Waking up....

I had a wonderful time chatting with my friend V (who is also a neighbor) until almost 2am last night. We met after the kids slept, and since we don't get to spend such time often after the daughter was born, we made the most of it. We exchanged a lot of verbal diarrhea, as she puts it - LOL!!!!

As a result....I slept in till late this morning. Fortunately, the daughter did so too. She woke up around 9am....and saw me sleeping next to her. She came and snuddled (snuggle+cuddle :)), caressed my cheeks, and then, very gently, she kissed me on my forehead.

I was in heavenly bliss. I did not want to open my eyes. I wanted this to continue and never end.

She waited, gazing at me, then took my palms, kissed them and placed them on her cheeks.

She then softly said, "Mumma" "Mummayo" "Mummyyyyy" - and waited.

I slowly opened my eyes, and there she was, snuddled up right next to me, giving me the sweetest smile that exists on this planet.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't scoop and gobble her all up.

My hubby just said - #1

I took inspiration of the post title from here: http://www.howtobeadad.com/category/my-wife-just-said

I just bought a huge bag of cuties from Costco and wanted to have a couple. I saw the bag was already open, so I knew the husband would have had some the previous day. So I asked him:

Me: "How do these cuties taste"?
Hubby: "They taste just as cute as me"!

LOL!!!!!

The husband has a great sense of humor....talks less, but cracks hilarious one liners often. I'll start posting them here in this series :)!

{this moment} Going confidently in the direction of her dreams.....

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember" - SouleMama

I absolutely LOVE this picture I took earlier this week. I nailed down the composition I had in mind, which made me very happy :). I edited the picture - changed to B/W + warmify....slight crop to remove a guy from the left.

Having traveled all over India by trains while growing up, I have a huge fascination of train tracks. They just set my mind wandering to amazing places. I have fond memories from all my train journeys that I took with my family in India. Looking at the picture above refreshed those memories and made me feel nostalgic!

{this moment} Giggling away

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember" - SouleMama

Just a typical evening in our house :) :)!

11 years at INTC

I vividly remember my first day at Intel, attending the New Employee Orientation workshop, 11 years ago today. It was my dream to get a job at Intel, and I achieved it within months of coming to the US. I started out as an Intern, at the small Sacramento campus, as a test engineer. I was extremely lucky to find a group which took me in as a family, nurtured my technical skillset, and appreciated the hard work, sincerity n personality that I brought with me as a fresh graduate. I still work with some of these people - we followed each other as we moved groups, and we blend so well as a team. Some have become my family in the US, and take care of me like their daughter. I feel very lucky and blessed to have begun my career with such wonderful individuals.

Since then, I have switched many job profiles, and have moved from the test side of things to being an architect. I landed into my current role by great recommendations and lots of luck....and it's a role which is very tough to get into. I have a very challenging job, as I mostly work on next generation technologies (none of which I can share publicly here), but it is very rewarding as well. Nothing that I work on can be googled - very little of it can be referenced from elsewhere. Inspite of so much experience on my resume, I am still a junior member on the team, with only one new college grad hired recently.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my professional life all these years. I've gotten promotions when I deserved them. When I was single, I worked hard and played hard. I put in long hours of work and sometimes worked weekends, but I traveled quite a bit as well, and always found time for exercise or sports. After getting married, I learnt to balance better. After becoming a mom, I switched to a reduced work-week and at the moment, I feel I have a very good work-life balance going on. Intel has supported me very well during these transitions. I have always managed to take as much time off as needed, and I have also put in extra time when the project demands it.

Intel is also a great place to work for the outstanding benefits it provides to its employees. From an excellent retirement program & Sabbatical every 7 years (which is 8 weeks of paid leave in addition to the 4 weeks off you get each year) to discounts for virtually everything, to amazing programs organized at each site - a top-class gym with 24x7 access, onsite Spa, fun quarterly events (our last one was a cricket game that I organized for my mostly non-Indian team), winter parties, summer carnivals, free tickets to movies and various shows...the list could go on and on. During the recession years, it was not so good. We even had to pay for the disposable water/coffee cup, but things have definitely gotten way better since then.

Intel is also known to have a peculiar work culture. Lots of meetings, lots of documentation, lots of power points - they say it moves slowly. Some of it is true....because we are such a large company. However, in recent years, the focus has been to be nimble and agile. There are many folks who have never worked elsewhere (like me), so people coming from outside of Intel have issues fitting in. I feel its more of their problem than ours, as we have an open door policy w.r.t all issues, and positive changes are welcome if influenced and approached in the right manner.

In recent years, the company has also put a lot of focus on hiring, and retaining diversity candidates - women being one of them. Special incentives are given if a diversity candidate is hired to the referring employee, and women are given much more flexibility and leave options to be able to retain their positions when they go out on maternity leave. A lot more needs to be done, but the progress in recent years has been very encouraging.

Many people ask me, Isn't it boring after so many years? Honestly, I rarely feel that way. It's because we have so many choices to do different things within the same company. It's a matter of making those choices and changes happen. If I were to keep switching companies, I would not get the flexibility I currently have with a flexible reduced schedule, where I feel I am as much of a mommy (maybe more) to my toddler as a valuable asset to Intel. I would also lose the benefits that I have piled upon so far in terms of retirement, stock, paid leave, maternity time-off, etc. Not to mention - each new place comes with its own challenges. Being within the company for so long, and having such a wide network of people that know me (&vice-versa), it is easier to switch groups and roles when the time comes. Getting recommendations for yourself is easy, and getting feedback on the new role and manager/colleagues is also easy.

At this stage of my life, I need the balance and flexibility, more than anything else. And I'm happy that my current company understands and provides that to me. When change is meant to happen, it will!

