US Visa interview experience

On the May 30th I had appeared for my Visa - Personal appearance and cleared it. Here is the experience I had.

Mine was of type L1-B blanket. The appointment was at 10:00 AM IST.
The entrance is the one facing the Gemini flyover(Chennai). You won't be allowed to stand in the queue outside only until 15mins prior to the scheduled time. At the entrance they would check you Passport and appointment confirmation letter. Once you are verified you will be let in. Once in, you will be physically frisked for mobile phones,storage materials or anything. Once clear you will be let into a lobby.

You would see a series of counter and they would check your documents. They will group documents together and pin them and separate the unnecessary ones. Keep the docs in the same order that they organize and hand over to you. Once that is done you will be let into the Visa lobby.

The Visa lobby is an insane place. It is a small room with 7 counters and a huge number of people. You would have to wait in the chairs provided until its your turn. When its your turn the crew will call you to stand in a queue. The queue is insanely slow. This is the most difficult part. You will have to stand in that queue for around 3 hours seeing others getting rejected. You would get really tensed and worried as time passes by. Those three hours would be like 3 decades. It is ridiculous that that the consulate can't make a work around for this annoying queue. Anyways once your turn comes you will be guided to one of the 7 counters. He will fire a few questions and you will be good to go, with or without the passport.

Tips
1.Speak the truth. Do not bluff. Even if you are missing something and if you are truthful there is a very good possibility of you clearing the interview(They wouldn't reject your Visa, rather ask you to appear on another day with adequate documentation). End of the day even they are humans.

2.Do not walk in with an empty stomach. Had I been made to stand another hour I would have definitely collapsed. Have adequate food, not less nor too much. You wouldn't want hunger let you down on dooms day.

3.Keep your docs organized. if we consider the interviewers getting irritated in terms of levels of irritation, giving a disorganized set of docs to the interviewer will directly put you in the 5th level of irritation. He will definitely turn you down.

4.Be cool, he/she's not gonna eat you. Greet them in a very friendly manner. Any questions they ask look at their face when you answer. Always have a smile on your face, it increases the comfort level and confidence on you. Trust me on this, it works.

5.Body language is important. The way you present yourself, the way you speak to them makes a huge difference. Especially the male interviewers will look carefully at you when they ask a question. Basically they are seeing how confident we are physically on buttressing whatever we speak. If they have doubts, they would keep firing questions. I was very confident in my answer so the interviewer never went further after the first question.

6.Those who are going for masters, better have a solid proof that you could sustain financially your education. Oral confirmation does not help much, documents are required. If your dad is a big shot you better have all certificates, job experience certificates etc. to bolster your point.

7,In case you are applying for Visa after a significant time period after your graduation, you would have to have a strong explanation of each and every month after your graduation until the current date as in what you did. You need to produce documentation to buttress that.

8.Finally, Be cool! Chill! No worries! The cooler you are, the easier it goes!

The traumatizing week

This week was very complicated for me, went through a lot of emotional trauma. The above graph shows my mind flow in the last week. Y-axis zero stands for absolute sadness and 100% stands for a very happy mood. Logically 50 means normal mentality. I went in to the week at 10% below normal. The thought of the Visa interview was the main cause

Monday
It all started on Monday when I came to know that my Mom was will. She usually falls ill quite often so I didn’t take it very seriously and continued my work. Later on, in the evening I came to know that things were really bad. She hadn’t had food for 3 days. I was scared and immediately booked my flight ticket to Trivandrum for Tuesday.

Tuesday
I flew to Trivandrum on Tuesday only to see my Mom in a very sad state. We organized an ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. It was really painful for me. Moreover the selfish bloody doctors… I detest them from the bottom of my heart…. I am proud to not have chosen that profession. Finally we got her admitted in a hospital. She was administered right away with medicines.

Wednesday
Wednesday was not any better. We did not see any much improvement in her. She was still ill. Constantly medicines were given to her. Her food intake was nill. I was really helpless.

Thursday
I could not travel to Chennai as I had planned earlier. I was really in a sad state when I got a call from my girl friend. She said “Darling, My mom has expired” and the phone went silent. I was really helpless. My girl was in a real bad state and I was not there to help her or console her. Things were just getting worse. Next day was my Visa interview day. I was really de-motivated and disappointed. That night I flew to Chennai.

Friday
I woke up early at 5:00 AM, went through my Visa docs. Had to fill certain columns, did that, caught a rick and left for the US consulate. I was still running at 0% mind alertness. At 9:45 I stood in the queue and was let in around 10:30. Surpassed around 3 annoying queues and got to my interview. Everything went just fine though and I cleared without much glitches. Friday ended at around 35% below normal mind condition.

Saturday
Still a bit sad today, but feeling much better. I spoke to my Mom, she seems to have improved a lot. I was really happy to hear that. Moreover, I spoke to my girl. She also seems to have overcome the grief and has got hold of the situation. She was speaking well and was looking forward to meet me in the next weekend.


A harsh week indeed! But, it’s all a part of life. Need to learn to face the troughs as well.

