SD to LA

Today was my first day at the new client in LA and it was quite eventful! Here's how -

I drove up to LA in a rented car (Kia Spectra) in about 2 hours and it took me another 15 minutes to figure out which building exactly I had to enter... the campus is huge! Once I got in (after the customary delays at the security for the badges) I was glad to see a normal office with spacious cubicles awaiting me... standard in today's IT world, you say? well not if you knew where I was coming from at my previous client location! :)

After I settled down, the rounds of introductions began and soon I was getting all muddled up with the names and faces... frankly even now, at the end of the day, I am not quite sure who I am sharing my cubicle with! I met the managers I had been interacting with the past couple of days and also the others on the various teams... All strategy & change guys so it should be fun to pick their brains... there also is a recent USC MBA grad student on the team... she seems nice enough, should remember to pick her brain too!

As the day wound down, I accompanied my team to the cafeteria and it was lovely too... there were stalls for different cuisines from round the world... I even spotted my ever fav - chicken quesdilla - on one of the menus but for today I opted for Chinese food - chowmein and orange chicken - instead... yummm! Lunch over, I headed back to the desk to do some more online hotel and apartment hunting but soon I felt my eyelids beginning to get heavier.... the effects of the daylight saving time shift, the early morning wakeup, the long drive was finally starting to kick in...

A colleague came over to rescue me from the state of certain stupor that I was beginning to enter into and she showed me around the campus... the corporate headquaters building was beautiful! I fell in love with the shiny black Lexus in the lobby... it was soo plush... ooooohh! After the long walk and chat, I headed back to my desk and soon it was time to start packing up... I was wondering about dinner when someone mentioned a team dinner! My ears perked up and after some debate, the venue was decided - Addi's Tandoor.

My sense of direction being what it is I was confident of getting lost and so I drove all the way to the restaurant almost stuck to the rear bumper of my colleague's car in front :) even almost jumped a light! Finally when everyone got in, there are were a few awkward moments when no one knew what to say but slowly everyone got into the groove and it turned out to be a fun dinner... One gentleman (colleague, i should say) had such a great sense of humor that I was glad the food had finally arrived coz my jaw had begun to hurt laughing! The food was not bad but I truly believe that Indian food should be had in India by Indians... nowhere else can they even come close! On the way back too I again used my 'stick to bumper' routine and reached the Doubletree hotel uneventfully... checked in... freshened up.... called home... switched on my laptop... and here I am!

Day 1 - finito... and here's to the coming days of work, shopping (just opp to the hotel is the second largest shopping mall in US), interviewing (Atlanta, LA and hopefully more), essay-writing (ISB still remains... the last bastion) and hopefully some more fun on the way!