I arrived in Newark airport and eventually found my way to the airport hotel. About 400 yards as the crow flies. But it took me an hour in two buses and one train to get there. Finished up my dinner at the bar and was on my way up to the room to get a good night’s rest.

I have two days worth of driving Natasha and Tuey back home in front of me.

On the way up, I got distracted by some stuff in the library corner of the hotel. There was an illuminated globe there. Sharmila loves globes. So, I went up to take a closer look. Loved what I saw. I was wondering if Sharmila might want a bigger one or was this size enough? Unfortunately, I could not estimate the size properly. Yes, the globe always being at an angle was not helping.

Did the next best thing. You know how hotels near airports have printers to print your boarding pass? Grabbed a paper from that. I knew the dimensions of standard US Letter size paper. From that I could establish the size of the globe. (Please do not say 8,000 miles 🙂 )

I could have gone to my room from there. But I stood there looking for globes in Amazon on my phone. Had I not done that, the most important part of the evening would not have happened…

Five minutes into my browsing Amazon standing in the corner of the hotel lobby, I heard a familiar “Rajib Roy?”. Looked up and saw two distinctly Indian looking gentlemen approaching me. Their faces looked familiar but for the life of me, I could not remember their names.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Vasuki!”, he put me at ease!

Of course, it was Vasuki – from the 90s in i2 when I worked in Dallas! I had heard stories of his great career progression from Madhav but I do not think I had seen him in over a couple of decades.

“And this is Chaitanya Pai”.

Immediately, I remembered a young gentleman from early 2000s working at a desk in Munich. We worked in Infineon for quite some time. Turns out he still lives in Germany!

What a brilliant coincidence! We sat down in the nearest sofa and caught up on so many of our old friends and their own families. Both now work with some of our old friends in a different company.

“So, how did you recognize me?”, I asked Vasuki.

“Oh! I see you in the Facebook posts all the time!”

“Ah! There is something to advertisement, then!!”

The irony is, a few minutes back, when I was walking away after dinner, I had thrown a glance at a table on the other side. A lady I had befriended in the hotel bus sitting next to me was sitting there having dinner when I had walked in. I had re-exchanged pleasantries as I walked to the bar.

I was going to wish her good night. She was not there. Two Indian guys were sitting there having a drink and discussing something.

I went past them.

IT WAS THEM!!!

Holy macro! I need to start paying attention to strangers!

That was a great start to what promises to be a very long driving weekend!