With great powers come great responsibilities!

I am sure everyone would have seen the Spider Man part-1 flick. There was this conversation between Uncle Ben(Don't know his real identity) and Toby in the morning Uncle Ben gets killed. It was all about Uncle Ben giving advice to Toby and Toby not giving a damn and walking away. But, there was this one dialog which really captivated my thoughts. "With great powers come great responsibilities!!". Toby should have realized the meaning of that, perhaps his Uncle would have escaped death.


Well, My life is kinda like spider man's, except that I don't jump off buildings that often :-). Especially at my work place and family, there are great responsibilities bestowed on me. There are people who rely on me. There always is this fear whether I can live up to their expectations. How is it gonna be if I let them down. Devastating! It looks good to others to see someone having so many responsibilities and accomplishments under their belt. Little do they know of the trauma one goes through. Expectations from different people. Need to satisfy different point of views. Carefully play with human emotions at the same time. End of the day, we all live on Earth, can't extend the 24hr mark any longer.

Well, The tough ride is challenging and sometimes fun. Living at the edge has become a life style. It's like being dropped into enemy territory in a war zone. Do or die!

Life is a challenge! Let's take it that way!

Family | Very important to an individual

Just another bad day at office, came home with a shrug on my face, marred with embarrassment, cursing the next day, probably gonna be worse.
Things were not gonna settle so easily that evening. I got a call from Mom and dad, bad news, my cousin's premature baby had passed away. I knew this cousin of mine really well.

There was this one time when he and I had gone to a sea shore to by fresh fish. I , as usual, confidently went and stood on a boulder jutting into the sea. That day no fishermen took to the seas as the waves were too strong. Imagine waves 15ft tall. People say you don't die of drowning, its the belting of the waves on you and the rocks that take your life. Well The overconfident me was surprised by a sudden wave that within a fraction of a second toppled me. I reached for air, didn't find anything, reached for ground , nothing, reached for anything, absolutely nothing! Finally I got hold of a rock and I gripped on it with all my life. Seconds later the wave receded and I was stunned to see myself hanging at the edge of the boulder. Below is 15ft merciless waves. Something else that took my attention was my cousin. He had thrown of his slippers and was all set to jump in to the waves thinking that I have fallen in. I was surprised to see that someone would go to that extent. That was my cousin.

His baby had been given birth prematurely when he was 7 months old. After that they took real care of him in the incubator. He used to keep the kid in his chest and sleep every night to imitate the mother's womb. But after 3 months tragically the baby passed away.

My parents called me and asked me to call my cousin and express my grief. That was one of the most difficult moments in my life. I really did not have the guts to call him up. May be 'coz I was brought up in hostels away from family. I really have lost the vitality of family. The corporate life is making things worse. There's been weeks when I haven't called home. Somehow I have prioritized work above family. That made things difficult.


Finally I gave in to mom's words. I called my cousin up. He spoke to me well. I spoke to his family too amongst the grief. I felt great after that. I realize family is very important to an individual. I hope I will someday change my life styles and prioritize things that really matter in life.

An excellent post of mine

Back in the days of collage I used to think crazy. Dreaming and coming up with weird concepts. Today I was just browsing my blog for a post I made in 2006 when I stumbled upon this wonderful post that I had written. I really loved reading it. Simply awesome.

Check it out for yourself.

http://prabhudc.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html

I love being disorganized!

Life has become totally synthetic. I envy those who were born in the 15th century or so. They had their freedom for innovation. Had Einstein been born today, he would've been no greater than any one of us. Everything is too organized now. In fact our lives are damn organized now.

My life was rather radical. I have had my belief and my own justification for everything, which I thoroughly follow in spite of the thoughts the people have around me. An embarrassing fact about me is that at my workplace, I am proudly the engineer with the least marks.(Paradoxical) Proudly??? Yeah! You heard that right! Back in college I always believed in studying anything for the sake of good marks or a safe job is absolutely stupid and ridiculous. Understanding concepts, digging up on facts and believing in them was always my approach. Well, It cost me a lot a lot of embarrassment. But, hey! Who cares!

It's been more than 1.5 years since I have been thrown into the corporate life. I took a mental survey of individual performances and mapped them to their backgrounds. As expected, success rate of individuals are directly proportional to their attitude towards their eduction. I have seen guys who have scored astonishingly high marks in their education suffering in the corporate world. The problem with these guys is that they are so pre-designed and planned that they have no room for out of the box thinking. They have been brought up that way. In fact, set aside the corporate world, even our lives demand out of the box thinking.

Well, in my survey, there were a small group of guys, rather superhuman. They managed to be their at the top by shear quality. Hats off to them. Frankly, I respect such individual, although there are only a few.

I believe the biggest weakness is in the Indian system of education. The education system is absolutely job oriented. On the contrary, I am quite impressed with the American system of education. Their education is more of concept driven rather than a lustrous pay check.

A nation's most wealthy resource is it's people. And I believe India has a lot of it. :-) . It is high time we check up our educational system. . .