Going With The Flow

Surprising as this may sound to some folks, I am not one for planning. Sure, given a trip or some immediate task I'll do as much planning as the next guy (maybe a bit more), but when it comes to the "big" things in life, I am mostly likely to just go with the flow. Since I am wont to be less than generous about my motivations, I have generally put this down to laziness. Or perhaps even a reluctance to face facts and make hard decisions. If you just go with the flow, then you have to put in less work up front and there is less scope for disappointment.

I am curious - how widespread is this approach? Do most people have a "life plan?" Did you know what you wanted to do in your life, when you wanted to reach the traditional milestones (graduate, job, marriage, kids, house, etc)? How many people know today what they want to be doing 5 years from now, 10 years from now?

Much in my life seems to be the result of some accident and some of these have had a profound impact on how my life has evolved. A good example is how I got a job at Qualcomm. In late 1992 and early '93 the job market was bad, especially for non-residents who needed an H-1. So my search was mostly limited to the big names - Microsoft, Intel, etc. In those days on-campus interviews at Va Tech worked as follows: Companies would shortlist students for the interview from all the submissions they got. If all spots were not taken, anybody was free to sign-up for those spots on a first-come-first-served basis. This was only on one day of the week - Wednesday, I believe - and on that day, students would line up very early in the morning (sometimes as early as 3am) to ensure that they got the spot they wanted.

Now, one week in January '93, Mr.Murty (Vinay) wanted to sign up for some company, but he didn't have a car and it was too cold to walk to school. I had a car, but wasn't really interested in signing up, especially since I already had an interview with Intel lined up. Vinay gave me the hard sell (promised me a donut I think) and I went along. Even though we got there around 5am, there were already several people in line. After chatting with some of them I realized that all the spots for the company I was targeting would be gone by the time my turn came. I had to find an alternative, even if only to justify sacrificing my sleep and standing for 3 hours in the cold. I went over the list again, but couldn't identify any company. As I wondered what to do I noticed another mutual friend who had just joined the line (it was past 7.30am now). I went over and asked him what company he was targeting. He replied, "Qualcomm." Me: "Really? What do they do?" Friend: "Not really sure, something to do with communications." Well, as you can guess, I ended up signing up for the one spot that was open.

Then came the day of the interview and I still had no real clue about this company or indeed what position I was interviewing for. There were two interviewers - one for hardware and one for software and as luck would have it, the spot I had signed up for (without any awareness of it) was with the software person. I obviously did well enough to get an invite to San Diego. (The h/w interviewer invited nobody back.) I knew I had done ok on-site because I was asked to meet with a manager later in the day and indeed the recruiter confirmed this after I got back to Blacksburg. But for a while there was no offer. Apparently, Franklin who personally signed all offers during that time, was not too happy about making a software engineer offer to somebody with an EE degree. Finally the recruiter (Michelle Fleck) pulled a fast one on him - told him that I had another offer (which of course I didn't) and that they would lose me if he didn't sign the offer. He relented and here I still am, almost 16 years later. Ilan Peer used to be the CBS SW lead then and pretty much the first thing he told me was, "We had to fight a lot to get you here."

There were any number of things that if they had turned out differently, would have resulted in me not coming to San Diego. Heck, if I had actually gotten an offer from Intel (which was very close) or Microsoft (not so close) I would almost certainly have taken those over Qualcomm.

So then, we have the question: Is everything just "meant to be" and we are mostly fooling ourselves if we think we are in control? Or is this thought too disheartening and we attempt to plan and establish order just to feel like we have a say? Maybe the Matrix was not too far off!

A Minor Screw-up

Sometimes it seems like I go through life just stumbling from one screw-up to another. Now my tweets are giving offense, so I need to watch those. This line of thought brought to mind some true classics, one of which is the subject of this blog.

I had managed a 4.0 GPA (mostly by accident) through the first couple of semesters at Va Tech and was awarded a Teaching Assistantship (TA) for my third semester. I was assigned to an introductory undergrad course - EE for non-EE Majors. This is a required course for all non-EE engineering majors and so is a rather large class, which meant it got two TAs. The instructor was pretty easy going - after all the students are only taking this class because they have to - and we (me and the other TA) realized that this was a pretty cushy appointment. There was no regular homework to grade or classes to teach. Our entire responsibility consisted of grading two mid-terms. Oh, and one of us had to administer the final since the instructor was going to be away during finals week. Since the other TA was busy on the day of the finals, I agreed to administer the test.

