Arrived in South Korea...Starting of a testing journey full of fun hopefully:)

Thank god Today I have got some time to sit with myself in Korea. I arrived in Korea on 31st of october, that is last week or so or more than that I guess. So approximately 10 days in Korea. I was planning to pen down my experiences in the new country from the beginning but lots of different things had stopped me doing that till now.
But thankfully today I am on my laptop to start recording my experiences in Korea and with Koreans. This is my first overseas trip so I won’t be able to compare it with other different countries but yes I will see how it is in Korea in comparison of India and how I will pass my stay here, happy stay hopefullyJ.
The emotional angle-
I have no hesitation to say that my first and foremost challenge in the new country is the emotional one. Far from my family, my country, It was not the easy first 3-4 days for me here. I was never so far from my home for prospective so many days, I studied outside home though after my 10+2 but my institution is never that far that I can’t visit home nearly every week. So it was a new experience and it took 3-4 days to realize that yes I am quite far but not so far thanks to Telephone and internet, which are two life lines here for me. I never used to call home in India. Parents always had the complaint that I never call but now I am calling at least twice a day, And It really feels nice and helped me a lot adjusting in the alien country. Thanks for unconditional support, love and affection of my family and friends.
Arrival -
I was not alone who came to Korea to join SK C&C, we were all 15 who arrived on the same day from same flight. Few of us met at Delhi airport only and other met at Seoul airport. There was lot of difference in both the places. In Delhi it was damn crowded and in Seoul it was as if we 15 were the only people at the airport. Mr. Ki Ho Park from HR team of SK C&C had received us and we started the bus journey of approximately 1 hour from Air port to the places where we’re going to stay for next one year.
In this Bus journey, On the one hand we were seeing sites of beautiful city of Seoul but at the other hand we were feeling really hungry after long flight hours. Later was solved as Devendra brought the poori-sabji from India and we had potentially the last meal cooked in India for next few months, and it was really delicious, I was already feeling emotional about the poori-sabji and that’s why cherished it a lot.
After one and half hour or so we all reached our apartments. We are all given apartments in different buildings across the three different areas although close to each other and well connected by metro train. Mine is in Golden Valley Apartments at the place called Migeum. Apartments are better than at least I expected, they are fully furnished with TV, Refrigerator, AC, Heater and all necessary furniture.
Food, the biggest challenge-
Food is the biggest challenge in Korea for a foreigner and more to Indians like us who are strict vegetarian. There are lots of restaurants here but they serve Korean food which is really hard even to survive with its smell. First day we didn’t think about anything and used noodles we bought from India as our dinner. But arranging each meal day after day is a challenge here more to a person like me who never cooked anything except noodles. But thanks to Mr. Anil Kapoor, not the film star but the guy who came with us and stays in same building as me and fond of cooking, I just need to wash dishes and do some work here and there to get proper Indian dinner. Although I am planning to try my hands on cooking very soon may be in next few monthsJ. Apart from that there are few good Indian restaurants around. And in the short stint, we tried three of them. So hopefully I will be able to survive.
Although Company is also aware of the issues we have regarding food here and they understand our concern as they also planned dinner in an Indian restaurant ‘Taj’ close to office on our second day here. But it’s not actually the solution of the problem as we cannot afford those expensive Indian restaurants so often unless something like that day happens every day. That day five of us dared to go to ‘Taj’ for having lunch as we were in no mood and condition to have just Vitamin-D from sun and water in Lunch. We ordered three ‘thalis’ for five of us and was planning to order extra naan if need be. We were just having our lunch when suddenly the restaurant guy came and told us that our bill is already paid so order anything you want. I asked how? And He told that Mr. Prakash (VP of Global Service Division of SK C&C, fortunately an Indian) is here for lunch and he has paid our bill. That was a jackpot for us and we ordered some more food and beverages too after that. It was a great filling meal by the grace of Mr. Prakash. God Bless Mr. Prakash J Hope to get more of such meals during my stay here….

Company and Office-
The company I have joined here in Seoul is SK C&C, third largest Korean company in IT services sector, they are looking for global expansion and our recruitment is the part of long term plan to have a dedicated development center in India so all in all a very good opportunity to grow and prove yourself. Their head quarter building SK-u Tower at a place called jeong-ja is state of the art construction with really top class facilities. And it would really be a charm working here, though we are not going to work in head office, we will be working in Telecom section of SK C&C which is in the different building and we are still to visit that office.

