My Tenth Week of Internship

I have fallen in love with Austin. Frankly, it is because of this lovely City that I have been able to do so many things in the past. I started working out (well now on irregular basis yet there was a start) and I could quit smoking and I could enjoying partying again… the best of the city came about this weekend. But before that the things at work…

Monday was the Intern cultural event at Dell and we were supposed to cook something and take it to office. I realized it when I reached office and saw my calendar for the day. So, Abhishek and I decided that we will cook some Pakoras and take them. Having Mak's wife Arundhati at home really helped us a lot. Surprisingly, it was an all-desi affair it seemed, but for one Chinese and one Korean. Dude are we already number one in terms of intelligent population at least :)

The whole week was marked with executive lined up to speak with us. Starting with Ahmed Mahmoud, I met with Ron "the Moto Razr" Garriques, Don "the airline guy" Carty, Steve Price and Mike Cannon. I little search on these guys and you would know why I didn’t reply to your mails, why I didn’t write any blog and why I was so busy soul searching off late :) Mann… one thing is for sure, having such a battery of people to talk to sure is the best part of my work. And if this was not enough, I also happened to meet and ask questions from Mark Jarvis this week.

Now coming back to the lovely Austin, this Friday one of my friend Nikhil and another friend Shashank with his wife Shweta came from Dallas and we headed to Sixth right after playing some Beer Pong games! Saturday was booked for some fun and we went to Town Lake for some Kayaking. Unfortunately, our Kayak toppled because of my stupidity (I am trying too much I guess) and to my horror I was in water with two people (Shashank and Shweta ) that had no idea about swimming. All my assurances went light as I saw the horrified couple holding on to the Kayak. We floated for sometime until finally rescued by some people!!! Coming to think of it, I think it was a lot of fun for me… but for the fact that the whole responsibility thing :( … Decided to take the evening cool and went to play bowling… A bad first game followed by some cool 2,3 strike in a row game and I was back in the league.

If you are thinking Saturday's incident hampered my love for water sports, you are absolutely wrong as I headed for some tubing on Guadalupe river on Sunday. 3-4 hours of chillax tubing and I was so happy about myself. Also I could satisfy my craving for IHOP while coming back. As I went to sleep on Sunday, I could hear myself singing love songs for the Live Music Capital.

How to manage your career

This was incredible. This was probably after a long time that someone spoke so much sense to me in an hour's time and changed my perception so much. Steve Price, the speaker, is VP of HR at Dell and his presentation on "How to manage your career" really helped me a lot. So i thought why dont I share with you all and here are the six bullets that Steve had for us -

1. Have a point of view about your career - So many of us don’t know what they want to do, how is still far off and almost all of us know that whatever we plan we will do thing differently from that planning. However, having a point of view can at least lead us to make the right moves. So here is my vision statement - "I want to be an entrepreneur is next 10 years." I might take different, difficult path or even a longer time. But at least I have a vision and I would try to move towards that in whatever I am doing. So have a point of view and keep it broad enough to modify and narrow enough to get a direction. one thing that can really help you in choosing this is "why are you not doing so many other things" - Note down everything you hate about those jobs and then start narrowing the ones you chose and have similar attributes. Finally prepare what I call "A-Career Model"
   


2. Think Self Inc. - This is probably the most important take away for any one who has not thought about this. So here is one concept from past - "Do your work sincerely and the company will take care of you" (I guess this is only relevant in context of Mafia now a days…or may be not even there). Now this concept worked very well for the generations before us. When Capitalism, Socialism and Communism were co-existing in the world, and each was trying to prove one is better than other. In today's capitalist world - I see this fallacy hurting too many hardworking employees. Steve talked about his father and I was thinking about my Dad the same time. "No the company will not take care of you, you will have to take care of yourself" and having understood this the next step is to think about "Self Inc". Think of yourself as a company, as a product and try to sell it. My pitch reads something like this these day "I am a creative problem solver and a transformational manager who understands technology well enough to solve business problems" and I know this is bad, but I am working on it big time. And here is how I am planning to work on this - Mind you this is my own 3X3 model for Self Inc. (which has not been used by anyone thus far and so I don’t know how useful this will be)
   Three Story - Three Versions Model
   
   For my boss For my friend For my Mom
   30 Minute Narration .....
   5 Minute Story .....
   1 Minute Pitch .....
   