Just before the finals week I met with the instructor to pick up the question papers and get last-minute instructions. He later emailed me with information about the room and time. The day of the finals dawned and I still lolling in bed at 7.45am (email said test is at 10.50am) and thinking how strange the start time was. Every exam I had taken had always started on the hour. I started parsing the email in my mind and started getting a funny feeling. I quickly sat up, logged in and re-read the email. Sure enough, what I thought was the start time was in fact the end time! The exam was due to begin at 8am.

For a moment I was paralyzed in horror - this is the finals we are talking about and the instructor had repeatedly made clear how this had to be done right - after all he wasn't asking for much the rest of the time. Then I swung into action - pulled on a change of clothes and dashed out of the house. I decided against driving since finding parking would cost me huge amounts of time. I had just missed the bus, but if I cut across between the apt buildings I could catch it at a later stop, so I ran hard across the intervening field and made it to that stop. The bus ride allowed me to catch my breath, but the horror of the situation was just churning my stomach. After a seeming eternity I got to the stop nearest to the building in which the exam room was and I started running towards the room. As I approached I saw a couple of students coming my way. Its almost 8.30am by now. I asked this student if he was in that class. He replied that indeed he was, but that "The TA never showed up with the exam." Trying hard to be nonchalant, I said that I was the TA and that he should follow me back to the room to take the exam. He hesitated a bit and then said, "Well, I can come, but most of the other students are gone." The game was up - there was no way to administer this test now.

With a sinking heart I made my way to the dean's office. What would my punishment be? Would they ask me to refund the TA money? Would my grades suffer? I imagined all manner of extreme scenarios as I stood outside waiting for the secretary to let me in. When I finally got an audience, the dean was rather nice about it. My offer to administer the test tomorrow (by personally calling each student) was brushed aside - many students had already left town since this was their last exam. Eventually it was decided that the students would get a grade that was an average of their two mid-terms and their project score. If anybody was unhappy with that, they were welcome to take the final.

It took me a while to digest what had just happened. I had screwed-up big time and come out fairly unscathed (I didn't get another TA position, but luckily I had an RA by then). Although I do wonder if there was some blow-back on the instructor. You see, the reason he was so particular about the finals was that, by rule, he is supposed to administer it - that is the one task they are not supposed to ask a TA to do.

Bondy & Murty

Some text in a document I was reviewing reminded me of this quick exchange that took place a little over 17 years ago - Fall '91, Va Tech.
Vinay and I were both taking a Graph Theory class and the course text book was authored by two guys whose last names were "Bondy" and "Murty." Given Vinay's last name, we promptly bestowed the "Murty" moniker on him and indeed, if you listen carefully many of us from that batch still use this name for Vinay. Anyway, we are in class one day and the Prof is going through this convoluted proof from the book and even after repeated passes most of the class is at sea. Vinay was seated right behind me and at one point I leaned back and whispered to him (in Hindi),"Abe, yeh kya proof likha hai re?" Without missing a beat Vinay whispered back, "Yeh mera chapter nahin hai. Yeh Bondi ka hai."

A Butterfly Flaps its Wings

It was the summer of '91, I was a grad student in Blacksburg, Va and I had just bought my first car - a 1984 Nissan Sentra. It didn't have a cassette deck (CDs were a luxury) and so I invested in one, but being a starving (ok, maybe not actually starving) student, I hooked it up myself. Some of the wiring was a tad confusing, but it seemed to work. Soon after, I was taking a couple of friends on an outing and the guy in the back seat comments, "Hey, how come your rear speakers are not working?" Innocent enough? Maybe, but that little comment lead to a car break-in, being shot at, almost going to court, a broken window, and a shattered windshield. Far fetched? Not so much...

I, of course jumped to the conclusion that I must not have wired something correctly. I yanked out the deck from the dashboard and started connecting wires that were hanging loose. At one point there was a crackle and I noticed that my clock was no longer working - I had shorted it out. A bit disappointing, but I ploughed on. Very soon there was another crackle and the deck, my brand new Pioneer Cassette deck, was no longer operational. Now that hurt. But, its not without reason that I am the designated customer service negotiator - I called the company and they agreed to repair it. I sent it in and was now without any kind of music system - not even radio.

