Antony’s Life Blog

(Picture courtesy of stock.xchng.)

About 8-9 years ago, I was dreaming about living in the US. Their high-tech industry grew very fast at that time. There are a lot of opportunities there.If many Chinese and Indians are able to migrate there, why can’t I? That’s why, I tried many different ways to migrate to the US.

• I applied for Master program in 7 universities in the US. Yes, it’s not a typo. Seven universities! One of them is Maharishi University. Guess what… all of them rejected me!
• I joined Green Card Lottery in year 2000. Since the lottery is purely based luck, I didn’t get it.
• Not to forget about job application. I submitted my resume to many US companies, including job agencies. I was quite lucky because one of them finally contacted me. We started H1B visa application. It was approved! Unfortunately, the company collapsed right before I came, almost at the same time as dot com crash.

Since I had no luck in the US, I went to Germany to pursue my Master degree. The rest is history. I forget about my dream of migrating to the US.

About 2 weeks ago, someone from Silicon Valley contacted me about job opportunity there. The job description is just great. I flew to Silicon Valley for an interview last week. The interview went quite well. They seem to be interested hiring me although no written offer yet.

I am questioning myself now, is the US still my dream land? Should I relocate there? It WAS my dream land but…. many things have changed. Right now, I would prefer living in Canada much more than in the US.

I used to have a dream writing a book in English. A few years later, my dream finally comes true. I will be writing a technical book published by a well-known publisher. Well, I am just a co-author. There are several other authors. Each of us will write a chapter covering specific topics depending on are our expertise.

Unfortunately, I cannot disclose too much information right now. Even the title is still kept confidential by the publisher. What I can tell is that the publisher has approved the proposal. The book is scheduled to be published early next year.

Now, I have a lot of home works to do. As you may notice, my English is not that good. We are going to have an editor, who help us writing in “good” English. Still, I need to improve my English.

Wish me luck… I’ll be very busy in the next couple of months.

I haven’t written any blog postings in the last couple of days. That was mainly because I was preparing for interview with Google. I didn’t apply for a job there, but I went for an interview because one of Google recruiters contacted me.

I have heard that Google interview process is very tough and complicated. This morning, I experienced it myself. And, they are all right…. it was so hard. They don’t ask stupid interview questions, e.g.:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• What are you weakness?
• etc, etc…

They use an academic approach. They fire a problem and we have to solve it. They want to see how we think, how we analyze the problem, and how we choose an approach to solve it. For me, because I am a software engineer, they want to see how I can write code in whatever language that I claim to be good at.

Well… I don’t think I will pass the interview, given the fact that my answers were not satisfying the interviewer. Actually, I knew already that Google is not the right place to work for me. They have been hiring brilliant, creative and young engineers only. I am not young any more, nor am I brillliant or creative.

Unfortunately, I cannot publish their questions here; otherwise their lawyer will come to me….