A decade in the US
I have now officially been in the US for a decade. I still remember the day I first reached the US – 11/18/1998. As I start to think about the 10 years some good memories and some frustrating situations are flashing by. I arrived via Singapore on 11/18/1998 some time in the afternoon and my good friend Vikram was the airport to receive me. Leaving from the airport for the corporate apartment and stopping at Amarin thai for lunch – it was my first time outside of the country I was born and brought up in – India. I started working for Sun Microsystems as a contractor pretty much in a couple of weeks and after a year and 2 months I officially joined Sun Microsystems. I still remember being part of the first release of J2EE – J2EE 1.2 and the kind of team and schedules we had. That in my mind has been the best team and the best experience of my life in the professional world. As of this writing I am still with Sun Microsystems and still with the same group – Java EE and working on the next revision of the platform. A long time for a most people in the valley and have been through the ups and downs of the company.
On a personal front I got to travel the world both for work and for personal vacation both in and outside the US, got married to my beautiful and loving wife Preety and now we have a 20 month old daughter that is the apple of our eyes. My brother also moved to the US first to study for his masters and then to work
Some of the frustrating things personally has been the process for greencard processing. Most people who have lived in the US that long are citizens or on the way to becoming citizens. However for both me and my wife we have applications that are filed in June 2001 and February 2000 respectively and are still waiting for the USCIS to approve the application.
All in all I would say it has been an interesting ride and an interesting learning experience of living here in the US.