Onsite... Itz an experienz

"Onsite is my birth right" - says every software engineer today. Onsite is not only about money but also experience and knowledge. Well, some people may deny about the experience and knowledge but for me it was the experience which was thrilling than the money. In the perspective of a guy who has never entered an airport, working in US is sure lots of first time experiences in store. Peoria is the destiny. I had no clue of where this city/town/village is in US. All I was informed of was, it was somewhere close to Chicago. As if I pass by Chicago every time I go to my native, I used to say "Oh... so it’s closer to Chicago".

I got into this project at the right time, i.e., it started growing in number as I was growing in experience. This project gave me the feeling that: I’m no more a single person, there's a team to back me. Onsite wasn't a dream anymore, I could see it coming. As and when my travel dates were getting closer, offshore was becoming exciting and more memorable. It would have been real hard to part from my offshore team but for a really hectic last week, which kept all my thinking on to the work and never let me bother about leaving my awesome offshore team.

I'm born and brought up in Chennai but never had a chance to get into Chennai airport. I parted from my parents and friends at the airport gate, stepped into the airport for the first time. No problems with the check in baggage, as I was informed, I weighed it to make sure each was less than 22KG. The hand luggage that I could carry turned out to be one with laptop bag. I had an extra bag which was almost empty for a set of formals incase my check in luggage got delayed, which was very usual as people told me. The problem was I couldn’t dump my laptop bag into the other bag. I had to empty out the other bag and somehow dumped the set of formals in my laptop bag. There were other tit-bits in that bag which I had to dump into the cargos that I wore. All my cargo pockets were stuffed with things like my camera, backup batteries, key chains, gifts from my friends, and of course freshly minted 100 five rupee notes. Yep, my mom gave me as she always does when I'm traveling. Thanks to the invention of cargo and thanks to my teammates for gifting it to me on my birthday.

My travel itenary was: Lufthansa from Chennai to Frankfurt, Lufthansa again from Frankfurt to Chicago, United Airlines from Chicago to Peoria and then Rudresh's Car from Peoria Airport to Hollow Creek Apartment. The funniest part was I had to empty my cargo packet at each of the airport where I had to transition. The guards were going crazy as I took at least 5 minutes emptying the pockets and couple of them became curious to know about the jazzy paper cuttings I carried. I bet they wanted to have one when I told them it was Indian currency, a five rupee note. Chennai to Chicago, right on schedule, thanks to Lufthansa. But yet another experience was waiting for me at Chicago airport. My flight to Peoria at 1600 got cancelled due to bad weather. The next flight was at 2130 and unfortunately had no seats to accommodate me. The help desk informed me of bus services each one hour to Peoria from Chicago airport. Well, I tell you Chicago airport is really big. A tram runs inside the airport to take you to terminals-1, 2&3. The Lufthansa from Frankfurt dropped me at terminal-1. I went to terminal 2 to catch the domestic flight to Peoria. Of course emptying and refilling my cargo pockets at the security. At 1800 hours the flight got cancelled and I had to stand in a long queue for an hour to get to the help desk. After learning that I can catch a bus to Peoria, I caught a tram again to Terminal-1. When I figured out the bus terminus, it was 2000 hours and the bus to Peoria left at around 1920 hours and the next bus is at 2230 hours. I thought of giving the 2130 flight a shot. Purely depending on my luck I ran back to Terminal-2, emptied my cargo and refilled it again at the security. Got a wait-listed ticket and was praying god at the boarding gate. Lucky again and I was onboard on United Airlines flight to Peoria. Vivek was there to pick me up in his Volkswagen, oops sorry 'Simran', as he named it.

US is so different from India. Yes, everything is huge, big and grand. I know all mean the same but that is US as I saw it. A small coffee here would easily qualify for large in India. But now, I'm starting to feel may be back in India things were small, meager and less. The cultural difference is also big. The next thing you'll not miss noticing is the attitude of people here. Courtesy and optimism is spilled all over or may be I was lucky enough to meet only those people. ‘Excuse me’ s, ‘Sorry’ s and ‘Thanks’ s are used like water here. Bet Americans cannot survive without these words. In my fifty days experience so far, I had never listened to something which was negative or not encouraging. No sarcastic comments but just words of praise. You are praised for what you are expected to do. I told myself "Be extremely careful of this as this is very new and very addictive". But then, I slowly sensed that the responsibility, those ever positive comments were inducing in me and my performance is improving day by day. The logic was indeed simple: " You don't have to extract work just encourage"

I consider myself lucky to be in this project, for this project is all that I earned and all that I have. I'm just working towards the project feeling the same about me!