Well, its been a few long days since I posted anything and now I am back - though slowly. The reason I was offline (not literally - thankfully) was because I was moving - not only cities, but companies and countries too! I was in lovely, beautiful, amazing San Francisco Bay Area and now am in the exciting London (where I have had the sun for the last three days and that might be a new record). I quit my previous company ( Capgemini ) and joined a new one ( Avanade ) and for now going back to my roots of product development.
So what have I been upto the last few weeks? Other than at work full time, resigning from my previous company, finding movers for all the luggage, trying to figure out the whole customs, duty, tax, etc thing. Handing over my responsibilities at Capgemini, doing all the paperwork needed, canceling/closing all services and utilities, trying to figure out the cost of living in another country, getting the legal paperwork done (visas, workpermits, etc), finding out tickets for the move, trying to sell off stuff we don’t need, trying to buy stuff I would need and which are cheaper in the US when compared to UK (mostly computer related stuff), packing some of the stuff (most of the furniture, the movers are going to do), trying to find out how to move a car from the US to UK (you have no idea what it entails - I will be blogging on that too).
Once I got all that sorted out kind of (among a million fights with my lovely wife Meenakshi, honey, they were all my fault - not yours, phew, thats taken care of), and got my butt in the UK I had to go through the headaches of getting setup here. Am in the process of opening bank accounts (hopefully that would be open by tomorrow - keeping fingers crossed). My new company has a relationship with this bank and because of which they will only take a week for opening a bank account, otherwise it would have taken 2-3 weeks! Can you believe that? Not to mention the amount of headache they gave me going back and forth on changing the reference letters, or this is missing or this needs to be changed or this is addressed to “Whomsoever it may concern” and not the specific bank. Jeeez, talk about being stuck up - after all it is my money I am giving them!
Well I have completed one week on ground and gone through the new hire orientation and hopefully will get everything settled down soon - till then onto more research for which phone companies to sign up for, which broadband, etc. If this house things goes through (which is a similar story to the Bank Account), then I can stop talking to Real Estate guys and seeing places and just being fed up and get on with life!
I would certainly miss the bay area - already do some aspects - getting my weekend coffee at Peets , meeting up with friends, enjoying the weather (which I never did since I was out at work), but overall its been a great place for me - which has had many important things of my life - where my career blossomed (so to speak), where I got married to lovely Meenakshi (she can be reading this, so gotta be nice ;)), where I met amazing people and mentors, where I loved working, the outdoors, learned so much about life, myself, politics, computers, everything. I will always have a special place in my heard of San Francisco Bay Area and I am sure there would be things that would keep pulling me back to the west coast for one reason or an another.
But, now is the time for change and new exciting adventures - in spite of me bitching so much I am really enjoying myself and having loads of fun! So, stay tuned and there would be more to come from London.