   I think once I am done with the above-said exercise I will be good to go anywhere and everywhere.
   
3. Follow your passion - Yes, and this is not too hard really. Many people have said it in many ways. The gist is do not do something for which you are not passionate, for people will see that and you will be tagged failure for no reason of yours. Keep that practical aspect of earning your living aside… if you are reading this and thinking seriously about your career chances are you don’t need a job you really need a career.
   
4. Focus on building your career portfolio - You have this wonderful opportunity and you are think what should you do next. Let me show you this diagram before I say anything -
   
   So now that you have decided on following this 2X2 for making quick decisions, let me show you another tool that can help you a great deal and I call it skill-fit portfolio management.
   

5. Own your career - Let me step back a bit and go to the "Career Manager" concept at Evalueserve. It was an interesting concept taken as it is from McKinsey like many of the other processes. But what's funny is that I managed more careers outside the 10-15 odd analysts assigned to me. In fact I never mentored these 15 and 100s other in the company used to come to me for advice. 6 of these 15 people left the firm later and I didn’t even know where the hell they went and for what reasons. Most of them lied to me during our meetings, made sure I give them a good ratings and present their cases well in front of management. BTW what happened to the people that didn’t lie. Let me ask this to you. There is this great analyst working under you and he is about to be promoted and move ahead… would you ever like to loose him… ??? The concept of career management was a recipe for disaster now that I look back. Sure you need guides, but no one is more responsible for owning your career as you are. I was asking my mentees to work hard when I was preparing essays for my B-School. At the same time, my managers wanted me to stick with my employment when they knew an MBA will be great for me! Oh BTW here is what one of my mentors at Dell had to say -
   "Have at least 5 mentors any time. Two inside the firm and three outside. Believe it or not it is the outside mentors who will ask you to stick with the firm and learn more before you make a switch!" and on one other occasion...
   "Also have three people in your life - one a senior, one a peer and one a junior - they will really help you grow in your life"
   
6. Be prepared "Life Changes" - And you don’t have to be a 2001 or 2002 graduate to know this (of course if you are one then it helps to understand this even more)… however this is even more important for you working people. At times we are so stuck up in the day to day roles that we forget the world beyond. You may be the best person in your role but if there is somewhere someone doing it cheaper companies will desert you… so automation, outsourcing, in fact the changes in market forces are key factors. Be aware of them and keep adding new skill set to yourself. Every 3 months stop and see what did you achieve in the last quarter. The Sunday post the Q-end is probably the best time for this.

So having said all these, remember to work on these three components day in day out - Transactional (day to day activities - will earn your bread), Strategic Business Initiatives (business plans, done by some one else some where else and you champion them - will earn you rewards), and Innovation and improvement (deep thinking, your ideas, your business, strictly to your work - will earn you respect).

My Ninth Week of Internship

Overall a great week and I am beginning to enjoy my time here now… pity it is happening so late. Went to San Antonio on Tuesday and visited Six Flags. Seeing those huge rides reminded me of the Acrophobic person I have become off late and boye did I not scream on those level 1 rides. Anyways rain then spoiled it all for us as all the rides were shut off in no time after lunch. So far so good… coming to claiming it, I would have gone to all those rides if it were not shutoff due to rains :) … Anyways the rains also spoiled any chances of our going to River Walk or for the San Marcos malls. Good thing was - as we spent the entire day in San Antonio, it was a 4 working day week once again :) (Okay okay for all my friends in I-Banking internships … I am working really hard some of these days - such as going at 9:30 AM and coming back at 7:30 PM!!!)

As for the work, I have started working more around the ideas of working in Analytics. Probably one of the best places for me as I love numbers, business problems and working on solutions… pretty generic you may say - but let me also add I like to work in isolation for most of the time and I am geeky by nature. I talk to numbers in dark and I hate to sleep over problems. Add all these and you would want me in Analytics for whatever life I have.