So it’s just the starting of my journey in Korea and lot to come in terms of the experiences, cultural differences and all other activities so just check it out, this is the general summary of few anxious starting days as got the chance of writing after ten days. So more specific entries are in waiting hopefully with lots of fun and information.

Back Again...

hey friends... we are meeting after long.. things have changed since then isn't it? last entry of mine was about debacle of indian cricket team in world cup and now after just 4-5 months we are World Champions in 20-20 cricket. it was refreshing to see young faces of indian team performing at the highest level with all the fire power.. n i enjoyed a lot.always wanted to see our team as world champions and it happened eventually that too in a newest form of cricket.

Not only it is a cricketing triumph but also resembles the fact of life.. One day you may be down and out but if u take the chances to bounce back that life gives that disappointment may ends and things will look much better. even though every thing happend to u teaches some lesson and gives you experience,the key is to recognize that and take that lesson with you and move forward with out any regret.

Life is full of experiences some good and some not so pleasing one. everybody has his/her share of experiences. me too had in my life.best part of all that i was evolving myself all the time. i take this opportunity to thank god for everything he has to offer.. obviously for good things and for other things because it really gave me chance to introspect my self and be a better person in
future.
guys enough of philosophy:).i started from cricket n see where i am. :) talking about day to day life..these days in office are relatively free. not much work really, as we just completed a realease. so enough time for my team mate vineet to try at some new and intresting games both online and offline and i pass my time see him playing and loosing:)just kidding.. some time he wins too.
apart from that lots of time i am spending in cab travelling to and fro from residence to office, so its like i am living a major portion of life in cab Really and i am serious:) travel is not always that pleasing though.. the way killer lines(Blue lines) are running on Delhi rodes its hell. even we had an accident but that happpened to be a truck, wanna say thank to my god that all is well.jus could have lost...everything.. was really frigtened after that.

so when i hear all most everyday about some or other accident in delhi due to this pathetic transport service.. can realize the grief of the affected families. just hope the guys who makes decision will think and realize that and do something so that no one loose their loved ones.

at this point wanna jus close now.. will try to be more regular now and write about various different things some body has suggested.:)

Take care

Bye...

Dibacle in the worldcup: a great shock

Hi Friends how r u all? Hope u all r doing well. If u went through my previous posts you must be aware of my passion for cricket so u may easily imagine how bad that last one week was for me. And also for the millions of cricket fans in this cricket crazy country. It was never expected even in worst of the imagination that we would be out of the world cup in such an early stage. It was shocking really shocking. I really can’t believe that world cup is just started and more than a month of cricket is remaining and we are already out. Ohhh what a shock!

Whole of the country be a common man, bollywood stars, politicians or any body else no one is free from this anger, shock and despair. So is this hype which is being created over the defeat in world cup valid? After all there are lots of things in this country which are not going the way it should be and you never see that kind of hype or even half of that panic is created over any thing else. Up to some extent I am agree with this argument. But not completely, we are a nation which definitely having lots of problems and not many things are in place here but even then there are quite a few things like cricket which give hope. Hope to feel like best in all. I agree that a win in cricket won’t solve any of our grass route problems but when we win internationally or have success and recognition at world level it boost the confidence of this entire nation. It always connects each Indian with a single hope, single dream. So if there is something that can connect or unite the feelings of the entire country which is diversified in all possible ways, that definitely worth this kind of hype. When team wins the whole country pours all the love for them treat them as God so when they loose so miserably they can’t run away from some kind of backlash and anger from the same people. Having said that I would be agreeing to the fact that the violence and hatred ness against the players is not what desired. Whatever they have done or not done, they are our heroes who did us proud in the past.

But there is definitely some thing to be corrected. Indians still loves cricket. They want their team to bounce back and again compete with the best in business, so am I. every body around is busy finding out reasons for this disaster and possible solutions to improve. I also gave thought about where we lack. I can figure out three big reasons for Indian dismal performance

1- Fear of failure- For me that was the biggest reason. If you fear from failure you can never win. There was enormous pressure on this team. There was pressure of 1 billion hopes and anticipation of all the Indians. No other team in the entire world has that kind and amount of pressure to perform. The hype that was created by media was depicting that this the best team in the world and only they are going to win the world cup. That is ok if a team takes it as appreciation and motivation but unfortunately it created hell lot of pressure. And they clearly were not relaxed not even against Bangladesh. It seemed that they were all the time thinking about “what if we lose?” and this clearly didn’t help team cause and they miserably underperformed.

