2009 An analysis!

Just few more minutes for the year 2009 to end...Thought I will do a quick recap of what happened in 2009 which remain in my memory and which will decide my 2010.

I remember Jan 1st very well. Bought lot of shares (esp. Reliance companies) with the money got as loan from the company. People say new year day is bad for investing, but things proved to be very good for me.. Stocks doubles in few months :)

Till march 23 rd was busy days with Infosys training. The extended training was a relaxed one and I really got to enjoy most facilities of mysore campus during this period. From may 20th onwards,

we all were anxiously waiting for posting locations. And it came by 26th or so.. Me and my best friend Tarun got separate locations :( (mangalore and trivandum 16hour journey!).. We had lot of plans to be executed in our mind of which none really worked out, and this 16hour distance proved to be the major reason!

May 29th, I joined Mangalore office. There was not much job in the initial few weeks, tried to learn some stuffs , but nothing much was learned !! Everyday we were eagerly waiting for a project call, and I have tried all sort of ways to get myself into a billable project.

Lot of things happened in these period, and I even lost faith in my favorite company Infosys. Is it because Infy is doing things which I don't understand or because I see things differently.. I don't know, but the kind of love and passion which I had for this IT giant was no more there by September.

I decided to leave the company and ended up with an offer from another MNC, but later decided to stick on with Infy for some more time (Once a senior manager of mine gave me a advice.."cijo, you are very sharp and brilliant. The only thing you need to change is.. to have some more patience....etc etc") .. I still don't have that kind of patience, because I believe time is precious than anything else.

And finally on October 12th, I was assigned to a client project! Yup.. At last...After waiting for months..... A project! That too in .NET!! I was thrilled like anything , but i never knew this will change my life drastically.

The project life was hectic. 75% time was spent at office. As days passed, my health started deteriorating. Somehow the project was over and I was moved to another project. Nobody ever asked me whether I am interested in this new work , but simply assigned me to it. This is one thing I would like to change in corporates. (more on that in another blog entry).. Had to work even in night shifts for 3 weeks in the new project.

At the end of each day, I do a look back and asks myself. "What have you learned today which will help you in achieving your dreams." My mind answers "null" 99% of days.

I realized the painful truth. Infosys is not the right company for me or I am not the right kind of resource for Infosys. Either way , there is only one solution. Leave the company :) This time I was pretty serious. The only question to be answered was What after this ?.

Though out my life, I was never short of options. Only problem I ever faced was , choosing between options. This time also, plenty of options lie ahead of me. A job as lecturer in engineering college topped the list. Doing MBA was the next in the stack. and so on....

Life is all about making the right choices, considering all the trade-offs. I don't know whether I am the best in making right choice, but I made a choice in my mind.

I don't know if this is the best choice. or is this going to be another bad choice like choosing Infosys from among many offers I had. I will have no one to blame but myself, you take a stick from one end, the other end follows you automatically..

In the past 365 days, I have made a lot of new friends and this alone is enough for me never to forget 2009.

The only thing which I will miss will be the time spend together with my friends.

Anoop,Alex,Jason,Sagish- room mates and

Jerry,Praveen,Lijo,Megin,Arun,Paul, Nidhi,Rini,Dency,Divya......... and a lot other names......

I have made another great friend also, she is not a classmate, not a neighbor, not even someone related to IT field! But we became great friends! (more on that later)

As 2009 is about to be over, I am still working on ways to make my choice happen.