First Salary

Yesterday was the last working day of the month, and it’s the day when your salary account gets credited with your salary. There were speculations that the salary account might get credited on the day before, but it had not got credited. From the morning I had been checking my ICICI account, as to whether the salary has been credited or not.

After many unsuccessful attempts, I finally succeeded at 5:30 pm. My salary account had been credited with an entry called ‘Salary’ and the account balance was 19.5k. I had expected a reduction of 3k in my salary since we had joined 5 days after the start of the month, but I ended up getting 4k less. Anyways the good news is that I am finally independent. I will be spending and living on the money earned by me.

Its not the first time that I am earning a salary. My first salary was from a company called ‘Snecma Aerospace India Pvt Ltd’, I was working in the company as a software tester. My tenure was for 2 months. The company was good and the facilities they provided were good. The salary was a bit low; mostly due to the IT meltdown during 2001-02. I was drawing 8k. I can never forget the canteen food. Snecma is the place where I met Srikanta Das, who is a very good friend till date.

The next salary, or its better to say stipend, was from Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, Bangalore. I had done my summer project there, during which I was earning a paltry stipend of 1500/- per month. Even though we (Me and another classmate Kuldeep Gaur) did not get much from the company in terms of money, the learning we got there was immense. Infact the company did spend a lot in our transportation. Our projects carried us to Tamilnadu, Delhi, Haryana and Chandigadh.

The difference between the earlier pays and this one is that this will continue for a long time; apart from the fact that the salary is 3 times higher that the maximum I had earned earlier. The previous 2 stints were not permanent; it was a part of my learning process, I was not fully independent.

There were a lot of things that I wanted to buy with my first salary – Digital Camera, Mobile Phone, Watch, etc. Looks like they will have to wait for sometime. There are a lot of people who mean so much to me in my life, I have decided to spend my first salary on them. I will keep getting more salaries, which I will put into getting the things that I have been wanting for a long time.

I was browsing the net today, when I came across one of the additional sites of Wikipedia, called Wikiquote. It is a collection of quotes on various topics. I also came across this nice collection of quotes on Friendship.