Anyways, I also met with some very interesting people this week. Starting with my meeting with Richard first. An academia turned corporate Richard is an expert on Taxonomy. Click here to see his profile on LinkedIn. Sensing that I would join at the same level from B-School as him, really made me feel bad for him and boy I was thoroughly unprofessional when I mentioned this to him. Anyways, It was great to hear his thoughts on PhD, academia, his past experiences and then about his new role.

I also got to meet with Michigan Alums this week at the University of Michigan meet. Its funny how we were discussing about Michigan snowfall and how weird this summer has been in Austin than talking about any serious job related thing. Also, how the talks then shifted to how we beat MSU in number of people attending the event… I guess that is Michigan for you. Another interesting meeting was with a family friend working here. After discussing work related stuff for around an hour in that accentized language, it was but hilarious how we shifted to Jaatu as soon as we started discussing about our villages and childhood :) Both these events tell me the roots are hard to change no matter where you are and whatever you do.

Came Friday, and I headed off to Dallas to meet Nikhil and Shashank. Nikhil was my class mate in high-school and I met him after 10 good years and yet it seemed as if we hadn't changes a bit. Celebrating his birthday over the weekend, I went to his funny place called Abacus. More on that here. Spent my weekend in and around Dallas and came back to Austin on Sunday evening. Once again happy to be in small Austin when compared to the high profile Dallas.

My Eighth Week of Internship

This was a happening week in all respects. Went to bowling games, to lakes, to parties, to meetings, almost everywhere. So much so, that I took full rest on Sunday and didn’t go anywhere. Highlights for the week included -

Tuesday - Bowling Game - Seriously my score had taken a hit ever since I have been here. I had been scoring 150+ consistently off late and suddenly it went to sub 120s in my first two games in Austin and I lost my sleep. The spare-king (as I would have loved to call myself given my very high conversion on spare pins) was suddenly out of touch … even on the simple single pins in corners, in middle… everywhere. And so I went to Bowling again this Tuesdays and started slow with the right weight, right posture, right release… basics really… and then I did it - Scored 168 finally :)

Thursday - Cocktail Party and Salsa - Phew… I hate when this happens to me… I had been waiting for sometime for this Thursday so that I can go out with my team and they all dropped in the last minute. I was feeling pretty miserable until this new member in our team saved the day for me by agreeing to come over. Still far for the best thing - But I still went and sat in the corner - not bothering to talk with anyone while I enjoyed my Sam Adams. Things got worse from there as I headed to down town for Salsa classes. I was told that you don’t need a partner and I happily paid for the classes and then I saw all these pairs dancing to glory as I stood in the corner… duhhh… I so much wanted to drink more… Alas I decided to come back and sleep

Friday - Austin Bats and Sixth Street - Read More here.

On the work front I met a lot of people this week to discuss the opportunities here. However the most notable of them was Lunch with COC team. For once I felt as if I know why things are happening the way they are and this information itself seems so enlightening.

Weekend - Saturday and Sunday were full chill out days - Didn’t Do anything :)

My Seventh Week of Internship

Key things this week at work -

• Getting busy with analysis spending hours staring at those huge files of data
• Working on various creative ideas to analyze the report
• Still another week with 4days :)

Outside Work -

• Out of cash for the first time in US - with more than $6,000 in cheques sitting at home, I was out of money in my TCF account and this meant getting over $400 as service charges @ $33 per transaction from the idiots for all the transactions I was making. So, when I bought a gum of 99 cents I ended up paying $33.99 for that because my account didn’t have sufficient funds. The worst hit day was Thursday when I forgot to take those last $20 from the trouser I was wearing on Wednesday… reached office and then came the best shot… why on earth does the team lunch had to be cancelled this Thursday only!!! Anyways survived the ordeal with one of my friend depositing the cheques in Michigan finally :(
• Watched/celebrated the 4th of July - Went to Zilker park to see the fireworks. Fun time.
  Roamed around Austin on Saturday - Saw Capitol finally and went around other parts of Austin.
• Cases and resumes - Worked on some cases on the banks of Lake Austin and redid my resume to include the MAP and Dell experience.
• BTW forgot to mention all this while - I have been back to regular swimming now :)

