In i2, we had a lot of “Raghu”s. For example, there was a Raghu Ram and there was a Raghuram. We used to refer to the former simply as “Raghu space Ram” in conversations. This one is Jayaraman Raghuraman. (To further confuse matters, his Facebook name is Raghu Raghuraman). We just shortened it to “J Raghu”.

J Raghu and I had spent a lot of time together from getting beaten up by customers (we just could not churn out good code as fast as sales would sell) to having recruitment drives in premier colleges in India.

Raghu is one of the few people I have seen in my career who has taken a lot of risks in life. And invariably has worked hard to eventually make them excellent bets.

Once in a while though, he drops his guard and lowers his standard to come out and spend time with old friends like me 🙂 🙂

In between office meetings and Zoom calls, there was an hour gap to grab lunch. With a person I started working with when I joined Riverside Insights and now has become a personal friend. Julia was very instrumental in the early days of carving out Riverside from the mothership – especially in the area of creating an engaged culture among the workforce. She was and still is wildly popular with the employees.

She eventually left the firm she was working with, moved to Austin and branched out on her own. Had a great time catching up and having fun like the good old days. (Don’t miss out on the silly bunny ears she still tries to pull on me)

Good to see her flourishing so well in her personal and professional journey!

Breakfast with our office team from in and around Austin – Cristy, Rhoni, Amy, Tony, Chris and Eric. This was at Patika. Nice sitting area outside.

Turns out, I had some more time left in the evening. That was enough to meet another i2-er from the past. Suzanne and I were in the same software development team but I did not know much about her at that time.

And then four years back, one September morning in Atlanta, she pulled up in our driveway with a customized camper that she lived in and painted from in the long road trip she was doing across America.

That is when I got to know the fascinating side of Suzanne.

Like that day, today too, we talked about her varied interests in life – sculpture, painting, photography, videography and so on. But mostly about the art of living life, our old and new friends.

The weather was perfect in Austin. We were sitting outside. And our time spent together was made even more enjoyable by the most cheerful person I have seen – Julia Zandy – who was waiting on us. She being half Persian, we three chatted about Iran and one of my favorite stand up comedian – Maz Jobrani!!

I had the chance of working with Ted back in my Dallas days. I remember him being extremely funny and very level headed in his thinking. During my Austin trip this week, he was my first port of call!!

Speaking of ports, we talked a lot about our trip to Eleuthera and the Bahamas in general. (He grew up in the Bahamas).

Found out that he has two elder sisters.

“So, growing up, you were the …” – I was going to complete that with some phrase like “youngest child spoiled by everybody” or something like that.

Instead, he finished my sentence – “…yeah, I was the dumbass”.

“What???”

“Yes, my sisters were both valedictorians and I barely scraped thru”. Then he went on to explain the challenges of growing up in a small island with one school and the same teachers teaching all the siblings and therefore constantly getting compared to his sisters 🙂 🙂

We also chatted about all the fun and challenges of our kids and the old friends we had worked with.

Thank you Ted for coming out and spending the evening with me..

Satyaki was in town for a couple of days. That was a good excuse to meet up with him and Amitesh this morning for a cup of coffee. Saw Satyaki after about three years (coincidentally that was in Amitesh’s house). And saw Amitesh after errrr… a few hours 🙂