2- I observe for last 2 years whenever this team lost, and questions were asked from the captain and coach. They always had answers like “we are in a build process” “this is a learning experience” and things like that. I believe that the winning is about habit and Indians were not used to win often recently. They were never clear about their combination and always experimenting with very important positions. As a result of that when they were in must win situations they didn’t has neither belief that they can win nor having the best possible combination to do that. So these experimentation and build process lasted for too long and it didn’t let players having enough confidence for coping the pressure of performing.

3- And last but not the least that we are lacking in basics of one-day cricket. We are far from international level in fielding. Our running between the wicket and ability to stop flow of singles is not up to the mark. As it was proved in match against Sri Lanka. But these are the things that are being kept in lower priorities as we rely on individual brilliance till they win matches for us. But whenever star fails these negatives of Indian team comes to the limelight as they are coming now.

So what u all thinks about these reasons or you think something else. Please share through your comments.

This is the time when everybody is talking about changes and rebuilding the team and there will be changes too. Coach and captain would be sacked. But is this the solution of all the mess in Indian cricket. I guess not completely. Approach towards the game must be changed from the grass route level. And BCCI has lot to do, lot more than just changing the captain and coach. Will they do the needful after this shocking defeat? Only time will tell. We can only hope that India starts winning again and make all the cricket lovers and spectators happy and proud.

Bye take care.....

Life is all about moments u live........

Hi Friends how r u all? Its too long since I have submitted my last entry. I am really finding my self kind of busy these days. It’s been more or less a 12 hour job to me, going office in the morning and then whole day in office and returning only at night don’t give me much time to do anything else. More over I find my self really tired when I reach home at night, not even getting any time for me myself.

But it is not that boring as it sounds. I live, or can say at least try to live moments of life while all this stuff. While small sessions with friends in cafeteria laughing and joking around, having regular treats from cab mats almost daily and discussing movies, music and many more during the 2-2.5 hours to and fro daily in the way and more importantly definitely enjoying working with in my team, learning technically new and better things everyday and plenty of new friends and collogues to be with. so not that bad at all.

In my view life is about living moments. Moments which makes you happy, which makes your loved ones and people around you happier. And I hope u guys are also living your life to the fullest.

Ooops I forgot to wish u for holi. So I take this opportunity to wish all my friends and visitors of this page a very happy holi obviously belated but still. So tell me how was your holi. Mine was absolutely great. I hope u all went to ur home for holi if u are not living with ur families. Because festivals are meant to be with ur loved ones and having their blessings and enjoying with them. I am very lucky about it. My home is very near to the place I stay, so it wasn’t that much a issue celebrating holi with family. The best thing about holi for me is gunjhiya. I love that. I tell u that in my two days stay at home on holi I approximately had 20-30 gunjhiyas for sure. Although it troubled me afterwards.. don’t u know how ha ha.. but I guess its worth for once in a year.

But for some of us celebrating festivals with family is not so easy. Living far from home, not getting enough holidays and more over even if you get leaves to go home traveling to home on these big festivals is a difficult job. I can say because I went to drop my friend to her train before holi as she was going to her native place. There was lot of rush on the station virtually not even getting place to stand on plate form. But there was some very interesting scenes over there. You must have seen coolies carrying luggage but there were coolies holding man and women, boys and girls and dropping them in to the train through the small window. All that You can see in India Only. We Indians are truly incredible as we can find JUGAD for everything.

Any ways, Coming one and the half month would be full of sleep less nights, excitement and anticipation for me and lots of other cricket fans. Cricket world cup is going to start in 2-3 days time from now. And for me sports specially cricket is a passion. So I am looking forward for the mega event and hoping that our men in blue will do every Indian proud. After Australian decreasing performance recently definitely opened the tournament and now all 8 top teams are equally approaching to the prestigious title. But still in my view Australia , India and Srilanka are front runners keeping pitches and conditions in west Indies in consideration but who knows. I would definitely want you to give your predictions for this world cup in your comments.

I am sorry if u are getting bored with this cricket stuff but me can’t stop thinking and talking about cricket specially on the eve of biggest tournament coming after 4 long years.

So I guess its too much for one go as its not preferable at least to torture your own friends more. So I will be closing this entry but hoping to get your honest comments….

Oh ya I remember today I have seen movie called “DOR”. Have u seen that? If not please watch it. Its worth watching if u like sensible movies which touch ur heart deeply more over it has wonderful performances by all the artists. And ya tell me how u liked that or not liked that if in case.