My Sixth Week of Internship

Done with the sixth week and I celebrated the half-way mark this week end. So much done and so much more that can be done :)

The important activities around the week included a Round Rock Express Game on Monday. Supposedly Dell has paid some 2 million for 5 years of marketing deal with Express and it is no wonder the diamond is called Dell Diamond. However, when the team you are supporting shows you a no-hitter game you better be prepared to cheer for something else and this time we did cheer for something else, our schools. So in the shout-off among schools, Umich was adjudged joint-first along with … I don’t know which school :) On Tuesday, I went for the Associate for the day program and spent half day on shop floor. It was after a long time that I was with these machines, finding my way out of the assembly line mazes. So we spent some good time understanding the entire process and then started working on the putting the parts required in boxes. I guess it was a light day and the slowness of the entire system thanks to parts not available was making things even lighter. However one of the person did comment that I was good at the work :) Oh BTW you can read this to know more about the process at Dell.

With rest of the week being part of usual here, the weekend came out to be good (again!). Played beer pong on Friday and Saturday, went to gym on all days and practiced some cases with others. With my PC in bad shape I was not able to do much of the surfing at home but I did manage to finally burn all my data in to DVDs and I am prepared to send that on Monday. For those of you wondering why am I not replying to your emails - well don’t have access is the short answer.

My Fifth Week of Internship

The week started with a big bang of having an opportunity to attend Michael's presentation. Well it is not always you get to meet someone in the list of Forbes richest men and this one was definitely special for the shear amount of growth Dell has had in the last few years. There were a lot of questions related to the recent changes in Dell, both on corporate level and strategic level and it was good to hear the leader taking a "I believe" stance. However, what caused me the most surprise was that in an organization spawned on Michael's entrepreneurial ideas - there has been no big names coming even close to the high command. Anyways, the positive thinking was surely reflecting in the entire meeting.

On the work front, things were finally moving and I was able to hit the cracks a little harder this week. On Friday, I had a one-on-one with Mike Rosenstein, Director for Global Tech Product Mgmt, and it was a great experience in short. We discussed about our project and it seemed he was really impressed and interested there. Talking about Dell in general it was good to understand that the executives realize the challenges and opportunities at Dell and are concerned to make a change.

I think of two things when it comes to changes at this 80,000+ man-powered elephant:

1. Finding information here is like finding "a needle in the hay stack"
2. And trying to execute something really require championing your ideas (Reminds me of this - "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world" - Archimedes)

The weekend was pretty productive this time - We were able to finally sit down and do some case practice. Man!! Was I not rusty this time. Anyways, I am finally able to get some dirt out of my analytical side. Gym routine is going fine in to the fourth week and I am happy to say that I am really beginning to enjoy the experience. On Saturday evening, we went to do some community services organized by Keep Austin Beautful at Stephenson Preserve as a part of our internship experience at Dell. Well mulching in the rain was not the best way to show interest in community and I was horrified to see the conditions of my shoes later. The night was "King Pong" tournament (Beer Pong) at Mak's place and I was happy to get on the third spot. Boye it was a crazy night :)

Watched Ocean's 13 on Sunday - Decent movie - I guess you start expecting things in a particular fashion in these sequels and this was no different (but for the fact that this was much more hilarious/humorous). Also watched Cheeni Kum and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom - enjoyed both of them. However the music for "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom" rocks!

My Fourth Week of Internship

Well two major things happened during the week at large - one I finally got a go-ahead for my KM project and second we went to Lake Travis on a Dell Sponsored welcome party on Wednesday afternoon! Now I know how much fun it is to be at the barge along with 50+ more people on an afternoon but then to be paid for that is shear orgasmic :) (pity they didn’t have any beer that day… never mind)

The weekend was pretty happening too - Friday was an all-boy hangout and with one of my intern friend (Abhishek Mitra) celebrating his birthday, Saturday also happened to be one. Went to sixth street and as Abhishek wanted to have some chilling time at Coyote Ugly (please use discretion while opening this link) we let the "Bad Boy" have some fun. After a lot of club-hopping at 2 o'clock we finally decided to head back. Sunday was a relaxing day after the week's hard work ;)

By the way, I think I forgot to mention this earlier that I have been trying to be pretty regular to gym these days. Finally, there is some reason to head back from office early and not feeling guilty about it!

