1 / 3Moving to Chennai, Stint at Apple
Exactly 6 months after Nat left, I left my life in Kochi of Cricket, Football, and Unix Administration thanks to my warped idea of relationship and bruised ego and got myself internally transferred within Wipro to Chennai. By then, just like Min, she had stopped all contact with me. All I knew was she worked in the same company but in a different campus and I was hoping to bump into her, some day, somehow.
Career wise, that move to Chennai came as a great turning point. With Nokia in Kochi, I was doing Unix Administration. With this move, I saw an opportunity to potentially work on a Web based project. I found this internal movement within Wipro to Apple who were looking for a PHP developer. I went through a rigorous interview process which I cleared without much difficulty. All the previous experience I had as a PHP Developer prior to joining Wipro came of perfect use. If not for that little habit I had from my school, maybe I would have stayed in Kochi, and maybe my life would have turned out very differently.
Apple was one of Wipro's biggest clients. With the very real possibility of yet another failure in my relationship, I didn't want to leave my Career to chance. My work upgraded to using fancy machines like Mac Minis and MacBook pros. Their office had a really strong air conditioning to beat the Chennai heat. I worked with Engineers from both Wipro and Apple and I just found myself being at home there. Everything came to me so easily because I was already well versed with the Web. And I worked hard. I was allowed to take the work laptop home which in those days was unconventional. I saw it as a dream to be able to work for Apple so I put in a lot of effort. There were days when I didn't sleep or eat. There were days I didn't go home from work. I was basically now being paid for my addition.
Wipro also filed my H1B so as to be able move to Infinite Loop in California temporarily which unfortunately didn't go through 2 times back to back. While that went on, work forced me to make frequent trips to Bangalore where half of my immediate team sat. Travel came with nice perks like accommodation in 4-star hotels, food and travel expenses paid for.