It was a tough day. Good customer meetings in SFO but some tough internal stuff I had to deal with. It did not help that I was three hours behind after a coast to coast flight.

Okay, now rollback five months. I was coasting towards my planned year off starting from Memorial Day. And then on my birthday, I get a call from a executive recruiter and I politely pointed out I am getting ready to take a year off. I was so enthusiastic about my year off that I described in great detail about what I will do. The executive recruiter seemed suitably impressed – almost carried away by my energy. But let me tell you how good these guys are. I thought he might take a year off following me. Instead I was on a plane for an interview in two weeks time!!!

Throughout this process that went over three months, there was this quiet, behind the scenes lady from a different office (SFO) who took care of all the difficult stuff – my travel, my schedule, my expense report. (Yeah! Working in a big company, I have no recollection on how to do those things). One of the most helpful ladies, I have come across. In fact, during one of those Thank You phone calls, I promised her that I will come and see her next time I am in SFO.

And today was that day. In between meetings, I had enough time to punch her office address in Google Maps in my iPhone, walk for ten minutes and surprised the heck out of her as she was busy watching the USA soccer game with the rest of the office folks.

You can only imagine how surprised (hopefully for the positive) Kristin Fresquez was. I had only 15 minutes. That was enough to catch up on her background, her stays in New York, San Fran… enough for me to say I got to know a new human being today.

And that is what I want my life to be. I will always work hard to make myself something in my job. But getting to know human beings is what I want to live for. One life is too short not to make a difference to as many people as I can.

Completely funny aside: Want to guess what her first words were when she saw me? “Is this one of your intersection points?”

Yes. And a doggone good one too!!!

I have to give Preetha credit for creating this intersection! She found out from FB that I had come to Providence to drop Tasha at Brown. She took a chance and contacted me to see if I was going to fly out of Boston. As luck would have it, although I flew into Providence, I was indeed flying out of Boston!

And then she and Ram were kind enough to take a train and a shuttle to Terminal A in Logan Airport to meet me! I had some time at hand and we simply walked over to the Hilton Hotel next door and settled down at the bar.

The last time I had seen them was in 2007 when Ram and I worked in the same team in Optiant. Speaking of crazy connections, Ram and his family were connected to a teammate of mine (Sujatha) in my post-Optiant job in Equifax who in her turn was connected (relative thru marriage) with another teammate of mine (Nari) in my pre-Optiant job in i2!! At this point of time, you can be completely excused for thinking 1.2 billion Indians are a very small well-knit tribe 🙂

In any case, it was great seeing the husband wife duo and we spent a lot of time remembering our old friends and then also talked a lot about ailing parents and the issues that their kids go thru who are not in India.

One side story on Ram. We used to have this contest every year in Optiant – we would put random number of jelly beans in a jar and you would have to guess the number of jelly beans in it. The closest person won. Ram won it every single year. He would run the most sophisticated analytical models and come very close. Every year. Till one year, one really smart lady completely trumped his algorithm. She would just add 1 to his number. She was sure he would be the closest. She took a half and half chance that he would underestimate versus overestimate!!! Now, that was smart!!!

This week started with a bang. Got to see a friend Lata Jayaraman – from 1986. We were introduced to each other by an ex girl-friend of mine. Ever since, our lives have gone in very different ways but once in every half a dozen years or so, luck would put us very close to each other and we would catch up on our past – the friends that we had those days (admittedly, I am the one who keeps giving the updates 🙂 ), her uncle who was my Physics professor in college, her cousins who were my next door neighbors in college dorm and so on.

Last Monday, I was able to see her for a couple of hours again. She was in town for some American Cancer Society convention. My friend is nothing if not a whole bundle of energy. I am the one who is relatively quiet when I meet her. So, you can do the math. In under two minutes of meeting her, she was talking about some medical terms that they had been evidently discussing during dinner. I was struggling to understand the relevance of the topic when she paused and explained in lay man’s terms. Evidently, all this time she was referring to bald heads 🙂

As always, one evening is way too short to catch up with all of Lata’s energies, but what the heck, I gave it a crack!!! At the end, I was so engrossed that I completely forgot to take her picture to capture in my “History of my Future. The First Draft” blog. I had to call her back from her room and get the valet guy to take a picture of us!!!

It was a long day in Chicago… In fact too long. But it is always well that ends well!! After literally 10 hours of straight meetings, I was done for the day dog tired. But there was always time to call up a old friend from the past. Plus I had to have dinner and I hate eating by myself.