My Third Week of Internship

The fun has just started to begin. I started working on my first project last week and by the end of this week it seems to be almost nailed. So when my mentor asked me how long will it take me to do this and the surprise he showed when I said "Two weeks" … Now I think I need to slow it down even further.

Monday-Thursday were all boring stuff with nothing much happening besides project work and a lot of reading. The only good thing happened all this while was the team lunch on Thursday and I had my tummy stuffed to the brim on this occasion. Came Friday and I tool off - yes this was the third week in a row that I would not be working for a 5 day/week. Compare this to my I-Banking friends who are spending most of their Sundays at work working till 2 A.M!

So what did I do - well here is a small itinerary -

Friday - Went to these beautiful dry caves in San Marcos, 35 miles South of Austin, called Wonder World Caves. These caves formed due to seismic activities between the two tectonic plates that form Texas state and divide the whole state in to two almost equal halves. It was great to see the earthquake from inside (almost 160 ft deep). The funniest part though was to go to the near by wild park and feeding Dears!

After spending some time there, went to Barsana Dham, a temple/aashram in the south of Austin. In case you are wondering since when this Atheist has gone believers way… wait till you hear this. Barsana Dham is supposed to be one of the largest Hindu temple in the States (probably after Swami Narayan Temple in Illinois. Strangely enough, I travelled on Route 59 all the way here and still missed that one… may be this time when I go back I will see this.

Saturday - The best day here so far. The lazy day started when I got up way past 11 and headed for Café Mozart around noon after having my brunch. After having a nice hot coffee on the cool deck near Lake Austin, we headed for a walk on the nearby trail - which we soon realized was meant for Dogs only! From there we went to Windy Point on Lake Travis and I simply could not resist the temptation to jump in the water anymore :) Having spent some time there, we went to restaurant Oasis and this time we didn’t have to wait at all to get some nice seats near lake. Boy isn't this place beautiful… and rocking as we soon realized as we headed to Sixth Street in the evening. Going to an 18+ club was not the best ways to enjoy the evening, but I didn’t mind much after such an eventful time. The only thing that troubled me was that music was all Latino and I could not get a single word of the songs we were dancing on… Night was young and bright but tiredness finally loomed over me as I headed home from there… but not before dancing Bhangra on Latino music!

Sunday - I was dead thus far and yet wanted to do so much more… went to this Pakistani restaurant for lunch and after a gave a little "why Pakistani restaurants are not good for business" I realized how corrupt my brain has become off late with the problem analysis business. Anyways, I didn’t count the poor food quality in to it and I was rightly corrected. A lazy start for the day turned further lazier with Sun glazing in its full glory on this June day… Hitting the pool seemed to me the best idea and so I did… Sure I survived thanks to my Pigments :) In the evening went over to some friends place and played few rounds of Poker before letting all-in and getting all-out! Also met a batch-mate from IIT (Ashutosh Chakraborty) after four years and man it was fun to remember the sad-loonie days of IIT. Tried to sleep early… Alas the thoughts surrounding … 'its going to be a long week" didn’t help much :)