I'm truly grateful for my professional journey so far....I hope it continues on the same positive path.

Here's to many more successful years in the semiconductor industry!

{this moment} Aquadoodling

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember" - SouleMama

The daughter received an Aquadoodle as one of her Christmas Gifts from our friend A. She has fallen in love with it (I love it too). It requires only water and imagination, and it's loads of fun. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a toddler.

Half Dome and Free Soloing

Out of the several National Parks that I have visited in the US, Yosemite is the closest one to my heart. You have to visit it more than once to relate to my feeling about this majestic place. I have visited the park several times, and have explored most of it. But I can go back here in a heart beat, and I always find Yosemite very inviting.

During my first visit in Spring 2000, I went with a bunch of college friends. I knew nothing about Yosemite back then. The trip was entirely planned by seniors, and I just tagged along. We hiked Vernal and Nevada Falls along the Mist Trail, and stayed in tents at Curry Village. I remember soaking my legs in the hot bath tub water for 3 days upon returning from the hike. But, I fell in love with the place, and could not wait to return.

The next time, I visited with a bunch of guys, and we decided to camp out in tents in the brutal cold Thanksgiving weather. We used up all the wood we had on the first night itself to keep us from freezing to death, and were hardly able to sleep all night, so we abandoned our plans to camp a second night, and headed back home. We did not hike much during this trip, but got a taste of camping.

During one trip with the hubby, we decided to visit Glacier Point at sunset, and realized that it was a no-moon day, and a stargazing night was planned at Glacier Point. We decided to be a part of it, and I cannot describe in words how amazing our experience was. The ranger led us through a series of steps towards conditioning our eyes before we started viewing the stars. There were dozens of amateur astronomers out there with expensive telescopes and had set them up for viewing the Milky Way. I saw Jupiter, our beautiful moon, the planet Saturn as well as its rings and hundreds of other stars. It was all free. Even without the telescope, if you looked up into the sky, it felt like watching a spectacular fireworks display. With Half Dome staring at you naked in your face, miles away from the nearest city lights, a pitch dark night sky never looked so beautiful and wonderful to me. We only left because we could not bear the cold anymore. It was a memorable experience.

Speaking of Half Dome, 8842 feet - one of my most memorable, challenging, and longest hikes was hiking to the top of Half Dome. It was an ~18 miles round trip hike (including the distance we hiked from the parking lot to the trail-head to/fro), with an elevation gain of 5000 ft. My friend H and I started driving from home at 2am to Yosemite. We reached around 6am, and after having breakfast, we started our hike close to 7am. After a long and tiring hike, passing through Vernal and Nevada Falls and then the long winding stretch of wilderness in between, we reached the base of the dome. My friend H had hiked once before to the top, and did not feel like doing it again. But I really really wanted to climb the cables to the top. Somehow I convinced him to accompany me. H had knots in his legs while climbing the cables, and had to have a climber below him massage his legs before we could move on. But, WE DID IT!

In the above picture, I am taking rest just before reaching to the base. You can see the steady stream of climbers (who look like ants) climbing the cables to the top of Half Dome.

And in the picture below, I am at the TOP. It was an amazing feeling and an extraordinary view from up there. All the aches and pains melted away with the view. I felt alive from within.

We soaked in the view, rested a bit, had a snack, and then started our descent. We had a long way back, and we wanted to complete our hike before sunset. I forgot to mention earlier, that I was not in any great physical condition before attempting this hike. I had just returned from a month long trip to India, where I had pigged out on my mommy's food to my hearts content, and had hardly exercised. I felt the pain of this during our descent, and would have been in much better shape coming back if I was fitter. A few minutes after hiking back from the base of the rock, we lost our way and ended up on a horse trail. We had company (hikers who decided to follow us blindly), and after much panic, we found our way back to the main hiking trail. With help from strangers (a couple from Europe who offered to walk with us with their head lights) and God's grace, we successfully finished our hike and returned back home that night with no broken bones or bruises - and just the kind of aches that feel like sweet pain after accomplishing such a feat.

Here is a short video of my descent....I am almost at the bottom of the rock near the base. 

I am truly a traveler at heart. Adventures (and adventurers) fascinate me, they inspire me. There are many modern day adventurers who I admire and whose journey I follow - Roz Savage (who I have met and blogged about here), Jordan Romero (who, at 15 years of age, just set a world record for climbing all the 7 summits of the world), Neal Petersen (who I have met as well), and many many others.

Today, I chanced upon Alex Honnold, and the art of Free Soloing. I watched this video....it is 24 minutes long, but well worth the time.....

He climbed the Northwest Face of Half Dome SOLO - no ropes, no harness, no protective gear, no FEAR - just sheer determination and focus and skill (and maybe a little bit of luck). He has done several other free solo climbs. He is a local lad, hailing from Sacramento, and went to the same high school that several of my friends' kids have attended.

Needless to say, my half dome hike which took me 12+ hours seems petty in front of this guy's accomplishments.

It's so inspiring to see humans accomplish such feats, which were once thought impossible. It shows us that there are no limits to what you can achieve. You can always push yourself to do better. You should dream big. You should always believe in yourself and trust your instincts to guide you.

Don't just waste this precious time and life that has been given to you as a gift....do something meaningful with it. Travel to new places. Experience different cuisines and cultures. Read new books. Take up new hobbies. Make new friends.  Give time as a volunteer to those who need it desperately. And do it NOW. Don't wait - you never know if there will be a tomorrow.

And then see how you feel from within - I bet amazing!

I will end this post by quoting Les Brown, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars :)"!

And Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 

And this from anonymous: "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming - "WOW - What a Ride!"

And this last quote from the book on Steve Jobs that I am currently reading: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out the inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."