sent out my resume to many more people, and hoping for the best. 

At the same time, I have started to brush up my C++ and also looking at Java. With this system that I have here, I don’t think I can install c++ compilers etc, but installing javac should be ok. 

Had a visit to the dentist today evening ( he’s a friend ) for a toothache. The tooth looks fine he said ( read ‘may’ not require root canal treatment ! ). Have to check back with him in a few days time.

Ok. figured out that the dates were jumbled up as some of the posts had the ‘sticky’ tag set ! How did that happen?? But its a neat feature. Blogger does not provide such nifty features.

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Day 12

Still no broadband at home. Airtel really sucks.

Out in a small internet cafe with a very slow PC . If I go above 3 IE windows, the system slows down abysimally. Wow ! Its been a long time since i saw or worked on such relics !

Some good job leads to follow. Looking at any place now. Chennai, Calcutta, wherever. Lets see what the future holds.

Need to start brushig up my technical skills, as many places I have applied to for architect positions.

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Day 11

Nothing much happened. Airtel Braodband service provider was to come and install the internet connection – but they did not. Airtel seems to be pretty pathetic here in Delhi.

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