My Second Week of Internship

Well after spending the weekend, which included Monday (memorial day holiday) as well this time, lazing and gazing around... I thought second weekend of my internship will be fun. After all I had my computer with me now! Alas… this wasn't supposed to be the case. So on Tuesday morning, when for some strange reasons I was feeling too tired to go to office, when my mentor gave me a list of projects (yes projects!) to be done this summer, I was least excited. However, hiding that I ended up reading some white papers on the search engine on the net. Trust me reading in your new office is not all that fun. First of all you don’t know how much others know so you tend to read more than required. Secondly, at the end of the day you hesitate to share your learning for the fear of sounding trivial… and last but the most important thing is that you don’t have anything to show as productive at the end of the day. However, I decided to showcase my knowledge and asked some questions at the end of the day (for some strange reasons my mentor thought them to be "Great"… now that’s one adjective I am most afraid of… it is okay? good? Or simply confusing… never mind! Wednesday and Thursday again went by in more reading and more questions. To add to this, I have been to these funny events organized by the HR team here - Rooftop party at 6 in the evening (when it is crazily hot here and you have to keep smiling all the while to avoid any suspicions from HR that you are not enjoying your project) and Ice-cream socials (where the HR team-member kept of rambling about the ice-cream vendor - how she started, how they serve, how many shops are there, how have they expanded… and yes it is Authentic Austin… in the end it turned out to be good for a Kroger Chocolate Vanilla combination). By the way, I forgot to mention that so far my third project (of which I have no clue so far) has been changed twice already! So came Friday this was and came the big launch night and oh boy that was fun…

So to build the context here, we update our website twice a year and Friday, June 1st was that time of the year. My mentor asked me if I am interested to see things, and seeing some opportunity for excitement, I readily agreed. Little did I know about that… Accepting that offer meant I get Friday whole day off and I had to show up at 10 in the night to office - thus staying till 6 in the morning of Saturday night!!! There goes my plans for the Friday night partying… on top of that spending the whole day doing nothing once again was not to cool either. What did I do - actively searched for the friends I have lost touch with on Orkut (yes and why else you wonder that I have suddenly added 200 friends in my list!!!)… At 10 in the night the office was sort of alive (much alive than at 5 PM on most of the days)… and people started testing the applications of which I had no clue. So I sat in the corner of that meeting room and as I was rightly suggested by my manager to bring my laptop there, I made full use of the same by learning things that have troubled me the most ever since I have come here - Baseball, Poker and Golf. After reading about then for around 5 hours - when I suddenly felt the feeling of - "I know kung-fu" (Matrix I)… I started searching for some articles on TV programs, Economists views on Child Labor, how to plan a trip on east-cost etc etc. It was a fun night finally. I think the most important thing for today was to find the freakonomics blog today. It is really a great evening read once you are done with the work. Anyways, I will come to that sometime later… so having spent my entire time with that, search finally went live at 4 AM and I did my bits by running some test cases. At 6, I was done and over with everything I wanted to know and came home.

When your weekend starts on the note of "I need to go to bed now" it is harder to sleep and you cant even call anyone for fun at 6 AM in the morning! So I went back home and straight away went to the pool. Swam for a good hour or so and the chlorine effect further delayed my sleep by a good 3 hours! My body was almost swaying with tiredness and I simply could not catch any sleep… watching "Ek Chaalis ki Last Local" finally helped.

The summary of the weekend - Swimming pool (3 hours), Grocery Shopping (2 hours), and a wonderful tour to Lake Travis and dinner at Downtown (Good Saturday evening)… By the way on Saturday, while roaming around these lakes around Austin, I finally realized what a beautiful place Austin really is (thank goodness for that)!!!

My First Week of Internship

It has been almost a week I have been here and life still is moving at a snail’s pace. At the end of the first day of orientation, I met with my manager for the global online division. Interestingly my mentor was coming on Wednesday only so I was lined up for some meeting in his absence to get some idea of the division. Also, interestingly, I was told I would have my laptop by next week only, which essentially means I as a summer intern of Global “Online” division of “Dell” would not be able to do anything!!!

Damn!!! Tuesday was still fine with the meeting lined up for me; however I was bored to death on Wednesday… save alone the arrival of my mentor. I went to a few meeting with him as I didn’t have anything else to do and was almost dozing off there. Thank goodness I was carrying loads of books with me all this while from Delhi to Mumbai to Ann Arbor and now to Austin. Finished 2 books in 2 days and got paid for that as well. What more can one ask for in such circumstances! And as if Murphy’s law wasn’t good enough to explain things here, we have a big weekend to start here with Monday off. God only knows how much I need a break right now… so be it. Met with a few friends here but spent most of my time watching movies at home. I need to start working pretty soon :(

And miles I went before I slept...

One of the things that have fascinated me for a long time was to drive long distances and though I had been traveling some long distance in India (trips being from Delhi to Rishikesh and one to Chandigarh recently… okay stop laughing now)… I had been looking forward to an opportunity to do the cross country for once.

