Dinner with Don, Bob and Jim – some of the behemoths in our industry. It is always so great for Riverside to do business with ProEd together.

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 🙂

Tracey (only the second person I know who spells her name that way) and I have worked in Equifax in our past lives. We left the company at around the same time. I knew she had moved to Nashville but did not know much more than that.

Fortunately for me, she was gracious enough to give me some time for coffee this morning in between her busy schedule. (She runs HR for an international division and has crazy hours).

I got to learn about her life story which has taken her from Iowa to Georgia to Colorado back to Georgia to Tennessee and she thinks will get her back to Georgia again! Unlike most of my intersection points, we talked a lot about topics from our professional lives.

Specifically, we discussed the potential long term challenges in Work From Home culture. We both seem to think that employers and employees alike have not quite fully fathomed the long term effects. We discussed onboarding challenges, how to inculcate the feeling of belonging when the whole employee base works from home, how does performance evaluation change and how does one go around building culture.

It was a great discussion and learnt a lot from her!

We also talked about her trips to India and thought we should do a trip together one of these days. Together with our common friend – Hunt Jackson.

“Before, I let you go, Tracey – I have my usual question – what have you learnt from life that I can learn from?”

“Travel”

“Travel?”

“Yes, travel as much as you can. To different places and countries.”

“Because there is so much of the world to see?”

“Yes. But more importantly, there are so many different people to meet. Learn from different perspectives, cultures and ethos other people have. Without that, we become frogs in a well incapable of understanding the larger perspectives in life”.

Travel, it is then! Hunt, if you are listening – we three need to to get to India sometime soon!

I met Scott Leftwich – a decorated Commander in the Navy (pilot – and was attached to the White House for a couple of years if I am not very mistaken) in 2010. I believe it was in San Diego. It was in the context of the acquisition of a company.

Over the years, we moved on to different companies but we kept in touch. At least once a year – on his birthday. Every birthday, I would make a promise – “If I ever visit Nashville, Scott, you will be the first one to know”.

Today was the first day I ever stepped my feet on Nashville. And he was the first person I saw!!

There was too much to catch up on in one evening. For starters, we had the old business we ran together. And here is a funny – but predictable – thing: We struggled to remember numbers, dates and even product names… but we remembered the people!! We talked about all our team mates. That is a great life learning… it is always about people!!

We talked about growing old… we talked about houses on the beach… we talked about our kids. I might have even tempted him to get on a motorbike!!

We talked about the stuff about Working From Home that nobody is talking about and the challenges in Leadership most of us are not comfortable discussing publicly.

What was startling about this gentleman is how little he has changed. It is that same constant smile, that sereneness to take an uncommonly balanced point of view and that ability to make me feel good by laughing at my terrible jokes!!!

I got to see him soon again!!