… is that I sometimes get to meet my colleagues’ families. I was in Charlotte and Jessica and I were going to spend some time after all the meetings. Turned out it was a Election Day and her daughter’s (Harper) school was closed.

Which meant, I got to spend the evening with not only Jessica but also Harper. She reminded of my younger daughter at that age throughout the evening!! It was a lovely chat!

The discussions this morning somehow centered around the Byzantine empire!!!

I ate way too much. Great discussions with Vivek. One of the rare guys with very thoughtful questions.

It started at Marlow’s Tavern, moved to Rumi’s and then finished out with the nightcap in our balcony well past midnight!

Last time I met Sameer was over seven years back. I think we were doing college tours for Natasha.

My last night in SFO was spent having dinner with this old friend. He has remained pretty much the same with that ever present smile and the quiet demeanor. The one surprise was his new hairstyle!!

Since he is an Apple executive, I always get a few pointers on some interesting and useful apps on iOS. I still use the sleep app he had suggested. This time he showed me a few that will test my intellect and spatial thinking!

Thank you Sameer for coming out to Burlingame all the way from San Jose.

Both of us had about 30-40 minutes of break during our meetings. We were in the same city but, of course we were in different offices. Made a dash to grab a coffee and catch up.

We had worked together for about 3 years. These were the early days of the current company I work in. As it often happens, we have way too many stories from those early formative days of the company. We even sat in adjacent cubicles before Covid came in.

Have you noticed how when you meet old friends from work after many years – none of your recollections involve numbers or even product names? Almost all of them are about people – and in fact specific interactions with or of those people.

I have a few that Celeste and I are going to talk about – maybe fifteen years from now. The one that I am surely going to mention to her soon to be born son is how we even got to an agreement to work together!!! I am sure she will suggest that it was my version, but I will have Graham to back me up!

Thanks to the effort of Lakshmi, Sharmila and I got together with Anand and his family this evening. Original plan got a bit washed away by the rains but we adjusted the plans and still put in a dinner and a walk. Brought a lot of the old Chennai days (where Anand and I went to undergraduate school together) and the Tamizh jokes back. Now that both their children will go to Georgia Tech, I hope to see more of them!

Tom and I would often see each other in the corridors of Equifax. After leaving the company, I used to run into him once in a while when he would be running too in Fowler Park. Then, for a couple of years we did not met. Other than the birthday calls, in fact, we had not talked much either.

Suddenly, a few weeks back, I got a message from him that his dad has been moved to a hospice. Since I volunteer in hospices, we were going to talk about what to expect and what not to expect. But the next day, I got a message that his dad had transitioned.

Today, we talked a lot about how to cope with a father’s demise and priorities in life in general. It was good to see good old Tom again!