It was a rather successful business dinner. Buoyed with the outcome, I walked into the hotel a little brimming with energy, if I may put it that way. Which was good since I still had a lot of emails to catch up on. Having summarily disposed of the suitcase in the room, I grabbed my laptop and strolled towards the Concierge Lounge in the one full service Marriott that exists in this city (and I take wide latitude in calling it a city) called Dayton in the middle of the vast plains of Ohio.

It was late at night. I was one of a few in the lounge upstairs. And, of course, there was the lady who tended to the lounge.

Emails or a human being? Tough choice. Not really. Human being, it was. A quick night cap was poured, the laptop was firmly closed and the conversations flowed..

“I did not catch your name”, started I.
“I am Diana. Diana Sprowl. Can I get you something”.
“No I am good. Are you from around here?”
“Yes. My dad moved here…” In those few seconds, I realized that I was going to have a great time. First, she seemed to be of a very positive demeanor. She was constantly smiling and spoke with a voice like she was at peace with the world. In spite of meeting many many customers like me every day, the vigor in her conversation with me was self-evident.

We sat down and chatted and I unraveled an incredible history of how she and I got put in the same place at the same time. You know my history. Here is hers…

Her grandfather was from Ireland. He immigrated to Cincinnati. “Why Cincy, of all places?”, I rudely interrupted her. Turns out he was always interested in farming and he became a dairy farmer in Cincy area. Her dad aspired to be in the army. Unfortunately, the doctors had to take a couple of inches of his right leg bone out for a particular condition. I had a hearty laugh as Diana rolled her eyes and told me “You know how dads are. He always preserved his bones and screws and all that in a bottle!”. Her dad, then moved to Dayton.

As she talked about her mom, a picture of a very gritty person came to the fore. Like so many American families of those days, her mom worked in a local industry and then, unfortunately lost most of her right arm in an industrial accident. But as Diana explained, she adapted faster than anybody could. Diana explained how her mom would change her granddaughter’s (Diana’s daughter) diapers with one and a half arm faster and more efficiently than most people. In fact, growing up watching her mom, Diana has a instinct of dealing with things that require both hands often as if she does not have one. Involuntarily, she follows the motor movement that she visually got used to watching her mom!

Diana grew up as one of four siblings. And she has three kids of her own. And 8 grandkids. The most poignant of all the stories was that of her youngest daughter. She met somebody who was one of the few to escape the Rwandan genocide and settled in this country. They eventually got married and had five kids. Diana, fished out a picture of the family from her phone and proudly shoed it to me. Out of a sense of duty towards his religion and the African continent, the gentleman often went to different countries in Africa as a missionary to spread the message of peace and love. And less than a year back, while he was in Kenya, he and the rest of the team vanished. She said that in spite of the best efforts from this country, her daughter is starting to lose hope.

For all that, Diana seemed to be very much at peace with herself and cheery of disposition. I asked her – “You seem to be very content with yourself. What were you doing before this?”. And that is when I found out that she was to be a massage therapist at one time. And a yoga teacher around another time. And then somehow, we got on to the topic of international travel. Apparently the one time she (and her sister) was going to visit a foreign country – Trinidad – there was an attempted hijacking on her plane (I think she said New York airport). And that put paid to her aspirations for international travel.

I finally blurted out “How old are you? If you do not mind me asking you”.
Her answer later, I thoughtfully said “Okay. I am fifty one. I will take some time to get to your age. Tell me something. What should I know now that you wish you knew when you are my age?”

She did not even blink her eyelids… “Love and live everyday like it is your last day”.

I have heard that vein of thought from a few people before. So, I pressed on … “And what else?”

This time she thought for a few seconds and said “Forgive often”.

By now, it was getting late and the lounge had to be closed. I reluctantly put an end to our conversation but not before I let her know that I just hope to grow up to have her cheerful outlook towards life. It takes a lot of grit to overcome so much and yet be able to put that priceless smile on. And that I cannot wait to get back to Dayton, OH.

The year was 1997. I was running a development team. Those start-up days, we often put the new entrants in Consulting Services team to test our software (which, if I may suggest, needed a lot of testing :-); did I mention I was running the development team? 🙂 ). One particular time, we were having a rather difficult time recreating a crash. And as you may know, without a core dump those days, we had very little ability to fix hard to trace bugs.

The plans was to have a full team of consulting services team keep hitting the same sequence of keys till somebody’s version crashed. That night, I was going around the building at the dead of night checking if anybody was still in the office. There was one, very young guy sitting in a corner and looked like he was trying to read something on his terminal.

“Hi, My name is Rajib. What are you doing so late at night?”, I introduced myself.
“I am Kwok Poon. I just joined in consulting services.”
“Very good. I am in development. So, what are you doing so late, though?”
“You are in development?”, I asked, ignoring my question.
“Yes”.
“What is scripting? Can you teach me how to write scripts?”

Now, mind you, this was way back in 1997. He was talking about Unix scripts.

For a moment, I scratched my head and asked “Sure. I am not the best. But I can teach you enough. Now or tomorrow?”.

“Can we do now?”

I glanced my watch. It was 1:30 AM. Sharmila was going to be totally asleep. What the heck. I sat down and for about a couple of hours gave hime some pointers on scripts and most importantly taught him “man” (the manual in Unix where you can get all the help 🙂 – which I was incessantly going to 🙂 ).

While he was picking up at lightning speed, I still was dog tired after a couple of hours. 
“Should we go now?”, I asked.

“You go ahead, I am going to try a little more”.

Next day, when I came to office, I remember meeting Willie – the head of consulting services and mentioning that there is a young Chinese employee in his group that might make a good name for himself. His intellectual curiosity and sharpness was something to be envious of. That is when Willie told me – “I know. He has automated most of the tests for your development folks. Somebody from your team taught him how to write Unix scripts”. I am not sure I ever told Willie who it was. (I was certainly afraid that a system crash by an errant script code might point back to me 🙂 )

But I absolutely narrated that story to Kwok as the experience I will always remember him by when I met him for breakfast last week in California. I was glad to know that he remembered that night too! I was good seeing him after so many years!!

He was so super sharp that he was soon shipped off to some of our toughest customers with very complex supply chain problems – first to Japan, then Korea, then Singapore, then Taiwan and then Hong Kong. (I might have the sequence of the last four countries wrong). I do remember meeting him once when I was visiting our Hong Kong office.

There was so much to catch up on when I met him this week. Being in the Bay area, it does not take much to guess that he has been with some very successful startups and continues with his entrepreneurial zeal. I found out that he married somebody in Taiwan that he had met in Dallas! That is a story for another day!

I certainly have had the fortune of meeting very sharp people in my life. Some very curious people. And some very humble people. Not too many put it in a package like Kwok has! Always great to have been touched by people like him in my life journey!