Live Jaaz music experience

Attended a party from a partner PRA Associates (Pinnackle Rock Associates). It was at Yoshi's in Oakland, near Jack London Square.

It was an experience. It was very interesting evening.
First, the food was useless for me, a vegetarian, non-fish eating, non-meat eating person can not eat anything at Yoshi's. Survivied on Diet Coke, had to cook dinner after coming home.

But the Music, Gato Barbieri was excellent. He is an old 70 year old, Saxo-phone player.
Very whimsical character but a very good player. One hour and 15 minutes, he played very nice fusion of Saxophone, Latio Beat, Base Samba (Bill said, somebody seating next to me) & Jaaz mix.

The musicial Gato tried to speak in english, but I did not understand anything. But, music, very good. He played 2-3 sets, (Do they call songs in Jaaz?) and it reminded me of home. The music was very close to Goa'n music. Reminded me of many old songs.

I was surprised at the sophistication of the crowd. Most of the people were frequet visitors and new many songs played by Gato.

Very very interesting experience,

Return to India Career Event: An observation

Attended a return two India career fair yesterday. This was very different experience than last event. Last event was disorganized, too many people and no structure. This was a well organized and well focused event.

Some interesting observations

1. Many people, who really are not sure about returning, demand that they be made managers
in India irrespetive of management express. Mostly they do not have any leadership
experience but believe that they can still manage, funny but true !

2. Too many middle managers from Sun Microsystems and HP looking to return to India
in Cognizant than their own Offshore Centers. I wonder, what's up with that.
Must have spoken to at least 20 of these people. Many were fishing, but most were very
serious and looking for options.

3. Twenty Graduates from Carnegie Mellon University attended the event. All of them were,
fresh gradudates looking to move back to India. Very interesting side benefit of H1-CAP,
Indian companies are benefiting by getting access to top talent quickly.

4. Met many old friends and contacts from SantaClara. Most of them are looking, fishing and
trying to understand what can they do at Cognizant type of companies.
It is so interesting see these MBA's amazed after realizing that more than 80% of Staff
functions are done in India. Cognizant do need MBA's but in Analyst role.

The experience was interesting and delightful, learned new things, overall a happy experience.

Bush : The next president

Bush won, in a close race. Kerry lost.

I was sure that Bush will win. Many people underestimate the "Re-Born Evengelical" status.
In America, in general people do not want to seen motivated by Religion, but American
politics for Bush is all about Religion & vote bank.

It is clear now that I am going to benefit from reduced taxes. He is going to support Outsourcing so I will have a stable, better and growing job. Not only that but he will start digging oil in Alaska, reducing the oil prices.

But I am not happy.

Why?

I am scared that the rights of aspiring citizens like me will not be respected. It is possible
to declare anybody as "terrorist" & put behind the bars. The residency and citizenship process
is going to become more cumbersome and difficult.

The huge budget deficit and lack of investment in universities is alarming. The situation to support universities is not going to change, now. The universities will detoriate further. The stem-cell, nano-technology & biology, all the controversial research areas will get lower attention and support. And, I hope that Bush's team do not update science textbook to remove references to Darwin's theory of evoluation. Overall, the American technical leadership will be reduced significantly.

The only reason I am in America, because I am guranteed of my privacy, my freedom of speech and my religion. This is the main difference between living in India and in America.
My friend John Ash-Croft is going to change all that. The immigration process is going to get
very very difficult and getting Green Card or Citizenship will be more difficult.

The War in Iraq -> a separate situation, will write more later,

South Beach Diet & Indian Food

Started using South Beach Diet few months ago and surprising lost 20 lbs.
During the India trip, realized how difficult is to manage South Beach Diet on Indian Food.

1. No food in hotels in cities is without Rice. Idali, Dosa, everything is made from Rice
2. All the vegetarian dishes have Aloo (Potato) in there
3. Sugar is mixed in every food including Daal or Sambar.

Learned few ideas to survive, here are tips

1. One can ask for Wheat Roti in Indian Restaurants, without butter obviosuly
2. Daal, espceially Black Daal - made up of Lentils, works wonders.
3. Some places you can ask for Moong Vada or Moong Dosa (Lentils again)
4. Many High end Indian Restaurants know about ToFU. If you ask, they will make something.
5. Never ask for Gardan Salad/Salad-> Indian Restaurants do not serve Lettuce,
Salad means -> Tomatos, Cucumber, Onions, Green Chillies
6. One can use "Papadam" or Papad-> Lentil Wafers regularly. Easily available.
7. Five-Star Hotels or High End restarunats serve "Ceasers Salad" - Vegetarian :-)

Over last 3 months learned many tricks to live on Vegetarian South Beach Diet, next post on my ideas and tricks

Otherwise,

Very busy week, many new problems in the current project implementation.

It is really scary to see how a big company can avoid customer problem and spend time on internal issues,

more later,

Ankush

First Post: Objective of this Blog

This Blog is about my ideas, opinions regarding life in general, specifically of an Indian living in America.

The blog will cover various topic including recent books, opinions about India, America, American constitution (yes, I love the American Consitutation), George W. Bush, Outsourcing Industry, Career Guidance, New Songs, My opinions about TV Series, Airlines

So In summary, pretty much anything and everything I like to rant on,

Enjoy !