Now, not having a music system was ok for tooling around Blacksburg, but the following weekend we were heading out on a 200 mile drive to an amusement park. A friend had a small boom box that he often took in his (equally ancient) car and he offered to lend me the same. It had a cigarette lighter adapter and so, we were all set. We even taped it to the dashboard so that nobody had to hold it all the time. Road trip was great and we returned late in the night and I went to bed without cleaning out my car. The next morning (a Sunday), a friend called to say that there appeared to be broken glass near my car. I ran down and sure enough, somebody had broken my car window in order to steal the $20 boom box. Now I not only had to replace my friend's boom box, but I also had get a new window. Thankfully, the thief had very considerately broken the rear window which didn't slide and so was not as expensive to fix as the front ones. I was able to find a replacement at a junk yard, but that plus the install put me $100 in the hole.

A week later, my 'repaired' Pioneer deck came back. I headed back down to install it, but it still wasn't working. Their note in the shipping package explicitly said that they had tested it. I was stumped - I knew next to nothing about cars and didn't know what to do next. Somebody then suggested looking at the fuses. I didn't know cars had fuses. I looked and sure enough one of them was blown - that was the second crackle I had heard. The clock was really gone, but the deck had never shorted. I changed fuses and now I had my deck working again. After all the hassle, I couldn't care less about the rear speakers not working, which had started this whole chain of events.

Well, the clock was still broken and after my first experience with junk yards I thought I would call around and see if somebody had a replacement for the clock. Sure enough, one of them did. He gave me directions and I headed off, with coincidentally, the same two friends in the car. Blacksburg is in a pretty rural part of Virginia and once you get outside of town, it becomes hilly billy country pretty soon. The directions were hard to follow and we were soon lost on some country road. At one point we decided to head back and in order to make a U-turn I had to turn into the driveway of a farm house. We noticed a couple of kids playing in the yard. As I started driving away, my rear windshield turned opaque and my friend in the rear seat started yelling, "Drive, drive!" I gunned the engine and left the place in a hurry. My friend exclaimed, "We were shot!" Yup, one of the kids had taken a shot at us and hit the rear windshield. We had noticed the guns in the kids hands, but had thought nothing of it. We drove home gingerly and after some debate, called the cops. Now, this is the deep south and here we were, students from India accusing a couple of white kids of having shot at us. We didn't even know exactly where the house was. The officer took our report and headed out to investigate.

He called me back a while later and said that he had indeed located the house and yes, there were kids playing with a BB gun and yes, they had seen a blue car turn around and leave in a hurry, but no, they had not taken a shot at the car. The kids dad claimed that he was there the whole time and he had seen it all. All I wanted was for the guy to pay for the windshield, but he was not budging. The cop said I could press charges, but it had to go to juvenile court since the kids were underage. I decided I should try, at least in the hope that the dad would settle out of court and pay for my windshield. The courts were in the next town (Christiansburg) and I started making weekly trips there. I was getting no traction - the cop seemed sympathetic, but he was pretty frank - he said the chances of me prevailing in juvie court were slim. Then if I lost, I may have to pay the expenses of the other side too. And maybe they would counter sue for a false charge. I could read between the lines - the word of 3 foreigners did not count for much against that of two white kids in that part of the country. The trips were getting painful - I had to schedule them around my classes and I was still driving with a plastic sheet in place of the rear windshield. In the end I gave up and paid for the replacement on my own. This was again from a junk yard and while it fit well, the defrost wiring did not work. Kind of a pain in the winter. I was out another $150, not to count all the aggravation and stress of the court house visits. My clock was still busted and my rear speakers were still silent.

It was several weeks later and a I had helped a friend do some India shopping. He was unloading stuff from my trunk and commented casually, "So how come you don't have rear speakers?" I responded, that of course I had rear speakers - the speaker meshes were clear visible behind the rear seats - but that they didn't work. He invited me to check for myself and as I stuck my head into the trunk I realized that he was correct: there were no speakers. There was the mesh, but no speakers below them. All this while I had been trying to coax sound from non-existent speakers. The thought occurred to me that I could saved myself some trouble if the audiophile had never ridden in my rear seat. Or maybe, the story I got from it is worth it?