And that is how Prasad Sista and I found ourselves together 12 years after our last meeting when he came to pick me up from the hotel to go for dinner. We were in the same college back in India (although I suspect when I went to college, he had barely learnt how to spell “college”). And then we worked together for a few years in the same company.

That was a evening of a lot of laughter. Of the “Kadi” jokes of IIT Chennai and the really really funny incidents from i2 days. I have always thought that I have been blessed to work side by side with some great people. But the fact that they still remember me and actually want to meet me makes me feel very special. Especially when that person is as great a guy as Prasad Sista!!!

If there is anything as exciting as meeting old friends while traveling on the road, it is probably making new friends in this exciting journey on the road we choose to call “life”.

Here is a new friend I made this week while catching up with my old friend – Reno. (See previous blogpost). And his name is Alejandro from Mexico. He was intrigued enough by my interest in making drinks that he gave me a couple of tips from his trade. The most valuable was the art of making layered drinks without getting the layers mixed up.

And here you can see him showing us how to make three drinks simultaneously!!! That was cool how he served three customers at the same time!! I need to go back some time to learn how to juggle bottles in the air while making cocktails!

Again, the best part of enduring all the pains and hassles of flying every week with all those delayed flights and getting lost driving in downtown streets and that uncomfortable light in the hotel room that you do not want to switch off and make it too dark to stumble around looking for a glass of water in the middle of the night – nor can you sleep when it is on – is undoubtedly getting to see old friends – even if for a short time.

This week, I finally managed to catch up with gold old Reno. Long time back when I had just moved into Atlanta, I had the chance to run with her multiple times in our Windward Road Runners group.

A very successful executive, she kept getting promoted and kept moving cities. Twice I almost caught up with her – once in Utah and another time in Oregon. This week, finally managed to get some time after long work hours on both side to meet up for a quick drink or two.

It was great to catch up with her professional success, her runs, trail hikes, her family and our old friends from Atlanta.

I look forward to seeing her down the road again…

Here is an interesting story from my travels of last week. My new friend Dan from my new job and I went out for dinner in Sheboygan when I was there early part of last week. There are not a lot of places to eat but Dan found us a nice place in Kohler called The Blind Horse which is a great restaurant. They have their own winery too!

As Dan and I started talking shop sitting at the bar over a drink, we got too engrossed to leave the bar. We canceled our reservation in the dining area and ordered food at the bar. After we were done, we started talking to the manager of the place – Yui – who was also helping at the bar that day.

She asked us where we were from and what we were doing in Sheboygan. BTW, I am yet to see another Indian in Sheboygan from my four days here 😉 So, no wonder, she was curious 🙂 Anyways, after we were done with our stories, I asked her about her journey. And I got the most fascinating story ever!

Yui was born in Japan and finished her school there. She had, at an early age, also visited Australia and stayed there for some time. Early on, she realized she did not like cities and crowd. She wanted the countryside and rural pace.

One day, her parents and siblings were at a bar in Japan that had a huge map of US. They were discussing about the places in US. None of them were much aware of US cities. Eventually, they started playing a dart game. On a whim, Yui came up with an idea – she said she would cover up all the crowded places in US and throw a dart. Wherever it landed, she was going to pursue higher studies there.

So they covered up all the places whose names they knew. The logic was if they knew about it, then it was famous and popular. If it was famous and popular, it had to be crowded. So, pretty much with California, New York, Florida, Dallas etc covered, Yui took a dart and as she put it “threw it as hard as I could”.

Upon closer inspection she saw that the dart had landed at some God-forsaken place called Kenosha. In the state of Wisconsin. This was the first time they found out there was a place called Kenosha. Or for that matter a state called Wisconsin. But that was it. She decided that she would study in Wisconsin. Her parents were totally cool with it.

A little research pointed her to Lakeland college nearby. It helped that they had a branch in Tokyo. She found out more information from that branch, applied and came over. She studied in Lakeland, met her husband here and now is managing the restaurant and winery.

What an outstanding story!!

Would you have the guts to let your life course be dramatically altered by the tip of a dart?

If any of you ever swing by The Blind Horse near Sheboygan, don’t forget to say Hi to her. She is also a great mixologist if you are into cocktails..

In all this excitement, Dan suddenly asked her something about the small place that we was from in Japan. Yui was surprised at the level of detail that Dan knew about her place. Finally Dan revealed his marine background and how he was stationed by her place for a few months.

Go figure!!!! What are the chances of that? He was stationed by the small place where she threw a dart to come to the place where he lives!!!

See, this is why I travel. This is why I love meeting people. This is why I love joining the dots!!!