Well I had planned one all India trip some time back before coming to B-School but I could never find a company to take it to execution. However, this time I was determined to go all the way from Canada border to Mexico border no matter what… I asked a few friends to join me as I take my car to Austin from Ann Arbor, but as luck would have it all of them got out one way or the other. So was I ready to call it off… No way here and I started my 1400 miles journey on my own (well for our Indian readers it is slightly more than Delhi – Bangalore Distance!)

I started on Friday, May 18, in early morning (11 AM to be more precise) and as I had decided to split my journey in two days with break at Memphis, I thought of covering 750 miles on Friday and remaining 650 Sunday after taking a day off in Memphis with my cousin. The 750 miles were further split in to three stretches – first one being after 300 miles near Indianapolis, next after 550 miles near St. Louis and finally at Memphis. However, as I started my journey, I was tempted to go on and on.

After taking my first break after crossing Indiana, I just didn’t feel like stopping. Of course the scenes in the way and the mileage of the car did help me to continue. In fact, one of the most memorable moments was to cross the Mississippi river between Illinois and Missouri. As I was crossing the bridge, the shear force of water underneath the bridge made my heart skip a beat of two and though the speed sign still said 65 miles an hour I could not stay on more than 50. For Indians, rivers have always had a mystery attached to them; however I had not seen something this big ever before. Gosh, it was hard to believe having seen the state of Ganges in Kanpur recently when it seemed nothing more than a canal. Even in Rishikesh, I have seen some people driving motor boats along the river; but seeing motor boats running from one bank to another was something I am sure not many Indians can digest easily. Anyways, after completing whole 450 miles in a record time (the distance equal to Delhi – Bhopal Journey), I finally reached Memphis at 10 PM local time. Some of the facts of the entire day –

Miles Covered – 750
States Covered – Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee
Major Cities – Indianapolis, St. Louis, Memphis

The Second Phase

It always seems easy to do less in the second phase; however the biggest hurdle becomes the boredom and lack of surprises. I had been chatting with myself for a long time now on the road and finally as I started to bore myself, I found something really occupying and this time it wasn’t Cowboys or Horse of Texas, it was the Texas Traffic. This leg of 650 miles was split between two states only, Arkansas and Texas, with one major stretch on I-30 being more than 320 miles. So as I was getting ready to cover this stretch and reach Dallas, I was illuminated with the truth of American city traffic; which I had been missing all this while in our small town of Ann Arbor, and there by I had been posting blogs on how different and difficult it is to drive in India. Sorry about that and here is the story – I was heading towards exit 44 on I30 from exit 48 (which means 4 miles of distance) and seeing 1:30 PM on my watch I was smiling to have covered so much in such a short time… so much so that I was thinking of reaching to Austin at around 4 (much ahead of my scheduled arrival at 5)… and suddenly I saw a whole sea of cars stopped in front of me… and on this highway with speed limits of 65 miles an hour it took me slightly more than an hour to cover 4 miles!

The journey there on was engrossing from the fact that I was constantly in the middle of this sea of traffic and getting my way forward was becoming increasingly difficult. Sooner I realized another fact about Austin. No matter how accurate your map may be, it is always difficult to find your way here and I lost my sense of direction in no time. Thankfully I had phone number of a friend of mine who had volunteered to help me in case I get lost and as he sat in front of his computer, it still took us nearly an hour to finally reach to my apartment from the nearest exit… phew!!! Even after reaching my apartment, things didn’t work out the way I would have like. From 1212 apt I searched all the way to finally reach at 2121… in between I had to call a few people to check my emails and as my phone gave up, I tried to get my computer hook on to some insecure wireless connection… got my way around the pressed shift key (my comp has this funny habit of getting the shift key on when I need it the most… those stupid practices of keeping numerals in your passwords are so crazy in these times)… all said and done I was home and on my bed at 7:00 PM… after completing a great journey all alone!

Miles Covered – 650
States Covered – Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee
Major Cities – Hope (Birth place of President Clinton), Dallas, Austin