Today is once again my first day of work at Toyon. If you have been a long time reader (or just aware of my life in general), then you know that I worked here as an intern for four months prior to traveling to India. Well, now I'm back as a full time employee. That means that I'll probably work just about as hard as before, but that I get paid a lot more and get benefits. Oh, and now I'll be able to do jobs that last more than four months.
It was good to get back. A lot of people seemed happy to see me. I filled out a bunch of paperwork, set up my computer (a brand new Dell workstation), and did some background reading on one of the projects I'll be working on. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'll actually be working with computer hardware on this project. Everything I did as an intern was software, and although I do like software, I missed not doing any work with computer hardware.
I also met a new (relative to when I was an intern) employee who was born in India and came to the US for grad school and decided he preferred living here. His wife is even from Kolkata (although I suppose it was still Calcutta when she last lived there)! It was fun getting to talk to him and knowing that there's another person here at Toyon that has walked some of the same roads I walked.
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2 comments:
A lot of Indian cities changed their names a while back. Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras became Chennai, Bombay is now Mumbai...
My understanding (and I may be a little off) is that the previous names were given by the British while they controlled India. I guess the new names are part of their way of making India theirs again. I don't really understand that part.
For the record, Kolkata and Calcutta are actually pronounced differently, they are just similar enough that many people (myself included) don't bother with the distinction. I did run into a few Indians while I was there that made it their personal mission to correct you and make sure you understood that Calcutta was incorrect. For the most part though, it didn't seem like people really cared.
Yah - about half the people I met in Mumbai still called it Bombay, and most people didn't really seem to care which one you used. I can understand why it would really grate on people though - the constant reminder of British occupation could be annoying. I think the St. Petersburg/Leningrad/St. Petersberg change is just as justified.
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