Bye Take care…

Come back of a fighter......

Hi Friends,

First of all want to thank all of u who has visited the blog and especially to those who gave their honest comments. I will require support from u all in future also.

Today want to talk a bit about a man who has back from exile with a bang. Every body had written him off, no body could have imagined that he will be back and that too like that. Literally whole world was against him and even the die heart supporter of him was having doubts whether he can make it again. But he has done it and done it in style. I guess now u must have recognized him yes I m talking about our very own Dada Saurav Ganguly. What a fighter he is. Everybody of us can learn how to have confidence in our abilities and don’t surrender against any difficult circumstances. His concentration, determination was treat to watch in South Africa he was the highest run scorer for team in test series and yesterday after more then one year returned in one day cricket as opener and played splendidly for attacking 98. u really must have wondering that if I am writing a cricket column but I say not exactly. But I feel we as a professional can learn a lot from dada. There r times when things r not going our way and it seems that everything is against us and no hope is visible but this come back of dada teaches us that if u have courage and confidence then u can afford not to think about what others think of u and just concentrate on your work and can show to world that what all u have. Hats off Dada…. And I hope he will continue to do so and hopefully team performs gr8 at world cup and we (u all and I) at our workplace.

Now going further we had an interesting lunch party last week. Actually this was a B’day party of my team mates Doodly Sharma and Tarun Jain. We were all 16 and went to a Chinese restaurant called ‘The Monk’. Although I had noticed that most of group members wasn’t that fond of Chinese but we still went for a Chinese lunch and I guess that was the choice of the host and we all were agree to that and was checking if we can get some thing good there. That was a restaurant which was in the middle of the floor of a mall and it was without walls and there were shops all around that.

The special thing about the restaurant was that all Chinese guys were cooking the food there with in that small place only and most of staff there was Chinese too.

When we reached there they really has to do special arrangement for us as they do not generally expect people to come in large groups as they also told us later that they r basically meant for shoppers which generally shops at surrounding shops and want to enjoy the food in between. But in some time they had made proper arrangement for sitting.

Then came the menu card, it was then the drama began, Menu items was confusing even for those who r used to Chinese food. Mean while it was 2:30 and most of us was really hungry till that time. Scene was really funny as we had menus in our hand and looking around on other’s faces so that can identify the gyanis who knows about those dishes and then he/she can order same or suggest some for us too. But unfortunately everybody was same and as confused as most of us. Actually dishes were same as usual Chinese but there were variants in terms of ingredients of each. But after bit of hard work and lots of guess work at last everybody decided and gave the order.

It was much of a black box scenario. We could just prey that our choice must be eatable. But there was more to follow as they took off the menus and now we all forgot the names of dishes we have ordered for. But thanks to the guys there who has remembered about who has ordered what and we all got the thing as ordered.

But for a surprise at least for me the food was delicious. It was one of the best Chinese food you can ever get. I don’t still remember what that was exactly but it was some variant of rice and some ingredient as peanuts, capsicum etc. and it was too good. And most of us liked the food and all thanks to the host for that. After that we had delicious cake and that concluded the lunch at ‘The Monk’. So if u like Chinese or even if u don’t I will suggest you to try ‘The Monk’. You won’t be disappointed.

Ab kuch baat dilli ki sardi ki. Its too cold this time around in delhi and rightly so. It was seen that from last few years winters were not as effective here as it should be in this whether but this year around its really can call as Dilli ki sardi. So just wanna close this entry with the suggestion to be protective in this cold so that u won’t get caught by cold and cough as I have been caught.

Bye take care friends…….

Joined NCR...and first few days...

Hi friends,
as i said m back with more. Its almost a week now since i hav joined my new company which is NCR Corporation. no no its not a govt. company as it seems with the name which has resemblence with National Capital region.its formally National Cash register. if u have used ICICI bank ATMs you must be aware of the organisation as you will see logo of NCR on almost all the ATM machines. ya ATM machines and self service equipments are the core business of this US based giant. they are listed in Fortune 500 list of most powerful companies in USA.and this development centre in Gurgaon is basically for providing IT and software services and support to all core business units of NCR spread over approx 100 countries around the world.So that was just intro to my new company. i had joined NCR on 10th of january as software engineer.

