THIS IS ME
My dad (Mr. Mohammad Yehya) and mommy (Mrs. Razia Yehya) standing in the front yard of our
home at Srinagar, Kashmir.
My dad was an officer in the civil services of india. Since his retirement, in 2003, he is running a school of education (Popular Education College) to train teachers.
My mom has always been a housewife taking care of the house and the family.
My elder brother Dr. Manzoor Ahmed with his wife Dr. Ishrat Manzoor.
My younger brother Shafaat is an electrical engineer in Power Development Department (PDD), Kashmir.
Youngest brother Firoz is a faculty member of the department of economics at University of Kashmir
CURRENT
I am working as a graduate student Assistant. I am a system administrator at the Computer Science Department.
BACKGROUND
I am from Kashmir, a beautiful valley. I live in the Indian side of Kashmir. I mention this because there is a part of kashmir in Pakistan and the two Kashmir's are divided by what they call a line of control. I always lived in Kashmir until the year 2000, except for the two years of my junior and senior high school, when I was in Aligarh Muslim University.
For my elementary education I went to a school called Woodlands House School on Gupkar Road in Srinagar. I was there until I finished my 5th grade. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a website of the school. Next time I go to Kashmir I will try to bring some pictures of my school. It is located on the foothills of the beautiful zabarwan mountain in Srinagar. A very scenic location. Whenever, I visit Srinagar I drive past this school. Well, since I mentioned Zabarwan mountain, they have the beautiful Dal lake on one side. I thought you may want to take a look at some of the pictures of dal lake on this website, www.Himalayanfoothills.com. Some of the pictures that I took of the lake are in the Kashmir link.
Ok let me get back to where I was. In my 5th grade, I heard of a boarding school, Jammu and Kashmir Sainik School Manasbal and decided to go there and join in 6th grade. My mom wouldn't agree but I was too stubborn to let someone get between me and something that I wanted. Anyways, I studied there till my tenth grade and that is when I decided to go to Aligarh, about which I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately again I don't have the website of this school. However, my friend and batchmate Junaid Andrabi was generous enough to share some of the pictures he had from the school. You can see me in the group picture. Other pictures are of my friends. This school shaped me into an independent person since I had to take care of most of the things on my own and take decisions at a very young age. I stepped into teenage in this school. This school also gave me some of my best friends. I also want to thank all my teachers who helped me through those years to develop into a well rounded young man, who could make decisions on his own. Studying in that school was a great experience. It was again at the foothills of very beautiful mountains. There were some beautiful chinar trees on the campus.There are some of the pictures of this beautiful tree under the Kashmir link. I was fond of one of those in particular because it had a lovely spring close to it and we would often go to drink water from it after our games time in the evenings. One thing that I will never forget about the school was that I had to wake up very early every morning which we hated so much. If I talk about Manasbal, how can I not mention the Manasbal lake. It is a beautiful lake , located only 2 miles from this school. I want you to look at a few pictures of this beautiful lake at this website, www.gmcsrinagar.net/kashmirguide/wallpapers/manasbal.htm.
As I mentioned earlier I did my 11th and 12th grade in Aligarh. One of the main reasons for me to go to Aligarh was the great personality of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. In my 7th grade I had briefly read about the life of this man in my urdu book. I was deeply impressed by this man and going to Aligarh to study was my humble tribute to this great man. He struggled a lot for the educational upliftment of the muslims of India and Aligarh Muslim University is the fruit of his untiring efforts. I salute this man.
After my senior high school in Aligarh, I decided to go back to Kashmir. I was missing my home a lot so it was great to be back in Kashmir. I joined the school of engineering very close to my home. They called it Regional Engineering College, one of the 18 in whole India. Recently they renamed this one and all others, National Institute of Technology. They are supposed to be best in India next only to the IIT's. I must agree the website of the school has not done justice to its true potential and the standard in the college. It has produced many brilliant engineers who are working all across the globe and have been very successful. It is surrounded by mountains and is on the bank of the beautiful dal lake.
In the year 2000, my senior year at the school, I got a job in Wipro. It is one of the topmost multinational companies of India based in bangalore. As soon as I finished my final semester I joined Wipro in the fall of year 2000, at bangalore. My first experience with the corporate world and my first job. Away from my home in Kashmir, at a new place. I got the training in bangalore and was asked to choose the city where I could start working with the company. I chose Delhi because, it was the closest to Kashmir. I worked for Wipro till the fall of 2003. That was when I decided that it was time for me to moveon.
In August 2003, I joined Hewlett-Packard in Bangalore. Around that time I had decided that I wanted to go for higher studies in US and had written my TOEFL and GRE. I wanted to join for my master's in fall 2004. Coming back to my job in HP. So, now I had to relocate back to Bangalore. In december 2003, I went on vacation to Kashmir and to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with my family. It is the festival celebrated by muslims all over the world after the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. I got a call from my manager that I had to go to America. The manager who I was supposed to work with in USA also called me.
On 3rd January, 2004, I came to fort Collins, CO. My first visit to the US. I was on a business visa. I was here till April of 2004, and returned back to bangalore. After a month of stay there I went to home for a month which is when I took all those pictures that I have uploaded under the Kashmir link. Anyways, I was sent on an L1 visa which is an intra company transfer back to fort collins, CO in June 2004. At that time I had also applied at Colorado State University for my master's in computer science. In the fall of 2004, I was accepted to the graduate program at Colorado State University, Fort Collins and I joined as a part time student, still working for HP at Fort Collins.
After the end of fall semester, I thought it was better for me to quit HP and join as a full-time grad student. That is exactly what I did. I quit Hewlett-Packard and joined school full-time from the spring of 2005. I had to change my visa to F1(student visa) from L1(intra company transfer visa).
I finished my Master's in Computer Science in July 2007 and am working as a graduate student assistant in the computer science department. Currently I am working toward my Phd.