In this post i will write how things have progressed since we made the decision about 4-5 months back.
1) Job Search
After we decided that it is time to move back, i started searching for jobs in India. In India right now Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR (National Captial Region including Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida) are the prominent places for IT jobs. However i had been reading in the news that Hyderabad is very hot place. After living in a very good californian climate who will like to live in too hot climate. Recently Pune has come up as a very good spot for IT business. Many reputed companies have setup their development centers. Pune is very near to metropolitan city Mumbai and it seems to have a nice weather. Further my wife has stayed here for her B.E days and she liked it. So it became the top location choice. Second preference was Bangalore and then Delhi region. Then it started by sending resume to friends and contacts in linkedin. I also registered on job sites like monster india and naukari.com. From the job sites i keep on getting the requirement emails. However 99% of the time it didn't result in any actual conversation. Looks like companies in India are hesitant in hiring guys from US. From some companies i got the advice that i should come to India for a face to face interview then only they will consider it. Finally after 2-3 months one company from Pune started the telephonic interview process. The whole process took about 1 months. Finally they offered me the job. It came just 2 day before we were about to leave for our east coast trip. They asked me to join in 1 month. My current job required to give a notice of 4 weeks. This was a very tight deadline. However i negotiated with them for 2 weeks extra time. Then i talked to then current employer about my decision. There was no objection from them and things went pretty smoothly there. Then we left for our 10 days vacation trip to East Cost.
2) East Coast Trip
This trip was planned for quite some time. I never got a chance to visit east coast during last so many years. So thought we must make a trip before finally going back. Who knows when we will get another chance. So on 1st July early morning we left our house to catch the flight. Thanks to Uma Aunty for dropping us at the Fremont BART. If you are living in East Bay area then BART is the best way to go to San Francisco. Very pleasant. Much better than driving or by cab.
Reached SFO on time and got the boarding pass of Virgin America. It had one stop at LAX where we waited at airport for about couple of hours. Then the next flight was for almost 5 hours. Since this was the first time for Kundan to travel, he got very uncomfortable during the last one hour. The seats of a plane (in economy class) are not comfortable at all. It is a torture for adults then just imagine the situation of a 2 year old. We reached JFK at around midnight. That night we stayed in a nearby hotel JFK Inn. They had courtesy shuttle service, which picked us soon. The room was small and it had a very big TV. So looked like sitting in the first row of cinema hall.
Next day we flew to Niagra Falls. We reached buffalo airport at around 2 o clock. There is a bus service from buffalo airport to niagra falls. But its frequency is very less. So we made sure that we reach the bus stop in time. The due time 3 PM came but there was no sign of bus. Using bus it will cost you only 3 bucks per person, otherwise the cab will charge you around $100. There were other people waiting for the same bus. Slowly they took the cab. But we stayed there waiting. Finally the bus showed and we went happily to our hotel (Quality Inn). The credit goes to Anshu for being persistent that we should wait for some more time. After changing we took the trolley and went to see Niagra. It was just amazing..
3) Selling our household items
4) Long flight from SFO to Kolkata
5) Stay in Kolkata
6) Stay in Darbhanga
7) Starting in Pune
PS: Since it is getting late for me i have not filled in the details. Intend to do it later.
