Its been four weeks since I joined Adobe and I thought its a nice time to recap the new experience. The major part is typical to any job/place switch : tons of new people, tons of new places and food joints, new lifestyle. There was a trip to to this beautiful place Chail and meetings with lots of new friends. So here are the things I felt/experienced.
Adobe and Noida: Adobe’s office is perhaps the most imposing building in its vicinity. So its natural that some coolness is attributed to it. I spent a good part of the first week knowing Adobe’s history ( which is a real wow!!). Its a shame that they do not make much money despite having some of the best and ubiquitous technologies with them. Hope that changes in the coming years. Apart from that, I was given the task of reading these absolutely beautiful tutorials on pdf ( Oh, I forgot to mention that I work for the Acrobat team). During the orientation, stalwart Naresh Gupta gave a wonderful speech on the history as well as the future of Adobe. One sentence sums the future : Cloud, Mobile and Social Computing are the future. My first impression of Noida (when I visited two years back) was that its a wonderfully planned urban locale with nothing to crib about. But after getting a closer look, I think its the place where extreme poverty and atrociously profligate lifestyles have come together and stand as testimony to the disparities that plague us (which partly explains the high crime rate, I guess). The sight of cars speeding by panting rickshaw-wallahs trying to cross the road before the light turns red somehow did not go down well with me. The weather, in comparison to Bangalore, is miserable (putting it mildly, that is). Now I know how tough it is to live in the North.
Trip to Chail : I have been lucky to be on a team trip within the first fortnight of my joining. We went to Chail, a small village thrown away in the hills near Solan. Its my first view of Himachal Pradesh. Chail is often termed a slice of heaven. May its not that big an exaggeration. Roads that wound around the hills like ornaments on a dame, Little homes sprinkled at random on the lush green surfaces of the mountains, Pine trees towering over you as if they were soldiers guarding the heritage from a bygone era, Clouds passing by you as if to say Good Morning.. the place is more a like a fairyland. Tolkien’s Hobbiton might come close 
. Apart from enjoying the serene beauty of nature I had some good time with the team games that went on. We won a treasure hunt and tug-of-war :O. I also learnt to play pool (my first pot was a reflection shot ) and cards. So overall, it was an absolutely amazing trip. On return, I got a glimpse of Chandigarh and can now appreciate why people from there are so much in love with their hometown.
The Work : As I already said, the stuff that Adobe has is really cool. The fact the Acrobat Reader and Flash Player are two of the most ubiquitous software should give an idea of that. However, what I do now and going to do in future is a sea change from what I have been doing. But I guess experience with giant-size teams, legacy code and highly evolved software development processes is a very good skill addition. Of course, I am having some good fun outside work too. I went to the golden jubilee meeting at Adobe’s ToastMasters Club, volunteered to make an impromptu speech and won the best speaker prize . I guess rambling on a lot of things frequently really helps.
There are lots of other things which are very exciting personally. My parents had our sweet little home renovated, I sent my Inspiron Desktop to home and put my parents on road to computer literacy (its the best feeling I had in recent times), My niece is absolutely in love with Alex The Lion of Madagascar ( a character I used to play to entertain her when she did not know of computers) and tons of other blessings of God that I could keep counting. I will save the other interesting things for future posts as I now seem to have time to blog more frequently.
. The QLC that started a year back is extended
