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90 days and Loving it. Hyderabad Rocks

One more month has passed since my 60 day update.. . Things are still looking excellent and the recent festivals added to the +ve thoughts about our move so far. With diwali and dusshera occuring very close to each other, we had ample opportunities to visit family, relax and enjoy the good times in Hyderabad.

Finally my son is in ukg / school and he seems to like the environment a lot. Everyone from the director of the school to his class teachers were flexible and willing to work with us, to get him accustomed to the new environment. We showed up 1.5 months later than our scheduled date and paid the term fee ( Rs 7500 ) for the current term. The fee covers everything including his meals and supplies. Uniforms and Bus are separate... due to the proximity of the school to our house, we decided to drop/pick him by car for the first month.

Boy-o-Boy, kids from my experience so far do nothing but watch TV/Cartoons and Movies. I am trying to get my kid outdoors, couple of my team members gave me references to a cricket/tennis training facility, another one gave me a reference to a taekwondo teacher who comes home to teach kids, etc. I am going for Cricket primarily to get him used to a team sport and tennis for the physical activity. Will update more on these once I finalize on them.

Started driving on my own during night and evening hours. I was driving in hyderabad before I came to the US, but it feels very different now since the traffic in hyderabad is in the worst shape I have ever seen. You should have seen the traffic between Road #3 and Punjagutta on the day before diwali weekend. Took me almost 1 hour, to get from jubilee checkpost to punjagutta center.

I am still lagging in taking care of myself on the Physical Fitness front, but I decided to make the best out of the situation by taking the stairs at the office. Some of my team look at me like I am crazy, but I plan to continue doing this as much as I can.

My pet projects are finally on track and I am doing my best to spend atleast 1 to 2 hours a week on them. Currently looking for some junior programmers that can help me with the basic work... heard that I can hire some good parttime programming help for less than Rs 5000, which should solve some major bottlenecks for me.

Hyderabadi's Travel Update

With my trip for an offsite meet, I really did not get a chance to update the blog.. My trip to kerala was very exhausting but rewarding. An excellent networking opportunity with global leadership teams. It exceeded all my expectations of an offsite meet. Work and Fun were well balanced with a cruise on kerala backwaters, snake boat races and performing arts demonstrations including panjavadyam, thayyam, kalari-payattu ( martial arts ) etc., and my favourite was kalari-payatt.

Kerala Cuisine, was heavily based in coconut sauces, and was centered around SeaFood/Fish dishes. I dont remember the names of all the dishes, but overall the food was excellent. I tried every item in the buffet for the first 2 days and ended up with an upset stomach towards the end of day 3. My favourite of all was Ada-Pradhamam { a payasam like dessert made with jaggery etc. }

2 Months since My Arrival

Its exactly 2 months since I arrived in hyderabad... No regrets, no challenges to deal with, enjoyed every bit of my stay here... bottomless biryani buffets... litres of teachers and blenderspride scotch [ may be thats a little exaggerated ;-) ] and the ability to re-live in a fun culture of dakhani [ hyderabadi ] phrases including my favourites "maakki kiri kiri" and "bindaas". Today I really laughed when a team member said "pareshan mat lena sir....", to calm me down about an issue....

In the last 60 days, I was able to complete the basic tasks like renting a house in hyderabad, move in, get connected, hire a maid+driver and move my family here. Couple of things I am really behind on are my son's school, drive on my own [ need to figure out how to get a license and insurance ], physical fitness / gym and a pet project I started while I was in the US. I hope to get on track by the 100th day or so..

With the global nature of the business that Indians deal with, work hours are not well defined. The higher you climb the ladder, the worse it gets.. though not a daily activitiy, you are expected to participate in calls, reviews etc., with australiam/APAC customers in the morning, Europeans in the afternoon and America's in the evenings. So a workday of mine goes from 11am to 7pm on some days to 2pm to 10pm on somedays. The best part is that you get to slack off on both Indian as well as Customer Holidays ;-). Companies have adapted well to this global demands with extensive work from home options, including wireless internet, vpn, blackberries/other devices that are tied into the company phone networks so that you have a virtual office extension that comes with you all the time.

Some of you asked me about lunch etc.. so here it goes. Cafeteria's at work are very well maintained / managed in many of the large companies. Food goes from the traditional thali between Rs 25 to 50 depending on the options along with traditional offerings like biryani, curry+paratha etc. at less than Rs 50 for a large serving. Cafeterias also have free coffee/nescafe/tea machines along with a coffeeday express or similar store that offers gourmet coffee between Rs 10 to 30 depending on your choice. Other standard things include a bakery counter where you can buy puffs, rolls, breads, sandwiches between Rs 5 to Rs 20, and a fruit bar that offers a medley of fresh fruits from Rs 10 to Rs 20 based on the size of serving. In some locations of our organization, food is free for the basic thali type and you pay extra for others. In some organizations like google, its all free including the gourmet varieties of everything and anything.

More later...

Broadband, Sundae, Real Estate, Telephones, Banking : An Update from Hyderabad

Beam Broadband : I ordered this service atmost 4 weeks ago and am yet to see any movement on this. The company called me a couple of times to schedule installation and never showed up. Hope they will show up some day and now that I have my primary broadband through sify, I am not too worried about them.

Sify Broadband : This is my primary provider now and the service has been excellent so far. Had 2 issues and 1 issue was fixed within 30 mins. The 2nd issue was related to bad weather and looks like a tree fell and severed the fiber connectivity to our neighborhood. This took them almost 18 hours to fix and my vonage service was down during this time. The best part is that SIFY people were courteous enough to call me and update me about the progress and when the service was up.

Network Services : Vonage works well on SIFY if the internet is up, VPN, remote desktoping to US from india are working very well. while there is some lag from home, its no different than remote desktop from the office facilities in Hyderabad.

Sundae/Desserts : Based on my previous story about Ohri's Hyderabad and its sundae's, my wife tried the awful awful sundae as a Lunch Replacement.. dont ask me that story ;-).. She says its "awesome".. so, go try it and email me your feedback. We also tried various others with names like lovers paradise, tall lady and lewinsky... this has now turned into a regular session to unwind after a busy day of work.

Telephones : Though the providers have matured over the last couple of years, they still keep adding subscribers without additional capacity. One other challenge you will face is that the roaming agreements are not that good so, you may loose connectivity when you are far away from the city.

Banking : ICICI bank account is fully operational after a long struggle to prove my address, and I am happy with the netbanking services they provide. Even bill pay, trading and other services are available along with SMS notifications for account activities like checks/withdrawals etc. I applied for a Demat+Trading account and waiting for that to be activated. These services require tons of paperwork and have extensive beauracracy tied to them. Banking institutions tried the mcdonald's "dumb it down " principle .. so, no one wants to think beyond the box.. an live example was a friend of mine who tried to cash 2 checks at ICICI. The teller asked him to get 2 separate tokens to cash these checks. The first token flashed on counter #X, and his second token flashed on counter #Y within 30 seconds of the first... He is yet to figure out a way to use 2 counters at once... This is normally how the indian companies deal with operations and customer service..

When i run into folks like Beam Cable Installer, ICICI bank and the many other service providers that never keep their word and ask for wierd documentation..., I remind myself that I have come here with very low expectations ... and that helps me stay cool.... I see the issues, laugh and move on.. Life has been entertaining and relaxed in Hyderabad so far.