"Well, If you have done your Masters in Biochemistry.. I did mine in Botany"

Hmm, I am now considered a Senior Software Engineer in EMC ;-), but its really funny, cos I didn't do my engineering in Computer Science. My first job interview in chennai was really funny.

hmm I will continue this story..

I completed my Masters in Biological sciences from loyola & started to pursue my dream job - a researcher in a top ranking institute (IISC, TIFR) A master's from loyola was good enough to pursue research in entomology labs, but it wasnt good enough for biotech research labs. Adding to my ill-luck, the same year, the goverment came up with a new rule that "Students are eligible for a research fellowship only if they clear the CSIR Examination". No one in our batch had any clue on what the exam would be, and what would be required to pass the exam.

In parallel, my father signed up for the "golden handshake" - where one gets a lot of money in exchange for an early retirement plan(from State Bank Of India) My father always believed that a bank job carried a lot of benefits and he always wanted me to take up his position, eventhough the bank would only offer me a "cashier" position to begin with. For some odd reason, he thought that doing research was just a waste of time. ;-)

Well, in life, some lessons are learnt in a bitter way ;-) i wrote the CSIR examination 3 times, and every time the results came, i felt like i was searching a winning lottery ticket number in a paper. Inasmuch as i was headstrong to be a "researcher", I missed the Bank job and found myself at the mercy of cancer department(chennai) for an aid to continue my Ph.d.

I wanted to be more "independent" and so i decided to even try a marketing job in the evening hours. oh. this was really tough because you have to go door-to-door or office-to-office to market ANZ grindlays bank credit card. It was a time in chennai when no one really wanted to pay interest for credit cards ;-) and so it was very difficult to convince customers. So in order to get a Rs 3500/month salary, one has to complete 3 or 4 applications per day (which comes to around 63 applications - assuming 21 working days)

My father passed away on the month of december, and it became increasingly stressful cos we had to move back to a different location. hmm more bad news was just waiting..

i will be back to continue..(as usual)