This was really a perfect beginning of new year with new place, new peoples and new work. and i am quite excited and enthusiastic abt the things i will be doing here. lets talk abt the experience i hav so far here in my first one week. this whole week mostly i was attending inductions which includes informative sessions abt company and its various departments. these sessions was really very important in the process of being used to and settle in the new
setup.these inductions was formal mostly so not much to talk abt them but i really wanna talk abt the induction session i had with Mr. Naresh Shetty the GM of this development centre in Gurgaon and he also happens to be the head of Enterprise Applications group in which i m going to work so he will be my highest boss here in office.

Although he talked abt various things like business ethics and the things which are must to succeed but one thing was core of the whole discussion was the dreaming is must to attain some thing. he told abt the importance of dreaming and then working to attain that dream.he also asked us abt the craziest dream we ever have in life, that was a intresting thing to answer becos everybody has some or other crazy dream and all are funny and intresting ones.

During the discussion he raised a question that was "are indians hardworking?"(or hardly working ha ha..) at first instance we found question funny because this is a well known fact around the world that ya we indians are very hardworking and thats y almost
everybody answered in affirmative.
but he was bit critical about this he gave an example and asked us that if we are given each of our necessity which every one wants to acquire in life(may be its levish life style, car, home and all) will then we be as hardworking as we are when we are trying to acquire those all things in life. he told us that here the difference lies in us and the americans. in his words "In america its really easy to acquire the basic things ,a person wants to live a comfortable life but even then they are hardworking" but he could not say that about indians in general. he also told us about the fact that he sees americans are the most hardworking society in the world as he did got chance to work with the people of various nationalities.

Although i was not as convinced with these point as he said abt indians but ya the whole of discussion was really fruitful and we didn't notice when those 2-2.5 hours was past. and when he finished we ya we all wanted more of it. Naresh shetty is an impressive personality with american accent in his english and ya had lot to offer to us from his experience. I am really looking forward to interact with him in future and i think i will soon having chance of that when i will be having one to one meeting with him as part of my induction which each new joinee has to go through.

apart from that session we too had some trainings abt the specefic tools which NCR uses for its processes and these trainings are still going on.

n ya on my third day only i got the chance to attend my first party at NCR. that was a new year bash and i was excited abt it. although i didn't no much of people apart from my team and the guys who were with me in the induction process. but still i wanted to attend it for more than one reasons. firstly i like to party.. yes wht to be surprised ya some of u will not believe me but don't know how i developed the intrest in partying and dancing for last few years now. and whenever i got chance to dance and enjoy i grab it with two hands and this was not exception i danced a lot for approximately 2-2.5 hours continuously. it was fun altogether. DJ was not so gud but still it was really enjoyable.we all enjoyed a lot some with drinks and some with out it. i was without it although the friend who was with me was having serious doubts about my claim as he saw me the way i was dancing.and secondly it was a chance to meet new people with whom me going to work in future so both my objectives were fullfilled by attending that party.

now lastly something about my experience with people i have interacted with. i found all very supportive and good be it my seniors in team or people in HR or my Cab mats all seemed to be nice and supportive. as i am new,passing most of my time with another new guy in my team named Asif Iqbal.i found him nice and helping.
will talk much about other guys and gals in my future posts and some more intresting incidents and discussions as they come along.
bye for now...but improved posts will follow soon...

and ya m waiting for comments too.. at least this time please each of u write your craziest dream in life this will be an intresting discussion. ok ok me also telling my craziest dream. infact i have various dreams which can be considered to be crazy like i wanted to be the member of indian cricket dream, i also wanna be Prime minister of India. but sadly i happen to be a software engineer. anyways m fullfulling one of the dreams (the dream to be a writer) atleast by writing this Blog..
also expect u to write ur craziest dream in comments...hope u will contribute..
Bye Take care...

Welcome All......

Hi friends,
hope u all are doing great.m happy to welcome u all to my first blog this is the place where from now onwards i would share my experiences at my work and with the life. although m pathetic when it comes to writing but still i have passion for it(Hum nahin sudhrenge). sorry from now onwards i will expect from u people to bear with my pathetic writing skills. but u can do that much for a friend..can't u? ya i hope nahhh m confident that u all will have some of your very precious time in which u used to do very imp tasks as chatting,checking or forwarding mails etc. for reading my efforts with writing and ya also leaving comments on my experiences(that is must). i hope we together will learn new things. so thats my introductory blog. i haven't included my intro as i assume that u all know me..if u r reading this fir bhi if u want to know more then keep reading....n God bless u in that horrible experience. but after all friends hote kisliye hain...enjoy more will follow soon..

Tarun Dixit